Reconciling Reduced Red Meat Consumption in Canada with Regenerative Grazing: Implications for GHG Emissions, Protein Supply and Land Use

Abstract

This paper reconciled the soil ecology benefits of forages and ruminants with reducing GHG emissions from beef. A scenario analysis compared four integrated systems for beef, pork and broilers. Slaughter cattle diets were either business as usual (BAU) or grass fed (GF), and the combined red meat consumption could not exceed the recommendation for human health. The four consumption scenarios included (PS1) equal beef and pork with BAU beef, (PS2) equal beef and pork with GF beef, (PS3) more pork and less beef with GF beef and (PS4) more pork and less beef with BAU beef. Broiler consumption was increased to force all four scenarios to provide the same amount of protein. All four scenarios required similar feed grain areas (2.5 to 3 Mha). At 2.3, 4.4, 2.2 and 1.2 Mha for PS1, PS2, PS3 and PS4, respectively, the areas in harvestable forage showed much greater variation. From high to low GHG emissions, the ranking of scenarios was PS2, PS1, PS3 and PS4. Although allowing for avoidance of soil organic matter loss changed this ranking, the carbon footprint of beef production was still double or more that of pork in all four PS. To reconcile the agro-ecological benefits of beef with reducing GHG emissions, PS3 may be better than PS4. Along with eating more pork and broilers, and less red meat overall, consumers can choose GF beef as an occasional alternative.