Where's the beef?

Beef cattle represent the greatest mammalian biomass on the planet and have a substantial and global environmental footprint, accounting for a large share of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions, water footprint and land use-driven biodiversity loss. The scale of these impacts depends on where and how cattle production occurs. As such, the aim of the project is to develop a spatial optimisation framework to assess trade-offs in global beef production considering multiple economic costs and environmental impacts. Results from the optimisation will inform decision makers on the best locations and land uses to produce meat whilst minimising multiple impacts from beef production. Such framework can then be applied to other livestock and crop production systems to improve the sustainability of global agricultural production.

 

Investigators:

Eve McDonald-Madden

Adam Charette-Castonguay

Katie Lee

 

Collaborators:

Steve Polasky (University of Minnesota)

Eddie Game (TNC)

Mario Herrero (CSIRO)

Daniel Mason-D’Croz (CSIRO)

Brett Bryant (Deakin University)

Cecile Godde (CSIRO)

Brendan Wintle (University of Melbourne)

Bradd Witt (UQ)

 

Funding:

ARC Future Fellowship