How to make your beef operation more efficient while cutting its carbon footprint
Last week I spent time with some French colleagues travelling throughout Ireland, and they gave me plenty of insight into the farmer protests in their country. With such an urban–rural divide in France, French farmers often feel the need for extreme measures to ensure that their voice is heard.
My colleagues noted that on this occasion there was support from the general population for the farmers’ plight.
The public felt some of the proposed new regulations would impact agriculture negatively and reduce domestic production, meaning that France would be reliant on importing a greater proportion of their food.
The government intervened with some measures such as a reduction in fuel costs, resulting in the temporary suspension of the protests.
However, the upcoming European elections will be hotly fought on the issues surrounding farmers’ rights.
Whatever your views on our government’s Climate Action Plan, it cannot be denied that all farming sectors need to take steps to help reduce their carbon emissions.
Many farmers switch off or become exasperated at the mention of the words ‘carbon footprint’.
However, there is a direct correlation between the steps involved in lowering footprint and improved efficiency.
The Signpost Programme promoted by Teagasc covers a number of key actions that can be undertaken on any livestock farm to reduce its carbon emissions.
To my mind, none of these steps are overly difficult to implement and are best practices that should be engaged by all farms.
Using protected urea, spreading lime and low emission slurry spreading will all immediately reduce your carbon footprint. They will also help to improve the quality of grazed grass and forage and in turn animal performance, no matter what the beef production system is.
Suckler herds will also benefit from calving heifers at 22-26 months. The less time a replacement heifer is on farm without a calf at foot, the lower her lifetime footprint will be.
Ensuring replacement heifers are growing to their optimum at all stages will mean they hit their target weights for breeding and calving at a younger age.
With a potentially late spring this year, replacement heifers that are not meeting their targets should receive special attention to ensure they are fit for breeding later in spring/ early summer.
A small quantity of supplementation at this stage could be the difference of a number of months before the heifer’s calving date.
Similarly, the younger an animal is slaughtered, the more efficient it is from a carbon footprint perspective. Of course, there is no point in slaughtering an animal based on age unless it has sufficient carcass weight.
As with the replacement heifer, the final carcass weight of a beef animal will be influenced by its nutrition as a calf/weanling as well as during its final finishing phase.
On average, to obtain 1kg of liveweight gain, a weanling animal needs to consume around 6kg of dry matter feed.
Conversely, a finishing animal will need to consume approximately 11kg of dry matter to achieve the same 1kg of liveweight gain.
These figures will vary greatly depending on genetics, animal breed, feeds used and management. However, it is clear that correctly feeding a younger animal is not only more efficient from a carbon footprint perspective but is also more efficient for the farmer.
For beef animals coming from the dairy herd and slaughtered at a young age, the carcass weights being achieved in a lot of cases leave it difficult for the beef finisher to be profitable.
This is the case despite breed and scheme bonuses being available for many of these cattle.
Compared to continental-bred cattle, dairy bred animals clearly have poorer feed efficiency during their finishing phase. Dairy-bred animals will generally have higher feed intakes, lower daily liveweight gain and reduced carcass kill-outs.
Ensuring the correct nutrition during both their first winter and final finishing stage, twinned with good grazing performance, can help prevent these issues, maximising animal performance and carcass weight.