Silvopastoral system as a climate-smart alternative for beef
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Agricultural Systems
Volume 225, April 2025, 104277
Silvopastoral system as a climate-smart alternative for beef production: Enteric methane emission neutralization and animal thermal comfort increase
Author links open overlay panelHenrique B. Brunetti a, Patrícia P.A. Oliveira a, José R.M. Pezzopane a, Alberto C. de C. Bernardi a, Alexandre R. Garcia a, Alexandre Berndt a, André de F. Pedroso a, Ana L.J. Lelis b, Sérgio R. Medeiros a
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Highlights
• Silvopastoral systems (SPS) can mitigate and adapt to climate change.
• Neutralization of methane enteric emission by tree carbon fixation was tested.
• Solely the part of the tree stem suitable for timber was considered as valid.
• The SPS offset 77 % of the emission fixing carbon stable in the long term.
• The SPS presented greater animal thermal comfort than the full sun pasture.
Abstract
CONTEXT
Climate-smart agricultural systems must mitigate climate change and adapt to it.
OBJECTIVES
(i) test the ability of a silvopastoral system (SPS) in Brazil to neutralize the CH4 enteric emission by tree carbon (C) assimilation, considering solely the stem-C destined to Products with Higher Added Value (HVAP) and furniture as valid, due to their long-term stability; (ii) test the SPS ability to provide increased animal thermal comfort and; (iii) compare the SPS productivity, animal thermal comfort and CH4 emission with a full sun system (FS).
METHODS
The systems had four areas managed under rotational stocking with beef cattle and were established with Piatã palisadegrass [Urochloa brizantha Stapf cv. BRS Piatã] in 2007. In the SPS, eucalyptus trees (Eucalyptus urograndis clone GG100) were planted in 2011, in single east-west oriented rows, with a 15 m × 2 m spacing, and thinned to 15 m × 4 m spacing in 2016. Microclimate data were collected in weather stations to determine the Black Globe and Humidity Index (BGHI). The CH4 enteric emission was estimated using the Tier-2 equation (IPCC Methodological Guide - 2019). Tree height and diameter at breast height were measured every six months from October/2017 to April/2019 to estimate the stem biomass using an allometric equation. The stem biomass was multiplied by its carbon content and by 40 % to consider the break-through yield in sawmill.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS
BGHI was lower in the SPS than in the FS. Even considering the stem-C appropriate for HVAP and furniture in a SPS with a stocking rate 256 % greater than the Brazilian average, 77 % of the CH4 enteric emission was offset. When considering all the stem-C, the net C balance was −14.28 Mg CO2 eq. ha−1 year−1.
SIGNIFICANCE
SPS are interesting alternatives to mitigate climate change while providing satisfactory animal production and increased animal thermal comfort.
Graphical abstract
Introduction
The global population is projected to grow about 25 % over the next 30 years, from 7.8 billion in 2020 to roughly 9.7 billion by 2050 (UNDESA, 2022), with most of its growth occurring in developing and emerging economies as Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa (Ranganathan et al., 2016). Due to the combined effects of population growth and increase of income of people living in countries under development (Fukase and Martin, 2020), some estimates expect an increase of 35 % in beef demand by 2050 (Komarek et al., 2021). Brazil can play an important role in meeting the increasing beef demand. The country has the biggest beef cattle herd in the world with 202.8 million animals, mostly raised in pasture-based systems (ABIEC, 2023). The beef production increased over the recent decades in Brazil concurrently with slight reductions in the area destined to animal production, indicating the country's potential for contributing to beef production without the expense of land use change. Such an optimistic scenario results from the country's tropical climate, use of improved forage species, and improvements on the use of weathered soils and pasture management (Landau et al., 2020).
Despite the good scenario for pasture and beef production in Brazil, the country has been targeted with criticism mainly due to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Of the various GHG, enteric methane (CH4) contributes to 65 % of the agricultural CO2-eq. emissions of Brazil (SEEG, 2023). Methane has a global warming potential 27.2-fold greater than that of carbon dioxide (CO2) (Forster et al., 2021), but a relatively short lifespan of 7.6 to 14 years in the atmosphere, while CO2 can persist for hundreds of thousands of years (SPARC, 2013). Under these conditions, reducing CH4 emissions is considered as a good strategy to reduce global warming in a short-term period, as the atmosphere CH4 disappears relatively rapid. On the other hand, the atmosphere CO2 fixation via photosynthesis can be considered as an advantageous strategy for short-, mid-, and long-term global warming reduction due to the elevated lifespan of CO2 in the atmosphere (IPCC, 2023).
In face of the challenging scenario ahead, the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) created the brand-concept referred to as Neutral Carbon Brazilian Beef (NCBB) (Alves et al., 2015). The concept aims to testify, using an auditable and parameterizable protocol, the neutralization of animal enteric methane emission by carbon assimilation by trees in silvopastoral systems (SPS). NCBB advocates that only the portion destined to products that ensure long-term carbon stability must be accounted for, such as wood destined to timber and furniture. In this context, the protocol ensures the neutralization of global warming potential in SPS for long periods. In addition, the fixed carbon originates from a much more stable source in the atmosphere (CO2) than the emitted carbon (CH4), ensuring an advantageous trade-off when the persistence of the benefit over time is considered.
