Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Ruminant Supply Chains – a Global Life Cycle Assessment

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Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Ruminant Supply Chains – a Global Life Cycle Assessment Greenhouse gas emissions from ruminant supply chains A global life cycle assessment Greenhouse gas emissions from ruminant supply chains A global life cycle assessment A report prepared by: FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS Animal Production and Health Division Recommended Citation Opio, C., Gerber, P., Mottet, A., Falcucci, A., Tempio, G., MacLeod, M., Vellinga, T., Henderson, B. & Steinfeld, H. 2013. Greenhouse gas emissions from ruminant supply chains – A global life cycle assessment. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Rome. The designations employed and the presentation of material in this information product do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) concerning the legal or development status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. The mention of specic companies or products of manufacturers, whether or not these have been patented, does not imply that these have been endorsed or recommended by FAO in preference to others of a similar nature that are not mentioned. The views expressed in this information product are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reect the views or policies of FAO. E-ISBN 978-92-5-107945-4 (PDF) © FAO 2013 FAO encourages the use, reproduction and dissemination of material in this information product. Except where otherwise indicated, material may be copied, downloaded and printed for private study, research and teaching purposes, or for use in non-commercial products or services, provided that appropriate acknowledgement of FAO as the source and copyright holder is given and that FAO’s endorsement of users’ views, products or services is not implied in any way. All requests for translation and adaptation rights, and for resale and other commercial use rights should be made via www.fao.org/contact-us/licence-request or addressed to [email protected]. FAO information products are available on the FAO website (www.fao.org/publications) and can be purchased through [email protected]. Greenhouse gas emissions from ruminant supply chains A global life cycle assessment This report presents results from a broad assessment carried out to improve the understanding of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions along livestock supply chains. The analysis was conducted at the Animal Production and Health Division of FAO and co-financed by the Mitigation of Climate Change in Agriculture (MICCA) programme. The following persons and institutions contributed to this work: Study team: • Pierre Gerber (Team Leader – FAO) • Carolyn Opio (Principal investigator – FAO) • Theun Vellinga (Livestock modeller – Wageningen University) • Alessandra Falcucci and Giuseppe Tempio (GIS Modeler – FAO) • Guya Gianni, Benjamin Henderson, Michael MacLeod, Harinder Makkar, Anne Mottet , Tim Robinson and Viola Weiler (Data collection and analysis – FAO) The following provided comments, views and information that contributed to the analysis: • Nico van Belzen (for the International Dairy Federation) • Imke de Boer (Wageningen University) • Christel Cederberg (Swedish Institute for Food and Biotechnology and Chalmers University of Technology, Göthenburg) • Jeroen Dijkman (FAO) • M.R. Garg (National Dairy Development Board, India) • Vincent Gitz (FAO) • Mario Herrero (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) • Muhammad Ibrahim (Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza, Costa Rica) • Hsin Huang (for the International Meat Secretariat) • Stewart Ledgard (AgResearch – New Zealand) • Adrian Leip (Joint Research Centre of the European Commission – Ispra) • Brian Lindsay (for the Sustainable Agriculture Initiative) • Tim McAllister (Agriculture and Agri-Food – Canada) • Alexandre Meybeck (FAO) • Jean-François Soussana (Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique, France) • Marja Liisa TapioBistrom (FAO, for the MICCA Programme) • Greg Thoma (University of Arkansas, United States) • Tom Wassenaar (Centre de coopération internationale en recherche agronomique pour le développement, France) Report writing: Carolyn Opio, Pierre Gerber, Anne Mottet, Alessandra Falcucci, Giuseppe Tempio, Michael MacLeod, Theun Vellinga, Benjamin Henderson, and Henning Steinfeld. iii Table of contents List of tables vii List of figures viii Abbreviations x Definitions of commonly-used terms xii Executive Summary xv 1. INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 background 1 1.2 Scope of this report 1 1.3 The Global Livestock Environmental Assessment Model 2 1.4 Outline of this report 3 2. OVERVIEW OF THE GLOBAL RUMINANT SECTOR 5 3. METHODS 9 3.1 Choice of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) 9 3.2 General principles of LCA 9 3.3 Use of LCA in this assessment 10 3.3.1 Functional unit 10 3.3.2 System boundary 11 3.3.3 Sources of GHG emissions 13 3.4 Overview of calculation method 14 3.4.1 Spatial variation and the