3 best strategies for sustainable beef farming:

• Mainly use renewable resources that have a minimal environmental impact
• Create happy and healthy beef cattle that use minimal amounts of antimicrobials
• Ensure profitability because healthy beef cattle produce healthy and nutritious animal proteins, both now and in the future.

Sustainable beef farming has many different elements that are all interrelated. An integrated programme with sustainable beef farm practices is therefore required.

Healthy beef cattle live in animal friendly beef farms that utilize renewable resources, minimize antimicrobial use, use the lowest possible levels of trace minerals, ensuring that beef cattle produces healthy, nutritious animal proteins. Sustainable beef farming that secures farm profitability requires an integrated approach, encompassing various interconnected elements.

A beef farm's carbon footprint is primarily driven by greenhouse gas emissions, both from cattle and farm operations. For instance, CO₂ emissions result from fossil fuel usage, and fertilizer production. Synthetic fertilizer production is responsible for about 2% of global fossil energy annually, thus contributing significantly to the beef carbon footprint.

Healthy beef cattle emit three greenhouse gases that impact the beef carbon footprint:

• Carbon dioxide (CO₂), nitrous oxide (N₂O), and methane (CH₄). Beef cattle produce a lot of carbon dioxide, but this is a circular process: plants use CO₂ and water to produce sugars and oxygen. Cattle use these plants and oxygen to produce energy and CO₂ (see Figure 1).
• Nitrous oxide is mainly released when manure is injected into the soil.
• When the feed is fermented in the rumen, there is enteric production of methane (CH₄). Most of this enteric CH₄ is expelled through belching. A small percentage of enteric CH₄ is produced in the cattle’s large intestine and then expelled. Next to enteric production of CH₄, there is also production of CH₄ via manure after this manure has been produced by cattle. Methane has a big impact on the beef carbon footprint because the greenhouse gas effect is 34 times bigger than the greenhouse gas effect of CO₂.

The different components causing environmental impact between dairy cattle and beef cattle are presented in Figure 2, where methane produced in enteric fermentation remains the largest contributor with more than 40% of the total, for both types of cattle1. A study from Capper and Bauman2 showed that between 1977 and 2007, the average slaughter weight in the US jumped from 274 kg to 351 kg. This increase meant fewer animals were needed to meet beef demand, shrinking the national herd size.

Additionally, the average growth rate improved from 0.71 kg/day to 1.16 kg/day, cutting the days to reach slaughter weight from 609 to 485. This progress reduced maintenance energy use from 53% to 45% and did significantly cut down resource use: feed by 19%, land by 33%, water by 12%, fossil fuels by 9%, and carbon footprint per kg of beef by 16%.

Cow-calf operations are the bedrock of beef production. By choosing the right genotypes that boost productivity and feed efficiency, we ensure quicker cattle turnaround and better feed utilization. Advanced grazing management and breeding management and other management practices to improve health will cut down on feed and land use. Sustainable cow-calf operations can reduce greenhouse gas emissions improving:

• Feed efficiency: by improving feed efficiency of cow -calf operations, cows produce less methane per unit of beef.
• Health of beef cows: healthy, well-fed cows have lower methane emissions compared to stressed or underfed animals.
• Beef calf supplementation: Supplementing beef calves is crucial to deliver healthier calves and to reduce time to weaning. On top of this a proper supplementation will impact rumen development, ensuring higher performance in the following feedlot stage.
• Technology integration: using technology to monitor and manage emissions of beef cattle helps in identifying and mitigating high-emission activities within the operation.

• Effective land use management practices: rotational grazing and the integration of legumes and other nitrogen-fixing plants can improve soil health and fertility. This helps maintain healthy pastures, promotes biodiversity, and increases carbon sequestration in the soil, reducing the need for chemical fertilizers thud enhancing the sustainability of the cow-calf operation.

