Shift to Grass-Fed Beef Production Won't Cut Carbon Emissions

Grass-fed beef isn’t more climate-friendly than traditional grain-fed meat largely because of the amount of land needed for grazing, a new study finds.

Research, drawn from reviews of 100 beef production operations across 16 countries, “reveals a stark reality: claims of low-carbon beef glaringly omit the most significant factor, the carbon opportunity cost of land use,” lead author Daniel Blaustein-Rejto, the Breakthrough Institute’s director of food and agriculture, said. The institute identifies technological solutions to climate and other environmental challenges.

The study’s findings, released Wednesday, have implications for policy strategies to mitigate the emissions from beef. Global estimates of beef-related emissions range from the 6% cited in the Breakthrough Institute study to 14.5% for all meat and dairy cited by the UN Food and Agricultural Organization.

The study, published in the PLOS ONE peer-reviewed journal, argued land use impacts have to be incorporated into any comparison of the relative carbon footprint of grass-fed products—in which cattle exclusively consume grasses and forage—with those moved to a grain-based diet. Beef from more grazing-reliant, or “pasture-finished” operations, produce 20% higher greenhouse gas emissions and a 42% higher carbon footprint than “feedlot” operations where cattle are grain-fed, the study said.

The findings draw from other studies that have concluded land that grass-fed operations have higher land-use intensity, including producing more emissions, because the amount of pasture needed in later stages for grazing cattle is much larger than the crop acreage needed to provide grain for those not grass-fed.

Some changes that could help mitigate emissions range from improved management of grazing operations to changes in animal breeding to produce animals more resistant to disease and heat given rising global temperatures, the author said.

The primary difference between grass-fed “pasture-finished” operations and grain-fed ones is largely in “the finishing stage” for cattle, as they are all initially raised on pasture or rangeland.

The primary difference comes later, when some cattle are typically diverted to feedlots and fed a grain-based diet, whereas cattle in “pasture-finished” operations continue to eat hay along with fresh and stored grasses until they reach slaughter weight.

Grass-fed and other pasture-finished operations can displace native ecosystems and reduce acreage available for restoration, such as tree plantings, the study said. Some grass-fed operations have been mitigated some of their roaming-cattle carbon footprint by using less land-intensive grazing practices, but the effect often doesn’t last long, the study said.