Environmental impacts of Australian pork

ABOVE: Dr Stephen Wiedemann presented the findings of the study at Food with Purpose 2024.

The following extract is taken from the study ‘Environmental impacts of Australian pork in 2020 and 2022 determined using life cycle assessments’ by Mary-Frances Copley, Eugene McGahan, Kate McCormack, and Stephen Wiedemann of Integrity Ag, commissioned by Australian Pork Limited and recently presented at Food with Purpose 2024.

The research paper in its entirety can be found at doi.org/10.1071/AN23352

The Australian pork industry has experienced substantial growth over the past four decades, resulting in a national herd of approximately 2.25 million pigs in 2019–2020.

The pork industry makes a significant contribution to the Australian economy, valued at $5.3 billion in 2020–2021.

Production occurs in each state in Australia, with the eastern seaboard – Queensland, NSW and Victoria – responsible for two-thirds of the national herd.

Pork is typically a lower environmental impact protein, but life cycle assessments (LCAs) in Australia have focused most strongly on greenhouse gas emissions, energy and water and not on other relevant impacts such as nutrient losses.

Environmental impacts arise within the farm boundary and from upstream feed production.

Most feed production occurs outside the operational boundary of the piggery, where there is less control over reducing impacts.

It is important for industry to understand both the direct impacts (within operational control) and indirect impacts (outside operational control) when developing environmental improvement plans.

Baseline environmental impacts (GHG emissions, fossil energy use, freshwater consumption, stress-weighted water use, and land occupation) for Australian pork production were determined previously for 2010-2011.

The study covered 14 farms in four major production regions, finding that impacts were strongly influenced by housing and manure management systems and feed systems.

The study concluded that, particularly in conventional systems, improvement in feed conversion ratios should result in lower impacts over time.

Compared with international production, baseline environmental impacts of Australian pork tended to be higher than northern hemisphere production for carbon footprint and land occupation but lower for fossil energy use.

 

In 2022, the Australian Government legislated an economy-wide 43 percent emission reduction target (from a 2005 baseline) by 2030 and a target for net zero emissions by 2050.

To align with the 2030 target, the Australian pork industry requires an approximate 41 percent reduction in GHG emissions from its 2010 baseline.

Also in 2022, the Australian Government joined the Global Methane Pledge, committing to a minimum 30 percent reduction in methane emissions across all sectors of the economy by 2030 from a 2020 baseline.

The commitment has implications for pork production and its methane emissions from enteric fermentation, manure handling and uncovered effluent ponds at both farms and processing plants.

Under the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative – Animal Effluent Management) Methodology Determination, methane destruction and avoidance at piggeries, such as covered anaerobic ponds and solids removal, can be registered with the Clean Energy Regulator and earn Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs).

The ACCUs can then be held, sold to the private market or sold to the Australian Government.

The implications around ACCU sales, when this abatement leaves one sector for another – for example, if ACCUs were generated by pig farms but sold to the mining sector to meet government requirements – have not been explored previously.

In the context of publicly communicated targets and commitments, to avoid double counting abatement, these reductions need to be removed from the pig industry account when being traded out of the sector, but not where they are sold to the Federal Government.

In addition to GHG, other priority indicators for Australian agri-food production include fossil energy use, land occupation and freshwater consumption, scarcity and stress.

In addition, nutrient losses are an area of concern for pig production but, though commonly assessed in overseas studies, eutrophication potential (EP) has not previously been assessed for pork using LCA in Australia.

While the pork industry is responsible for impacts across all of these indicators, it is also exposed to impacts arising outside its operational control in other industries, most notably via feed grains.

 

It is anticipated that, as industry continues to improve performance, the relative contribution to environmental performance of external sources, such as feed grain production, will increase over time, unless substantial intervention is undertaken to achieve equivalent environmental improvement in other industries.

The shift both in Australia and globally to public commitments to long-term environmental improvement targets necessitates ongoing monitoring and reanalysis or interpretation of past results to understand trends and countertrends.

In response to this, recent studies of pork production have explored and reported on trends over time.

This study provides two updated benchmarks (financial year 2020 and financial year 2022) for the environmental performance of the Australian pork industry and discusses the short-and long-term performance of the industry drawing on past studies of Australian production.

The updated analysis is fundamental to reporting improvement trends, sustaining improvement by identifying priority areas for industry to address, and identifying and managing emerging countertrends.

Whole of supply chain impacts

All impacts were higher at the retail shelf than at other stages of the supply chain for multiple reasons.

Mass losses that occurred in the product flow between stages uniformly increased impacts across all categories.

Additional GHG emissions and energy use were attributable to fossil energy inputs in transport, at distribution centres and retail operations.

Retail operations and logistics accounted for 13 percent of GHG emissions (including land use and direct land use change, LU and dLUC) per kilogram of retail pork in FY22.

Of this, grid electricity consumption at retail operations was the major source of emissions.

There were no significant differences between the two analysis periods for impacts at primary and further processing.

Per kilogram of pork at the retail shelf, energy inputs at processing and post processing accounted for 15 percent of the total and fossil energy at the retail level accounted for 27 percent of the total.