use of Geographic Information System 14 3.4.2 Emission factors 15 3.4.3 Land use and land-use change 15 3.5 Data sources and management 16 3.6 Allocation of emissions between products, by-products and services 17 3.7 Production system typology 19 4. RESULTS 21 4.1 Cattle 21 4.1.1 Total production, absolute emissions and emission intensities 21 4.1.2 Emissions by production system and agro-ecological zone 24 4.1.3 Regional emissions, production and emission intensities 24 4.2 buffalo 31 4.2.1 Total production, absolute emissions, and emission intensities 31 4.2.2 Emissions by production system and agro-ecological zone 33 4.2.3 Regional production emissions and emission intensities 33 4.3 Small Ruminants 37 4.3.1 Total production, absolute emissions, and emission intensities 37 4.3.2 Emissions by production system and agro-ecological zone 39 4.3.3 Regional production, emissions and emission intensities 42 v 4.4 Summary of results 45 4.4.1 Comparison between ruminant species 45 4.4.2 Emission intensity gap within systems, climatic zones and regions 47 5. DISCUSSION 51 5.1 Methane emissions from enteric fermentation 51 5.2 Emissions from feed production 59 5.2.1 Nitrous oxide from feed production 60 5.2.2 Carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel use in feed production 64 5.2.3 Carbon dioxide emissions from land-use change 64 5.3 Emissions from manure management 68 5.3.1 Methane from manure management 68 5.3.2 Nitrous oxide from manure management 69 5.4 Comparison with other studies 70 5.5 Analysis of uncertainty 74 5.5.1 The approach 75 5.5.2 Results from the uncertainty analysis 77 6. CONCLUSION 83 REFERENCES 85 APPENDIx A OVERVIEW OF THE GLOBAL LIVESTOCK ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT MODEL (GLEAM) 95 APPENDIx B DATA AND DATA SOURCES 111 APPENDIx C ChAnGEs in carbon stoCks rELAtEd to land use and land-use chAnGE 127 APPENDIx D POSTFARM EMISSIONS 153 APPENDIx E EMISSIONS RELATED TO ENERGY USE 161 APPENDIx F rELAtive vALue of sLAuGhtEr by-produCts and effect on alloCAtion of emissions 171 APPENDIx G MAps 175 APPENDIx H COUNTRY LISt 189 vi List of tables 1. Sources of GHG emissions included and excluded in this assessment 12 2. Description of emission categories used in this assessment 13 3. Overview of the data sourced for the preparation of this assessment 17 4. Global production, absolute GHG emissions and emission intensities for milk and beef 21 5. Global production, emissions and emission intensity for buffalo milk and meat 32 6. Global production, emissions and emission intensity for small ruminants 37 7. Variation of cattle emission intensities within regions, systems and agro-ecological zone 48 8. Variation of buffalo milk emission intensities within regions, systems and agro-ecological zone 49 9. Variation of small ruminants emissions intensities within regions, system and agro-ecological zone 50 10. Regional sources of soybean and soybean cakes in 2005 66 11. Main exporters of soybean and soybean cakes in 2005 66 12. Regional comparison of land-use change emissions associated with soybean production 67 13. Annual carbon stock changes and emissions from pasture expansion in Latin America 68 14. Comparison of emission intensities for beef cattle 71 15. Comparison of emission intensities for small ruminants 72 16. Summary of parameters and uncertainty distributions used in the Monte Carlo simulation runs for dairy and beef in France 74 17. Summary of parameters and uncertainty distributions used in the Monte Carlo simulation runs for beef in Paraguay 75 18. Emission intensity for imported soybean and soybean cake used in France 76 19. Default carbon stock values for Paraguay and uncertainty values of carbon pools 76 20. Summary of results from Monte Carlo analysis for mixed dairy and beef production in France 78 21. Impact of alternative soybean scenarios on emission intensity for dairy and beef in France 79 22. Effects of alternative LUC uncertainty estimates on average emission intensity for beef production in Paraguay 80 23. Percent Contribution to Variance (CoV) and Rank Correlation Coefficient (RCC) in mixed dairy and beef systems in France 81 24. Percent Contribution to Variance (CoV) and Rank Correlation Coefficient (RCC) for grazing beef systems in Paraguay 81 vii List of figures 1. System boundary as defined for this assessment 11 2. Overview of the GLEAM modules and computation flows 14 3. An illustration of production activities and partitioning of total emissions to products and services from cattle 18 4. Classification of ruminant production systems used in the assessment 19 5. Relative contribution of different processes to total GHG emissions from the global cattle sector 22 6. Contribution to total milk and beef production by production system and agro-ecological zone 23 7. Emission intensities for milk by production system and agro-ecological zone 25 8. Emission intensities for beef by production system and agro-ecological zone 26 9. Regional contribution to milk and meat protein 27 10. Emissions per kg meat and milk protein, comparing allocation of emissions to different outputs 27 11a.
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