Coupling emission intensity with production efficiency in global beef production

Beef production contributed up to 8% of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2010. The adoption of environmentally friendly practices in beef production can be encouraged through low-carbon certification and payment for environmental services schemes. However, such schemes rely on affordable, accurate, and easy-to-use tools for the evaluation and verification of the environmental service or mitigation provided. Here, we aimed to develop a model for estimating GHG emission intensities of beef products (EI_beef) at national, regional, and individual animal levels based on their statistical relationship with the readily accessible cattle production data. We found that the metric, carcass weight by age (CWA) of slaughtered cattle is strongly correlated with EI_beef (R² > 0.90). We show that a CWA-based model can be used for estimating and monitoring emission intensities at the individual animal level. By using readily available data on carcass weight and age at slaughter, the model facilitates low-carbon beef certification and thus, the implementation of carbon offsets and mitigation technologies in the beef production sector.