The Australian beef industry has released its latest report on emissions and claims to be making progress, but is it fast enough for export markets, which are increasingly demanding action on climate change?

Emissions are coming down as farmers increase the amount of ground cover across their paddocks, land clearing has slowed, biodiversity is growing and abattoirs have built systems that trap waste and divert it from landfill.

Mark Davie, chair of the steering group that manages the Australian Beef Sustainability Framework (ABSF), said Australia had a critical role to meet the challenge of feeding a growing global population.

"The Australian Beef Sustainability Framework is a key tool to ensure we can deliver high-quality beef that is powerfully nutritious and sustainably produced,” he said.

But green groups complain about the impact of agriculture on the planet in places like Brazil, where the Amazon is being cleared for grazing and methane emissions from cattle are contributing to global warming.

Some of Australia's key trading partners are also pushing hard for more action.

New taxes and bans

The European Union is looking at new rules that would ban imports of products linked to deforestation, while Japan has just announced regulations requiring companies to report on Scope Three or "third party" emissions to that country's stock market.

Pauliina Takabe from Japanese company Starzen is in Sydney looking at the Australian reporting system for emissions after regulations changed in her own country.

Her company will use industry data to report on emissions caused by the Australian products they import.

NAB economist Bel Quince is also seeing clear signals from export markets about the need to change within the next two to three years.

"We need to read the tea leaves at what's coming given companies are looking at scope one, two and now scope three emissions," she said.

Banks in Australia are supporting farmers to take action on sustainability by offering "green loans" to finance projects that reduce emissions or store carbon in the soil.

Beef industry confident of 2030 target

Mark Davie is confident about the beef industry's record so far.

"We will meet the target because of the carbon sinks we've got, the vast production system," he said.

But he is concerned about the EU push for a no-deforestation supply chain commitment.

As an example, he said that what was identified as land clearing in Queensland was mostly Brigalow or Mulga scrub, used by farmers in dry times to feed their cattle.

It regrows over several years and so he does not see that as de-forestation.

He is also concerned about the New Zealand government's plan to apply a tax on methane from cattle to drive down emissions in that country and said farmers needed to move the conversation by talking more about the things they were already doing to preserve nature.

Those projects would only happen, he said, because there was a business operating on the land that made all the sustainability work financially viable.

"They're probably running ten environmental projects on their property without even knowing ... management of things like wild dogs, being able to recover swan and native bird populations, and without cattle in that landscape those things don't happen," he said.

Breakthrough technology will help get to net zero

Australia has been at the forefront of developing food additives that will significantly reduce the amount of methane cows emit but there are a couple of other developments that could also significantly reduce emissions from the sector. 

The first is being developed by start-ups in North America that are looking at new packaging systems to enable fresh meat to be stored at ambient temperatures for up to two years.

It would be a massive step towards reducing the need for refrigeration for meat products, a big source of emissions.

The second is the push to use other parts of the beef carcass.

At the moment 80 per cent of the value comes from just 20 per cent of the cuts, so the industry is looking for ways to use the rest — what is being called the "fifth quarter".

Cow hides affected by ticks are not currently used, for example, but the industry thinks it could extract collagen from them which could be used in the pharmaceutical industry.

30 year project

For Gippsland farmer Jennifer O'Sullivan, becoming sustainable was a journey that took thirty years.

She and her husband started with a plan for managing the soil, land and water and that work is continuing today. 

"We just put in shelter belts and another thousand trees, so it's ongoing," she said.

She has mapped the emissions from her property and said they were very low.

"Our emissions intensity is just 7.9, and we'd like to get that lower," she said.