The methane freight train is rolling, and Australian producers are at the forefront. In his latest newsletter, Bill explores how emissions reporting will shape the future of livestock production, the challenges for producers, and why data-driven insights are more critical than ever.
This post is an extract from CEO and Co-Founder, Bill Mitchell’s fortnightly Optiweigh Insights email newsletter. To get a copy in your inbox, SUBSCRIBE HERE.
I was in Melbourne last week and had a chance to catch up with Steve Rennie from Coles. Jacqui and I have had a great relationship with Coles for over 15 years now. Nearly all our cattle go to them, and they have been terrific to deal with. This is helped by the fact that there is no argy-bargy over a contract. As long as we continue to deliver the right product, they continue to take the cattle at a competitive price when they are ready to go. There is another topic about risk here, but we’ll park that for another day.
Anyway, our discussion over lunch was dominated by the elephant in the room: Scope 3 emissions (ie emissions associated with the products they buy from their suppliers).
For Coles, one of the main culprits is the meat department, which contributes about 85% of emissions because of methane. Under the existing calculation methods, methane emissions from ruminants (sheep and cattle) are accounted for in the same way as methane emissions from industry.
Personally, I’m not sure this should be the case. There are not many more ruminants on the planet than there were before industrialisation accelerated and caused the increase in total global emissions. I believe that the things we (as farmers) do to decrease emissions should be counted as a credit to the livestock industry (rather than them just making us ‘less-bad’).
The trouble is, I just don’t see things changing. The livestock industry worldwide is so small it is going to be very difficult to win this argument against all the other big industrial emitters. As things stand now, the rest of the world sees us as big emitters, and this is causing big Scope 3 problems for our customers.
This year large organisations need to start mandatory climate reporting, and I get the feeling that emissions from livestock are coming at the industry like a freight train. We can jump up and down all we like about how unfair it is, but I don’t think anybody is listening.
On our farm, we emit about 12.8kg of CO2 per kg of meat produced. Because we don’t breed, the main driver of this figure is weight gain. The better our weight gain, the lower the emissions per kg of meat.
Sounds counterintuitive, but the key here is feed efficiency and time to market (Source: https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/food-agriculture-environment/more-and-more-beef-and-less-climate-impact).
If we were breeding, then other drivers we need to consider include weaning rates and weight for age of progeny. Again, dominated by weight gain. Weight gain = productivity. Pure and simple.
From now on, we need to all start thinking about productivity. Not only in terms of the direct benefit to our bottom line, but also in terms of what it means for our customers.
Our customers are going to need us to show them some improvements that they can include in their reporting, because they need to be able to show their stakeholders (in particular their shareholders and financiers) that their Scope 3 emissions are reducing.
So, make sure your Optiweigh is out in the paddock working. Even if it’s with stock that you’re not really worried about the weight gain right now, it can still identify opportunities for improvement.
I’ve always hated the idea of having to worry about more than just one bottom line, but my meeting last week really highlighted the fact that I am going to have to accept and embrace this new normal.
If there’s something you want to know, or you’ve got an idea for an upcoming newsletter, let us know.
Talk to you again in a fortnight,
Bill and Jacqui.