Meeting Climate Change Targets – necessary adjustments and challenges for Brazilian beef industry

M. C. dos Santos, L. K. Aguiar, R. J. Bansback, B. J. Revell and S. de Zen

No 236325, 90th Annual Conference, April 4-6, 2016, Warwick University, Coventry, UK from Agricultural Economics Society

Abstract: Brazil is an important player in the global beef market exporting throughout the world. The Brazilian livestock sector contributes to about 3% of the national GDP, and it has the potential for further increasing its beef exports; only about 1/5 of its beef production currently goes for export – at the same time domestic beef consumption has been rising. It has various competitive advantages compared to other major exporters but it has faced questions in recent years on the adverse impact of the beef industry has on the environment – particularly in relation to GHG emissions. Historically, the main challenge has come from criticism that the increased land needed for higher beef production levels has caused greater deforestation. However, this is no longer the case as Brazil is increasing its production by improvements in productivity rather than devoting more land to cattle farming. This paper shows the contribution that improvements in stocking rates, calving intervals and increasing of the age of slaughter are making to improvements in the productivity of beef production without causing such damaging GHG emission impacts.

Keywords: Agricultural and Food Policy; Environmental Economics and Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 19
Date: 2016-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-env and nep-net
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/236325/files/Brian%20J_Revell%20upload.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aesc16:236325

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.236325

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 90th Annual Conference, April 4-6, 2016, Warwick University, Coventry, UK from Agricultural Economics Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().