NEW Meat & Livestock Australia managing director Michael Crowley’s Qld Rural Press Club address last week provided an opportunity to gauge his opinions on the industry’s Carbon Neutral 2030 commitment, and the question of whether the industry should be pursuing carbon neutral or climate neutral objectives.

“Climate neutral is a fantastic target in a number of ways, in that it has driven a significant amount of investment that we did not have coming into our industry before,” he told the gathering.

“Back in 2017 (when former MLA MD Richard Norton surprised many industry stakeholders when he announced the CN30 target during MLA’s annual general meeting), the language was very specific – that the industry can be carbon neutral by 2030,” Mr Crowley said.

That was relying on a few factors – investment, the right policy settings, and the need for a fair few of the product innovations coming through the pipeline at the time (ie feed additives) – to be commercialised pretty quickly.

“Perhaps that hasn’t all gone according to plan, but it has led to a significant amount of investment in areas where we had very little investment before,” Mr Crowley said.

“It’s got us a significant way down the track, and certainly from a customer point of view (big retail chains and food service customers like McDonald’s), they are telling us that their shareholders are expecting a big improvement – not only from our industry, but many others.”

“It (the CN30 objective) has positioned the red meat industry a long way down the track, and we are now viewed, globally, as leaders in this space.”

As far as reaching the ‘neutral’ target itself was concerned, Mr Crowley said it was one of the issues to have on the table, for debate and discussion.

“If we don’t get to carbon neutral by 2030, what are the risks?” he asked.

“I tell you what: if we are 80 percent of the way there, we have made unbelievable progress. I’m less worried about it, but we’ve certainly had some feedback around the topic,” he said.

Climate neutral Vs Carbon neutral

Back in 2020-21, the industry did ‘bake’ climate neutral into the CN30 roadmap, as a significant milestone, Mr Crowley said.

“The sheep industry is already there for climate neutral. That’s telegraphed in our ‘Red meat – Green Facts’ publication. The forecast for the beef industry is that we can get there in the next few years. We don’t want to put too hard a timeframe in it, but some time around 2028 – it looks very achievable,” he said.

“But we still have to have the discussion and debate about whether that gets us far enough along the journey.”

Mr Crowley also drew attention to the 1 July launch of the new Zero Net Emissions CRC for Agriculture program.

“I think that is going to accelerate a lot of the investments in this space. That fills a significant gap that we knew we had back at the start of the CN 2030 journey in 2017.”

“As we sit today, we are probably not going to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030. But without setting the objective, we wouldn’t currently be talking about ‘where to from here’.”

“I think climate neutrality for the red meat industry is absolutely achievable, but we can’t drop the ball on the innovations we make to get adoption – whether that be the active ingredient in asparagopsis; the adoption of 3NOP (Bovaer); the adoption of more legumes in our pasture base, especially in northern Australia; driving low methane as a trait in genetic selection; improving soil health, that also means storing more soil carbon.

“All these things are fantastic outcomes that we should not drop the ball on at all,” Mr Crowley said.