What’s the beef?: Reducing Carbon Emissions in Beef Supply Chains by decentralising the carbon value chain

Abstract

This project engages with the ES Farm Action Group’s Data and Systems Boundaries group to develop an understanding of technical characteristics, opportunities, challenges, and barriers, of Agriculture 4.0 systems, in achieving Net Zero targets. The goal is to collect data that would allow future systems to connect and optimise carbon data collected from various stakeholders along the beef supply chain to address transparency, trust, data ownership, accountability, and environmental impact challenges while incentivizing producers through a “carbon loyalty scheme” to produce meat with low carbon values.

Description

The carbon footprint of a kilo of British beef is estimated to be 17.2 kg CO2e. Sustainability through Net Zero is a requirement for stakeholders of the British farming sector1, with Morrisons pledging to be supplied by Net Zero carbon British farms by 20302. Consequently, consumer goods companies such as Unilever plan to introduce carbon footprint labels on its products by the end of 20213. British beef is ethically produced to one of the highest welfare and environmental sustainability standards in the world. To ensure that these standards are met, beef farms are required to collect information on various operations that take place on the farm4. Additionally, beef farmers and other stakeholders along the beef supply chain are tasked with maintaining records and designing policies geared towards achieving Net Zero to make them socially responsible corporations.
Additional challenges such as issues around trust, data sharing, time-consuming and repetitive audits, and data ownership make it difficult for stakeholders to capture true carbon values along the beef supply chain. Opaque and siloed data collection platforms coupled with a lack of immediate incentives to produce low carbon meats has resulted in reduced enthusiasm to produce sustainably produced meat.

This project engages with the ES Farm Action Group’s Data and Systems Boundaries group to develop an understanding of technical characteristics, opportunities, challenges, and barriers, of Agriculture 4.0 systems, in achieving Net Zero targets.