Climate-smart agricultural systems are, not only expected to reduce GHG emissions, but also to adapt to global warming. The 2023 IPCC report considers several scenarios in which the increase in Earth daily average temperature ranges from 1.4 to 4.4 °C by 2100, with the possibility of overshooting in the most optimistic scenario (IPCC, 2023). The scenarios considered also estimate that the CO2 atmospheric concentration will range from 437.6 to 562.8 ppm in 2050, and from 393.5 to 1135.2 ppm in 2100 (Meinshausen et al., 2011). In tropical conditions, the trees (C3 plants) may increase or decrease productivity depending on the balance between the benefit brought about the increase in the atmospheric CO2 concentration and the detriment caused by increased temperatures (Elli et al., 2020), while the grass (C4 plants) are expected to benefit from temperature increase (Approbato et al., 2023). On the other hand, it is very unlikely that climate change will directly benefit the animals but, on the contrary, increased temperatures can decrease animal thermal comfort and performance (Castro-Pérez et al., 2020) and, consequently, increase the age at slaughter and carbon enteric emission per animal product.
Strategies that promote alternatives to increase animal thermal comfort will be crucial in the near and distant future. The presence of trees in SPS has shown to be an interesting alternative to provide shade to the animals in tropical regions (Pezzopane et al., 2021), mainly during the warmest hours of the day.
In this study, we aimed to (i) evaluate the capacity of a SPS in the Brazilian Cerrado biome (the biome in Brazil with the greatest area destined to pasture-based beef production) to neutralize enteric methane emission by carbon fixation, following the NCBB protocol; (ii) evaluate the capacity of the trees in the SPS to increase animal thermal comfort and; (iii) compare forage and animal productivity and enteric methane emission of the SPS to a “baseline system”, comprised of an intensively managed full sun system (FS).
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Section snippets
Experimental site characterization and management
The study was conducted at Embrapa Pecuária Sudeste, São Carlos, SP, Brazil (21°57′42” S, 47°50′28” W, 860 m asl), from October/2017 to April/2019, in a SPS and in a FS. Local climate is classified as humid subtropical climate (Cwa; Köppen) (Alvares et al., 2013) with two well-defined seasons: dry season, from April to September with average temperature of 19.9 °C and accumulated rainfall of 250 mm; and rainy season, from October to March, with average temperature of 23.0 °C and accumulated
Thermal comfort index
The SPS presented, on average, a reduction of two hours of animal thermal stress per day compared to the FS system (Table 1). For all seasons of the year and when considering the whole experiment, the BGHI in the afternoon and the nH > 79 values were lower in the SPS as compared to the FS. The greatest afternoon BGHI value was 83.2, registered in the FS in the summer of 2018/2019, whereas in the same period in the SPS the value was 80.0.
Pasture of the production systems
On average, the pre-grazing forage mass (PrG forage mass)
Thermal comfort indexes
The consistently lower BGHI registered in the SPS as compared to the FS (Table 1) agrees with the results found in literature on thermal comfort in tropical and subtropical regions (Baliscei et al., 2013, Karvatte et al., 2016, Oliveira et al., 2017; Pezzopane et al., 2019). Similarly, the lower nH > 79 of the SPS when compared to the FS in all seasons of this study agrees with the results of Pezzopane et al., 2019a, Pezzopane et al., 2019b and Magalhães et al. (2020). The results of the
Conclusions
This is the first time that, even in an intensive system with silage supplementation and a stocking rate 256 % greater than the Brazilian average, the silvopastoral system (SPS) is shown to be an interesting alternative for CH4 neutralization, offsetting 77 % of the CH4 enteric emission in stem-C appropriate for Products with Higher Added Value and furniture. To perform the C-balance, we followed the Neutral Carbon Brazilian Beef (NCBB) protocol which is very stringent regarding the C stability
Ethics approval
The experiment was approved by Animals Ethics Committee of Embrapa Southeast Livestock (Declaration 07/2017).
Availability of data and material
The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Henrique B. Brunetti: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Validation. Patrícia P.A. Oliveira: Writing – review & editing, Supervision, Resources, Methodology, Investigation, Funding acquisition, Conceptualization. José R.M. Pezzopane: Writing – review & editing, Supervision, Resources, Methodology, Investigation, Funding acquisition, Conceptualization. Alberto C. de C. Bernardi: Writing – review & editing, Supervision, Resources, Methodology, Investigation, Conceptualization.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by Fapesp [grant numbers: 2019/04528–6 and 2023/02444–5] and IABS/Rede ILPF. Henrique B. Brunetti acknowledges the support provided by Fapesp [grant number: 2024/12895–7] and CNPq [grant number: 153768/2024–0].
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