NAPCo’s carbon neutral beef brand, the way ahead

Reducing the cabron footprint on individuals farms is one way toward the industry’s CN2030 target.

THE push for the beef industry to become carbon neutral by 2030 is well under way.

And while Meat and Livestock Australia says they are soon to release their road map to achieving the aspirational target, some producers and cattle companies are already changing things on-farm.

At the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences outlook conference recently, NAPCo general manager for corporate and commercial affairs Stephen Moore spoke about the road to developing Australia’s first carbon-neutral beef brand, Five Founders.

With 6.1 million hectares and 200,000 cattle under management, NAPCo is a big player in the beef industry.

Mr Moore said NAPCo started Five Founders to diversify its customer base, take some uncertainty out of returns for shareholders and because there was rising awareness among consumers, and a desire by them to learn more about things that happened inside the farm gate.

Mr Moore said there were three pillars in the brand they focused on: traceability, animal welfare and environment.

“We have the animal for its whole lifespan.

“Every animal born on our properties and entire breeding herd is in our control so that’s important,” he said.

Under the environment pillar was consideration for NAPCo’s carbon footprint. It was a little foreign to a lot of people in our business; we hadn’t thought too much about emissions and climate change.

“We always focused on being efficient and productive and never had to distil it down in to this kind of language,” Mr Moore said.

So to start with, they measured their entire carbon footprint across the business and then began to look at what activities they could replace to reduce it.

“(We were) looking to reduce our footprint through management practice and activities and then offsetting the remainder,” Mr Moore said.

NAPCo worked with Climate Active and the Federal Government to get their carbon-neutral claim for Five Founders beef.

“We’ve got about 90,000 breeders in our company so that is a big carbon footprint,” Mr Moore said.

“So a lot of our activities have been focused on reducing our emissions through that breeder herd profile.”

This included selecting breeders for efficiency and capturing data around the age of animals at processing.

NAPCo is also using renewable energy solutions, such as swapping old diesel generators and bores to solar.

However, Mr Moore said some of the things to come in the future, such as feed additives, would be crucial.

“We have to work on the animal itself if we are going to get to this goal of carbon neutrality,” he said.

“Food has become part of people’s identity. They are linking it really closely with who they are and what they stand for. I think that will continue and us as a red meat industry need to keep up with that.”