AS THE beef industry moves closer to regulated emissions reporting, there are calls for upgrades to the tool most commonly used to measure carbon footprints.

In recent years, banks, processors and other supply chains have been pushing producers to measure their “baseline” emissions using the SB GAF (Sheep & Beef Greenhouse Accounting Framework) tool – a publicly available carbon calculator created by the University of Melbourne that is used by Meat & Livestock Australia, Agricultural Innovation Australia and private companies like Ruminati.

While the emissions reporting has been voluntary at this stage, it last year took a step closer to becoming a regulatory requirement for most cattle producers – with new laws making processors, banks, bigger producers and other supply chains report the emissions of all the companies they deal with.

But according to Russell Pastoral Operations managing director Adam Armstrong – who also has positions on AgForce and Cattle Australia – improvements need to be made to GAF.

After the company took part in a carbon baselining program through its bank, Mr Armstrong decided to take a deep dive into the different carbon calculators to more accurately measure the operation’s emissions and see what improvements need to be made.

Beef Central recently caught up with him in his office in Brisbane to run through the different calculators and some of the areas that he believes need improvement.

A move away from a state-by-state approach

The GAF tool has taken the internationally recognised United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization calculator and put it into an Australian setting on a state-by-state basis.

While the Government’s intentions with the legislation is relatively unclear, Mr Armstrong said if it was to inform decisions about reducing emissions at a farm level, the calculator needed to better reflect the complexities of cattle businesses.

He said a state-by-state approach was a very blunt way of estimating elements like pasture nutrition.

“If I’m in New South Wales and I’m in winter, they’re saying you’ve got six percent crude protein, irrespective of whether you’re in Broken Hill, in the New England, or the Southern Highlands,” he said.

“In Victoria, where we have those highly improved systems, they’re saying your crude protein levels are 20pc. Now, many producers in New England and Southern Highlands are going to be far closer to that Victorian model than Broken Hill, as is any producer grazing cattle on an oats fodder crop.”

Mr Armstrong said the crude protein levels were not being adjusted when fertiliser was applied.

“It asks me to put my fertilizer in which is about building a nitrous oxide footprtint, but it doesn’t recognise the reason you put fertiliser on is to lift the nutrient quality of your pasture (which would lower your footprint),” he said.

The excel version of the GAF tool does give users the ability to manually adjust crude protein levels, however they have to go and find out what they are. Some commercial versions do not allow for the adjustment.

Still an honesty system

The cattle management part of the tool asks for information about livestock numbers (bulls, steers, cows and heifers), liveweights and weight gains. For breeders it asks a series of questions about calving rates.

One of the original pilot programs Russell Pastoral participated in was on its Blackall property, Champion Station, which was backgrounding about 2000 head.

Mr Armstrong said the company used subjective assessments on weights, which ultimately resulted in a 51kg overestimation of weights, which overestimated feed consumption and ultimately overestimated methane emissions.

“We’ve had to build a complex tool to model our herd-flow to be able to have accurate weight data to put into the GAF tool. So straight away, that’s a major issue that there’s no integrity in the weights and their progressional weights that’s going into this tool.

“If you’ve got systems like us, you can actually do that accurately, but I could also just artificially deflate my numbers, I could say my cattle are 200kg when they’re 400kg.”

Painting the whole picture

While the GAF tool has some provisions for carbon sequestration through planted trees on farm, Mr Armstrong said he would like to see modelling for carbon sequestration in soil.

Russell Pastoral is currently looking into starting soil carbon projects, which he said would show significant amounts of carbon going back into the farm.

“At a minimum, we need a net number being spat at the bottom,” he said.

“Ultimately, I would like to be able to say, ‘if I’m positive on carbon positive pay me out’.”

More alignment of calculators

As more and more producers have been using the GAF tool and updates have been made, Mr Armstrong has found that some providers have not been keeping up with the updates.

“We were literally trailing all the tools side by side in this office and getting different results being spat out of the end,” he said.

“As we reverse engineered it, we found out that was due to the fact that it depended which version of the GAF the provider’s platform supported.

“There appears to be better alignment now between the calculators we have used but it is highly concerning that there can be any variation at all.”

More industry support needed

Mr Armstrong said a clear and transparent process needed to be put in place for updates to the GAF tool, supported by industry and informed by research.

The Government has been tight lipped on how it plans to collect the carbon footprint of producers, except to say that it should not come at undue cost. It is working on developing voluntary emissions estimation standards, with GAF viewed as the authoritative source in the meantime.

Mr Armstrong said while it is already legislated, industry support was needed influence the future process.

“At the beginning of this journey I was critical of GAF and its design, I have now come full circle and realised it’s about leaning-in and improving the model to make it more fit for purpose,” he said.

“Conversations with other agricultural sectors including sugar and grains indicate the issues identified with livestock calculators apply to those sectors as well.

“As a mixed farmer, it makes sense to me that the RDCs work together on the science to address these issues and support the improvements needed.

“My view is that GAF should be a central point of truth, as long as it as accurate as it can be, then the commercial guys can build all the bells and whistles they like on top.”