Economic Assessment of Agroforestry Systems Compared to Other Greenhouse Gas Mitigation Options for Suckler Cow Farming

Simon Briner, Michael Hartmann and Bernard Lehmann

No 114271, 2011 International Congress, August 30-September 2, 2011, Zurich, Switzerland from European Association of Agricultural Economists

Abstract: Agriculture is responsible for a large share of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, especially for methane and nitrous oxide emissions. Applying a bio-economic whole-farm model, we assessed five GHG mitigation options on their economic suitability to reduce emissions from grassland-based suckler cow farms. Among the assessed options, only compensation by agroforestry systems and the choice of an adequate production system showed the potential to significantly reduce emissions. If an adequate production system is chosen, GHG emissions per kilogram of meat can be reduced by up to 18% – from 21.9 to 18 kg CO2-eq./kg of meat – while total gross margin can be increased by up to 14%. Through the application of an agroforestry system, GHG emissions in all systems can be further reduced to 7.5 kg CO2-eq./kg meat – equating to a reduction of GHG emissions of 48% to 66% – at costs between 0.03 CHF/kg meat and 0.38 CHF/kg meat depending on the production system and the state of the system before the reduction. In contrast, the addition of lipids to the diet or a cover to the slurry tank has neither the potential to reduce GHG emissions significantly nor are they cost-effective enough to be implemented. Nitrification inhibitors can reduce GHG emissions up to 10%, but costs for this reduction are much higher than for agroforestry systems. The application of agroforestry systems to suckler farming in Switzerland therefore seems to be an adequate option to reduce GHG emission significantly for a relatively low price.

Keywords: Livestock; Production/Industries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 12
Date: 2011
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/114271/files/Briner_Simon_267.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:eaae11:114271

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.114271

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2011 International Congress, August 30-September 2, 2011, Zurich, Switzerland from European Association of Agricultural Economists Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().