This demonstrates that though primary production may dominate the emission profile, distribution and retail networks are considerable contributors to energy consumption.

Between 2020 and 2022, freshwater consumption and stress also declined per kilogram of pork ready for distribution to retail and per kilogram of retail pork, however this was overwhelmingly attributable to upstream feed production rather than reduced water consumption at processing or retail.

In 2022, water consumption at retail represented only 1 percent of the total freshwater consumption per kilogram of pork at the retail shelf, whereas consumption at primary and further processing accounted for 9 percent.

Any additional direct EP at primary processing was attributable to irrigation of treated wastewater on-site, which was a minor contribution.

Total emissions

Though the carbon account (total industry emissions incl. LU and dLUC) in 2022 was 56 percent lower than in 1980, industry expansion to increase food production resulted in higher total GHG emissions in FY22 compared to the previous analysis period.

Net GHG emissions for the industry (that is, total emissions including LU and dLUC plus ACCUs generated and sold on the private market) also increased between FY20 and FY22 by 10 percent, a combination of a 6 percent increase in total emissions from expanded production and the sale of more than 70,000 carbon credits to private enterprises outside the Australian pork industries.

Where ACCU Scheme project holders sell to the Federal Government, as the credits are not retired against a claim, it is not double counting to account for these reductions in the pork industry.

This market dimension is a new consideration for agricultural industries including pork, where the apparent environmental benefits from interventions may not be attributable to the industry because these are sold to other sectors.

In FY22, ACCU sales outside the industry accounted for 6 percent of the sectoral (Scope 1 and 2) net emissions.

Sectoral emissions (not adjusted for ACCU sales) represented 54 percent and 53 percent of the industry’s net carbon account in FY20 and FY22.

Scope 1 emissions from manure management systems were the greatest contributor to the sectoral carbon account, accounting for 78 percent and 75 percent of the emissions in FY20 and FY22 respectively.

This finding demonstrates that the potential for the greatest emission reduction lies in the transition of to lower emission intensity housing systems (for those producers not already operating CAPs, with high proportions (>85 percent) of deep litter, or outdoor production).

The contribution of the major gases to total industry emissions (excluding LU and dLUC) did not change between FY20 and FY22.

For net emissions however, the contribution of methane increased in both percentage and absolute terms between the two years in response to a decrease in carbon dioxide equivalent emissions from LU and dLUC.

Comparison with other proteins

The present study analysed impacts to the retail shelf, which was an extended supply chain compared with most protein LCAs reported to date.

To aid comparability, we compared results excluding the retail and distribution stages for pork, that is per kilogram of boneless fat-corrected pork ready for distribution to retail.

Environmental impacts were higher than retail-ready boneless chicken meat and shell-and protein-corrected eggs for GHG, LU and dLUC, fossil energy use, freshwater consumption, water stress, and land occupation.

Compared with protein and fat-corrected lamb, boneless retail-ready pork had lower impacts for GHG excluding LU and dLUC, freshwater consumption and stress, and total land occupation but higher impacts for fossil energy use and arable land occupation.

Boneless fat-corrected beef had higher GHG emissions (excluding LU and dLUC), freshwater consumption and stress and total land occupation impacts per kilogram than pork, but lower fossil energy use and arable land occupation impacts.

None of the comparison Australian studies for poultry, beef or lamb reported EP.

Piggeries may lose a small proportion of nutrients from the site in run-off losses even under best management practices but comparatively, total meat production is very high.

Conclusions

As the environmental credentials of agri-food products become more important to customers and consumers, the ability of the Australian pork industry to quantify, understand and communicate performance and long-term trends is increasingly important for the industry’s social licence.

This study was the most comprehensive of its kind in Australia based on industry coverage, which represented 70-72 percent by volume.

Between 1980 and 2022, the industry has reduced product carbon footprint (including LU and dLUC) by 78 percent, fossil energy use by 61 percent, freshwater consumption by 90 percent and land occupation by 42 percent.

However, the rate of change was found to have slowed in the most recent period for GHG emissions, suggesting interventions and concerted effort will be required to continue emission reduction.

Scope 1 emissions from housing and manure management systems were the greatest contributor to the sectoral carbon account (Scope 1 and 2 emissions), accounting for 78 percent and 75 percent of the emissions in FY20 and FY22 respectively.

This finding demonstrates that the potential for the greatest emission reduction lies in the ongoing transition to lower emission intensity housing systems.

Piggeries with CAPs, high proportions (>85 percent) of deep litter or outdoor housing produce pork with lower GHG emissions, providing a range of options for the industry.

Advancing progress towards low-emissions pork would be enhanced by a structured emission reduction pathway for industry, developed with broad input from stakeholders extending from suppliers to retail and from government and finance.

Further, pork is a relatively low impact meat production system with significant potential to further reduce environmental impacts by implementing sustainable practice change.

Mary-Frances Copley, Eugene McGahan, Kate McCormack and Dr Stephen Wiedemann
Integrity Ag