Beef Cattle and Sheep (Carbon Footprint)

Debate between David Heath and Bill Wiggin

Wednesday 26th June 2013 Westminster Hall

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr David Heath)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Brooke, and I think that this is the first time I have done so, so it is a particular pleasure. I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish), not only on securing the debate and his contribution to it, but on the work of the all-party group for beef and lamb, which he chairs, and its report.

I am going to introduce a few figures, which are important to the debate. It is a fact that man-made greenhouse gas emissions represent a serious threat of climate change. Inescapably, agriculture directly accounts for about 10% to 12% of global greenhouse gas emissions. More widely, including other emissions associated with agricultural production, such as land use change, energy for fertiliser production and fuel for transport and refrigeration of products, emissions from global food production are far more significant, perhaps totalling 25% of global greenhouse gas emissions. In the UK, the figures are rather different. Agriculture accounts for about 9% of UK greenhouse gas emissions, and overall emissions from the agriculture sector have decreased by 20% since 1990, while we expect them to decrease by 12% from 2010 levels by 2025. I hope that that puts the issue into context.

The hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton, as well as the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford), stressed the importance in discussion of such matters of recognising balance—there are downsides, but also upsides. The hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) mentioned, for example, the value not only of biodiversity but of having a thriving and positive economy in the country. Getting the balance right is important, therefore, and is exemplified in specific cases. The hon. Member for Ogmore told us about his little, sad-looking White cattle in Plynlimon. I seem to remember that Plynlimon is the wettest place in the United Kingdom—it has the highest rainfall—so perhaps that is why the cattle look sad: they are sitting at the source of the great River Severn and feeling sorry for themselves, because it is raining. Nevertheless, he made an important point about needing the right animals in the right places to achieve the right results.

To return to our carbon footprint in this country, UK beef and lamb producers are among the most efficient globally. In 2010, the EU Joint Research Centre published a report showing that British beef is produced with less than half the emissions per kilogram than beef from Brazil. Those results are supported by research undertaken by Ricardo-AEA and Cranfield university, which reported that beef from Brazil is produced with 33% greater emissions than beef from the UK. The point I am making, because many Members have been concerned about what carbon footprinting is all about, is that it can be a useful tool to help businesses identify inefficiencies and emissions hot spots in order to improve not only environmental performance, but business efficiency and competitiveness.

I was slightly concerned by the contributions of some Members, who suggested a serious detriment to agricultural producers in this country, which carbon footprinting is not. Carbon footprints are not used in international policy making; they are tools for the benchmarking and marketing of products. In England and Wales, we do not have Government targets for mitigation in the agricultural sector. International emission comparisons are made using greenhouse gas inventories that are compiled under strict guidance issued by the Inter- governmental Panel on Climate Change. It is important to recognise that carbon footprinting can help the industry to meet not only our societal needs, in dealing with greenhouse gases, but its business needs, in doing the right thing. Carbon footprints are not intended—I can certainly foresee no such intention—to be introduced as targets or as something that individual producers must fulfil.

Nevertheless, the industry wants to do better. The UK beef and sheep industry, therefore, is seeking further emission reductions through the EBLEX product road maps, recognising that measures to reduce agricultural greenhouse gas emissions generally increase business efficiency and competitiveness. My Department welcomes such developments as part of the wider growth strategy for the sector.

The APG made some specific points. Its report draws attention to the problems of standardisation for carbon footprinting of the beef and sheep sector. Under the previous Government, DEFRA worked with the British Standards Institute and the Carbon Trust to develop the PAS 2050 standard for carbon footprinting and to encourage best practice. PAS 2050 aims to simplify carbon footprinting so that it can be carried out by a wider range of practitioners, and provides guidance to ensure greater consistency in approach.

The report is right to point out, however, areas of uncertainty where flexibility is needed, so PAS 2050 is not prescriptive for individual products, although it includes the potential for industry to develop product guidelines known as “supplementary requirements” to ensure that consistent approaches are used and to improve comparability of results. The dairy sector, for example, has produced such guidance via DairyCo, in partnership with the Carbon Trust. DairyCo has also worked with the International Dairy Federation to promote international standardisation. EBLEX is, as mentioned by the hon. Member for Ogmore, discussing international standards for carbon footprinting beef production systems with the Sustainable Agriculture Initiative or SAI Platform, a food-industry initiative supporting the development of sustainable agriculture worldwide. Similarly, EBLEX is exploring options to develop international standards for lamb production.

The APG report also calls for improved accounting of soil carbon sequestration in carbon footprinting. PAS 2050 provides for the optional inclusion of soil carbon sequestration in carbon footprinting, but we might have a misunderstanding about the terminology, which I want to address. There is a distinction between carbon storage and carbon sequestration: carbon storage is carbon that is held by permanent pasture or any other land management system; and carbon sequestration is a process by which carbon is captured in that system.

Scientific understanding indicates that UK pastures represent a significant store of carbon, but do not tend to sequester additional carbon from the atmosphere. That is where the distinction needs to be drawn. If we change land management, of course we have a change—perhaps a positive one, perhaps a negative one, but one that could be either sequestration or release of carbon—but, in a steady state, we do not have a movement of carbon on that basis. Where management practices are employed to increase soil carbon sequestration, the benefits are often small, uncertain and difficult to measure. Nevertheless, DEFRA has invested £390,000 in a project to improve carbon accounting under agricultural land management, including work to assess the extent to which agricultural land management can enhance carbon sequestration in the UK, the findings of which will support carbon footprinting studies. We expect the results to be published in the spring of 2014.

[Bill Wiggin]

My understanding of what the Minister said is that grassland is better storage than a sequestration process. However, the business of farming for cattle and sheep means that the carbon is captured by the grass and then moved along the food chain as the cattle eat the grass and become food and manure. That is the sequestration process, and that is why it is important to measure it.

[Mr Heath]

There is a constant store in any land management system. Any landscape feature, if it is not changed, will have a constant store, so there is a zero-sum gain. If the land is ploughed up or a different crop is grown, the equation may change and the position will be different. That is the simple point that I am making.

We want to continue to fund research into improving the sophistication and accuracy of carbon footprinting methods to support the industry and we have engaged actively in the production of internationally agreed standards for carbon footprints. Research under the UK’s agricultural greenhouse gas research and development platform is a £13.5 million initiative which, in response to the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell), who is not in his place at the moment, is shared with the devolved Administrations, so it is also relevant to the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan. Its purpose is to improve the understanding of greenhouse gas emissions from UK agriculture, and it will also provide underpinning evidence to improve the quality of carbon footprints.

Given the wide variety of production systems and processes in beef and sheep farming, carbon footprinting inevitably becomes part of the marketing mix, but as with other product information, the industry has a responsibility to be transparent about what it has and has not included in the analyses.