Biomass consumption and environmental footprints of beef cattle production in Argentina

Argentina is globally known as a beef producer and consumer. Although the national and international significance of Argentinean bovine meat production, only few but valuable attempts were made to systematize and evaluate the environmental impact of the beef cattle sector by using a life cycle perspective. In the present work we aim to assess the environmental performance of the Argentinean beef cattle sector by performing a cradle-to-farm-gate partial life cycle analysis. Firstly, we modeled 75 beef cow-calf and finishing systems distributed among 8 livestock regions to obtain the environmental footprint per ton of live weight (LW) at farm gate for each cow-calf and finishing system. Secondly, the cow-calf and finishing systems were linked to form full production systems for each region and weighted by regional stocks. Thirdly, the regional data were integrated to determine the weighted average footprint per ton of LW and the absolute environmental impacts of the entire beef cattle sector. For 2016, the weighted means of environmental footprints at national scale were: 22.6 ton DM/ton LW for biomass consumption, 10.7 ha/ton LW for land occupation, 17.4 ton CO2/ton LW for GHG emissions, 10.3 GJ/ton LW for fossil energy use, 182 kg N-P-S/ton LW for synthetic fertilizer use and 4.68 kg a.i./ton LW for pesticides use. As a result, the total production of beef cattle in Argentina during 2016 consumed an estimated 129 Mton of biomass, of which 92% was grass (71% native pastures and 21% seeded pastures) and 8% were supplements as maize grain, silage (maize and sorghum) and hay. Regarding land occupation 61.1 Mha was necessary to supply the sector, 95% of it represented by grasslands (81% native pastures and 14% seeded pastures). Also, the beef cattle sector emitted to the atmosphere 99.3 Mton CO2-eq and used a total of 58.8 million GJ of fossil energy, 1.04 Mton of synthetic fertilizer and 26.7 thousand kg a.i. of pesticides.