Climate Change
Pork producers have been experiencing the impacts of climate change over a long period, primarily through drought and climate variability. Long-term drought conditions have caused feed shortages, reduced water availability and affected the costs of other farm inputs such as bedding material. Climate change is projected to extend the duration of 'dry periods', and further exacerbate the effects of drought, while also increasing the variability of rainfall patterns and the frequency of severe weather events.
The main climate change challenge is global warming caused by increasing levels of emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG, expressed as carbon equivalents CO2-e). These include carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O). The livestock sector is responsible for 66 per cent of GHG emissions from agriculture in Australia, which amounted to about 16 per cent of Australia’s total GHG emissions in 2006.[1] However, the relative share of national GHG emissions (excluding deforestation) produced by pigs (0.4%) is significantly smaller than other agricultural sectors - sheep (3.4%), dairy cattle (2.7%) and beef cattle (11.2%).
Adaption to climate change, which is already underway in pork production, is part of the solution. However, mitigation and utilisation of GHG emissions (carbon abatement) needs to be broadly adopted to address the effects of climate change in the long term. Hence, the adoption of GHG mitigation measures has serious implications for the environmental credibility of the Australian pork industry.
[1] Garnaut, R 2008, The Garnaut climate change review – final report, available at: http://www.garnautreview.org.au/domino/Web_Notes/Garnaut/garnautweb.nsf