Rural Industries Research & Development Corporation

Research Compendium 1993 - 1994

Research Project

OPPORTUNITIES AND COSTS OF REDUCING GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS FROM AGRICULTURE

Objectives

• To evaluate the opportunities and costs of changing management to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the Queensland beef and sheep pastoral industries.
• To establish methodologies for a similar evaluation of wheat cropping and temperate sheep grazing systems.

Background

Global climatic changes have been widely forecast to result from increases in the atmospheric concentration of radio-actively active (or 'greenhouse') gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide and the Australian Government has made commitments to reduce emissions of these gases. Australia's agricultural industries are significant emitters.

Hence, there is a need to determine whether there are practical, economically and environmentally sound management options that will allow agriculture to reduce emissions, and if so, what costs are associated with different levels of emission reduction.

Research

Existing simulation models of sheep/wool, beef cattle and wheat cropping enterprises in Australia have been adapted to include carbon and nitrogen flows and storages and emissions of methane, nitrous oxide and other greenhouse gases.

These models evaluate the effects of management decisions (eg. changing stocking rate, clearing trees, changing burning regime, crop variety, time of sowing etc.) and climatic variation on pasture condition, animal performance, crop yield and farm financial status. They are suited to a wide range of ecosystems throughout Australia and are accepted by the farming community as giving practical results.

The modified models have been used to investigate management options relevant to each industry, to determine the opportunities for reducing emissions and to determine the costs involved in emission reduction strategies.

Outcome

In the temperate sheep and tropical beef grazing systems investigated, there appear to be management options that can result in cost-effective reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

In the tropical systems, these options include reducing stocking rates where these currently result in greater than 30% utilisation of pasture and optimising burning and clearing practices.

In the temperate systems, alteration from the current practice of autumn lambing to spring lambing and concurrent adjustments to stocking rates may also reduce emissions without economic penalty. Preliminary studies with the tropical sheep grazing and wheat systems model suggest similar results.

Implications

The management practices investigated here that provide cost-effective ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are often those promoted in Landcare. Hence, there exists an opportunity to quantitatively link Landcare and climate change issues. However, there remain challenges in validating these modelled results, extending this information effectively and incorporating the greenhouse benefits of Landcare activities in the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory.

RIRDC Project No: DPI-21A

RESEARCHER: S M Howden

ORGANISATION: Bureau of Resource Sciences

PHONE: 06 272 3438

PUBLICATIONS:

Howden, S M, White, D H, McKeon, G M, Scanlan, J C and Carter, J O, 1994, Methods for exploring management options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from tropical pastures. Climatic Change 30 pp49-70.

Howden, S M, White, D H and Bowman, P J, 1995, Methods for exploring management options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from temperate sheep-grazed pastures. Ecological Modelling.

Last updated: 10 October 1996
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