Nil – or no – cost options will reduce GHG emissions on UK farms
Take Home Message: Agricultural green house gas emissions can be reduced by 5% by altering management, particularly by the wider use of genetic improvement in the beef and dairy industries.
There are a range of cost-effective options – either nil or low cost – for the UK livestock sector that will abate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. And not only will these options result in a saving for farm businesses, but they can also be used to guide policy makers on options available and the feasibility of delivering cost effective GHG abatement for the UK livestock sector. So said SAC’s Eileen Wall, presenting findings of research on the cost effectiveness of abating greenhouse gases (GHGs) from UK livestock system to delegates at this year’s British Society of Animal Science annual conference.
“Mitigating, or abating, GHG emissions from livestock systems can play a vital role in providing solutions to the UK’s climate change obligations,” she explained. “The main abatement options from the livestock sector, independent of grazing/pasture management, are through the efficiencies with which ruminant animals utilise their diet and manure management. Options include breed selection, through manipulation of dietary regimes or manure storage strategies.
“Attempts to abate GHG emissions should first target those abatement options that are cost efficient and this study estimates the cost effectiveness of selected options for the UK livestock sector,” she added, outlining the rational behind her team’s work.
Research reviewed by scientists at SAC in Edinburgh highlighted an array of abatement options for livestock, which fell into two broad categories – options that focus on animal management and options that focus on manure management, for example on-farm anaerobic digestion.
The options were shortlisted based on their likely uptake and feasibility and information on the abatement potential of each option for reducing GHG emissions were taken from a range of sources, including publications, reports and expert opinion. Other information collated or derived for each option included the applicability (percentage of animals to which the abatement options could be applied), the effect on productivity and/or the effect on feed intake. Other input data, such as animal numbers and livestock system parameters, were also collated. And the cost of implementing each option was estimated using the annual cost of administering the abatement option per treated animal and multiplied by the number of animals treated.
“Our work revealed that a range of options, both animal and manure management options, have a high potential for the abatement of GHG from livestock systems,” said Dr Wall. “The cumulative effect of these measures show that an annual abatement of approximately 2.68 MtCO2eq could be achieved in the livestock sector at a cost of around £100/tonne by 2022.
“This represents around 5% of the 2005 UK agricultural GHG emissions – 44.7 MtCO2eq, excluding land use change.”
She added that some options were not currently feasible in the UK, for example the use of ionophores is prohibited, but may become an option in the future.
“But some of the measures proved to be highly cost-effective such that adopting this measure would result in a cost saving to the farming system. For example, the use of recording and genetic selection tools in beef results in improvements in the systems that utilise these tools.
“These tools are not used as widely as in other livestock sectors and improving the uptake of such tools, and increasing the efficiency of production in some beef systems, will have a large impact on overall GHG emissions. It will also have an impact on the overall farm profit and sustainability and, therefore, be highly cost-effective.”
The results also showed that on-farm anaerobic digestion tended to be only effective on larger scale farms.
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