Availability of disaggregated greenhouse gas emissions from beef cattle production: A systematic review.

Abstract Agriculture is a significant source of anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and beef cattle are particularly emissions intensive. GHG emissions are typically expressed as a carbon dioxide equivalent (CO 2 e) 'carbon footprint' per unit output. The 100-year Global Warming Potential (GWP 100) is the most commonly used CO 2 e metric, but others have also been proposed, and there is no universal reason to prefer GWP 100 over alternative metrics. The weightings assigned to non-CO 2 GHGs can differ significantly depending on the metric used, and relying upon a single metric can obscure important differences in the climate impacts of different GHGs. This loss of detail is especially relevant to beef production systems, as the majority of GHG emissions (as conventionally reported) are in the form of methane (CH 4) and nitrous oxide (N 2 O), rather than CO 2. This paper presents a systematic literature review of harmonised cradle to farm-gate beef carbon footprints from bottom-up studies on individual or representative systems, collecting the emissions data for each separate GHG, rather than a single CO 2 e value. Disaggregated GHG emissions could not be obtained for the majority of studies, highlighting the loss of information resulting from the standard reporting of total GWP 100 CO 2 e alone. Where individual GHG compositions were available, significant variation was found for all gases. A comparison of grass fed and non-grass fed beef production systems was used to illustrate dynamics that are not sufficiently captured through a single CO 2 e footprint. Few clear trends emerged between the two dietary groups, but there was a non-significant indication that under GWP 100 non-grass fed systems generally appear more emissions efficient, but under an alternative metric, the 100-year global temperature potential (GTP 100), grass-fed beef had lower footprints. Despite recent focus on agricultural emissions, this review concludes there are insufficient data available to fully address important questions regarding the climate impacts of agricultural production, and calls for researchers to include separate GHG emissions in addition to aggregated CO 2 e footprints. Highlights • Multi-gas footprints are typically converted to a total carbon dioxide equivalent. • Different carbon dioxide equivalence metrics emphasize different climate behaviours. • Reporting emissions of all gases as a combined total loses important information. • Disaggregated data could not be retrieved from most (71%) full beef LCAs. • Relative emissions intensity is highly dependent on metric choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]