Carbon, water and land use footprints of beef cattle production systems in southern Australia

For agri-food products, environmental impacts related to greenhouse gas emissions, water use and land use are all typically of high concern. Concurrent assessment is therefore important to report meaningfully on environmental performance and to avoid potential negative consequences of narrowly focussed environmental improvement strategies, such as carbon footprint reduction alone. In this study, land use footprints were calculated for six diverse beef cattle production systems in southern Australia (cradle to farm gate) using net primary productivity of potential biomass (NPP0) as a means of describing the intrinsic productive capability of occupied land. The results per kg live weight, ranging from 86 to 172 m2 yr-e (where 1 m2 yr-e represents 1 m2 of land occupation for 1 year at the global average NPP0) represent between 1.3 and 2.7% of an average global citizen's annual land use footprint, and highlight the importance of land use in beef cattle production. These results were approximately 10 and 1000 times the normalised carbon and water scarcity footprint results. The diversity of land types supporting livestock production underscores the importance of taking into account land quality in the calculation of a land use footprint. While NPP0 can be used to improve land use assessment beyond a simple measure of land area, further development of the land use footprint indicator is recommended and discussed.