The Cost of Transitioning the Livestock Sector to Net-Zero

This paper by Franco Bilott, Karen Michelle Christie-Whitehead, Bill Malcolm, Nicoli Barnes, Brendan Cullen, Margaret Ayre, and Matthew Tom Harrison adopted a co-design approach to model several practices aimed at reducing or removing GHG emissions.

1.       Improving soil carbon storage by grazing management and pasture renovation;
2.       Improving carbon storage in vegetation by planting native tree species;
3.       Improving livestock feed conversion efficiencies (FCE);
4.       Adopting anti-methanogenic feed additives, such as Asparagopsis or biochar;
5.       Revenue diversification with renewable energy or irrigation to reduce dependence on rainfall for income.

The findings of the paper indicate that:

• Few interventions enhanced profitability while reducing GHG emissions.
• Antimethanogenic feed supplements and planting trees afforded the greatest mitigation, while revenue diversification with wind turbines and adoption of livestock genotypes with enhanced feed-conversion efficiency were most conducive to improving profit.
• The intervention with lowest social license—continuing the status quo and purchasing carbon credits to offset emissions—was also the most costly pathway to net-zero.
• In contrast, stacking several interventions to mitigate enteric methane, improve FCE and sequester carbon negated enterprise emissions in a profitable way.
• Costs of transitioning to net-zero are lower when interventions are stacked and/or evoke productivity co-benefits.

Summary provided by Matthew Harrison

The full text is accessible here.