Global environmental costs of beef production

This paper evaluates the impact on greenhouse gas emissions of beef produce d under different management systems and compares these results with the es timated biophysical capital alteration of these same systems. The environme ntal impacts of a specific intensive US feedlot system and a traditional Af rican pastoral system are calculated using a methodology that includes the major land-use and energy-related emissions. Although assessments of carbon dioxide emissions find much greater impacts related to the US feedlot mode , the methane intensity of the pastoral mode is much larger because of the lower productivity of these systems. It is found that when indirect sources , which include emissions from fossil fuels and foregone carbon storage on appropriated land, are considered as well as emissions from enteric ferment ation and wastes, the social costs of the feedlot system at 15 kg CO2 equiv alent/kg beef are more than double that of the pastoralist system. Accordin gly, the results of the more complete greenhouse gas emissions analysis wer e found to converge somewhat with the biophysical capital alteration approa ch in this example, although it is also argued that the entropy-based envir onmental indicators may have limited use in evaluating agro-ecosystems' con tribution to climate change. Given an assumed, albeit uncertain, climate ch ange impact value, a tax on beef production of about 9% of the unit price w ould represent the upper limit of the shadow costs of the associated greenh ouse gas emissions flux from feedlot systems as estimated here, and a centr al value would correspond to a tax of about 4%. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B .V. All rights reserved.