Canadian beef producers continue to make significant progress in making their operations more environmentally sustainable thanks in part to research and extension efforts.
“We’ve done a lot of work to quantify how beef producers are reducing their environmental footprint,” Dr. Kim Ominski says, citing results showing lower greenhouse gas emissions, water use and ammonia emissions per kilogram of beef produced. Ominski is a professor in the University of Manitoba’s Animal Science Department and this year’s recipient of the Canadian Beef Industry Award for Outstanding Research and Innovation.
She says improvements have occurred in animal productivity (reproductive efficiency, weaning weight, carcass weight) and crop yields (barley grain, barley silage, corn grain and corn silage). Improving productivity allows more beef to be produced from fewer cattle, less feed, land and water, and reduces emissions per kilogram of beef.
In a study she and her colleagues published in 2015, they found that in 2011, Canadian beef production needed only 71 percent of the breeding herd and 76 percent of the land needed to produce the same amount of liveweight for slaughter as in 1981. At the same time, for each kilogram of Canadian beef, beef cattle producers have:
- reduced GHG emissions by 15 percent,
- lowered water use by 17 percent and
- decreased ammonia emissions by 20 percent.
Ominski also says that the land producers need to raise their cattle is incredibly important in terms of carbon sequestration. Forages and grasslands used for grazing capture carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, carbon above the ground in plant growth and carbon below the ground in roots.
“These landscapes play a critical role in maintaining carbon stocks and biodiversity. Not only are they important for cattle but they also provide habitat for many plant and animal species including wildlife,” she says.