Targets for efficient cow-calf operations:

• Reproductive performance: only 89.1% of cattle produce a live calf annually. Boosting this rate would reduce the population size needed for beef production, thereby lowering environmental impact.
• Weaning weight: in an efficient cow-calf operation, calves should wean at about half their dam’s mature weight. However, with beef cows nearing or surpassing 635 kg, this target is hard to hit due to nutritional limits of pasture diets.

Feed conversion rate is the most important key success factor for feedlots. Next to feed efficiency, reduced mineral excretion is an important parameter of sustainable beef farming.

• Precision feeding systems of beef feedlot cattle optimize feed efficiency, reduce feed costs and minimize environmental impact.
• Innovative feed additives enhance digestion and significantly cut methane emissions.
• Effective waste management systems recycle nutrients from manure, minimizing environmental contamination. This could potentially create a circular beef farming system.

By integrating these strategies, feedlot operations can enhance productivity and profitability while significantly contributing to environmental stewardship.

Targets for efficient beef feedlot operations:

• Feed Conversion Rate (FCR) has a direct impact on profitability of feedlot operations and should be as low s possible.
• Average Daily Gain (ADG) is critical for meeting market weights targets for beef efficiently.
• Mortality should be as low as possible, ideally under 1%. High mortality rates can indicate health or management issues.
• Carcass quality and yield: dressing percentage, marbling score, and yield grade are important targets, aim for high-quality grades like Prime or Choice with high yield percentages.
• Days on Feed (DOF) before cattle reach their market weight should be optimised to balance growth rates with feed efficiency. This will influence feed costs and turnover rates.
• Yardage cost are the non-feed cost per head for every day that an animal is fed harvested feed in some form of confinement3. Yardage costs of beef cattle include all fixed costs and all operating costs not related to feed. Fixed costs includes taxes, insurance, depreciation, and interest on long-term assets. Non-feed operating costs would include labor, bedding, veterinary costs, processing charges, fuel, utilities, office, repairs and miscellaneous expenses. Reducing time to slaughter of beef cattle highly influences yardage costs of beef farming. Yardage costs are a significant part of total costs to run a feedlot operation for beef.

One example of how pasture-based operations can practice sustainable beef farming, is that they can use land unsuitable for crops. Grasslands and rangelands are renewable nutrient sources for beef cattle and can be managed to sequester carbon while boosting biodiversity. Rotational grazing is key to soil health and preventing overgrazing. Rotating beef cattle allows vegetation recovery, creating a balanced ecosystem and aiding carbon capture. Adding legumes and nitrogen-fixing plants to pastures naturally improves soil fertility, reducing the need for chemical fertilizers, further enhancing sustainability of pasture based systems for beef cattle.

Targets for grazing beef on pasture:

• Stocking rate: the number of animals per unit area of land (e.g., animals per acre) should be optimised to prevent overgrazing and ensure adequate forage availability.
• Average daily gain of grazing beef directly influences profitability and market readiness​
• Grazing utilization rate, the percentage of available forage consumed by livestock. Aim at optimal utilization rates that avoid under- or overgrazing, to balance forage availability and pasture health .
• Forage quality and quantity, measures of the nutritional content and biomass of pasture forage.
• Animal health indicators such as morbidity and mortality rates, incidence of diseases, and body condition scores (BCS).
• Soil health indicators such as organic matter content and erosion levels, to support sustainable grazing practices and long-term pasture productivity .

Selko offers a number of feed additives such as Selko LactiBute that can improve feed efficiency, which is key to reducing greenhouse gas emissions per kg of meat produced. State of the art trace mineral management with Selko IntelliBond can improve beef health and productivity while reducing the deposition of copper and zinc into the environment. This reduces the risk of harming soil biodiversity. Storage and soil injection of manure can reduce emissions of methane, ammonia, nitrous oxide, phosphorus and sulfur dioxide emissions. Selko is working on manure additives to further reduce the impact of manure.

With Selko feed additives, beef farms can improve their sustainability, ensuring their animals are healthy and their farm operations are profitable with a a minimal environmental footprint.