Cattle production sensitivity analysis (liveweight)

Introduction

This document explores the difference in municipal level cattle liveweights following the estimates of cattle herd population for the TraseH2O project. Three cattle population estimates were calculated for the purposes of calculating cattle water use and GhG emissions (enteric methane and manure). The steps used to derive cattle population follow those now used by MCTI; we follow this method and use:

1. MCTI/Census estimate: The IBGE 2006 agricultural census to derive cattle age categories; this approach is followed by keeping and removing dairy cows from the cattle population.
2. Anualpec estimate: The Anualpec data was used to derive the cattle age categories; this approach includes the dairy cows by default.

We compared these estimates at the country level in 2016 with those published by MCTI:

• MCTI without dairy cows = 198,383,961 heads
• MCTI with dairy cows = 217,925,318 heads
• Anualpec with dairy cows = 218,190,739 heads
• reported by MCTI = 217,492,377 heads

We calculate the cattle total heads and liveweight per municipality for the 2010-2019 period and check differences based on the cattle population by considering the dairy cow and bull populations.

First we calculate the total heads of cattle per state, as well as the total heads for all of Brazil, between 2010-2019. We need to consider only 3 significant figures since the per animal LW is 3 (e.g. 550 kg) as we assume that the estimate of cattle population is far from perfect, compared to the liveweight of individual categories.

Our values makes some assumptions about the cattle population and whether to include dairy cows or not, bulls or not, as a means to carry out a sensitivity analysis for what represents the cattle sector in Brazil.

These slight differences seen at the state level will then create smaller differences in the “per LW” indicators for beef production:

• deforestation per tonne of LW
• Greenhouse gas emissions per tonne of LW
• Enteric methane, manure and water use per tonne of LW
• Water use per tonne of LW (when including the impoundments)

We end with the summary of liveweights for Brazil:

and individual states

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References

MCTI (2020) Quarta Comunicação Nacional E Relatórios De Atualização Bienal Do Brasil À Convenção-Quadro Das Nações Unidas Sobre Mudança Do Clima. Quarto Inventário de Emissões de Remoções Antrópicas de Gases de Efeito Estufa Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovações: Brasília, DF. Link https://www.gov.br/mcti/pt-br/acompanhe-o-mcti/sirene/publicacoes/relatorios-de-referencia-setorial