Environmental Impacts of Ceasing Dairy Production

Climate change and water scarcity are major challenges facing the planet. Agriculture generates considerable GHG emissions and consumes water from rivers, streams and lakes. Reducing consumption of agricultural products with a relatively high carbon or water footprint, such as dairy, is often promoted as a mechanism to reduce the environmental impacts of food production. Using footprints to inform decisions is problematic because they represent the impacts of current production and not the consequences of re-allocating constrained resources such as land and water when demand for products change. We used consequential life cycle assessment to assess the water and climate change consequences of replacing NSW dairy production, and co-products of dairy production, with plant-based alternatives. Ceasing dairy production required the production of 125 kt of soybeans for soymilk and tofu, 38 kt of soymeal to replace meat meal and 8 kt of vegetable oil as a cream alternative and also increased demand for agricultural land. We concluded that water savings associated with the change would be limited and emissions reductions would be ~ 70% of that as estimated by the C footprint of production. We also assessed the climate change consequences of replacing NSW dairy production with plant-based alternatives when two GHG emissions reduction strategies, enteric methane inhibitors and flaring methane from effluent ponds, were implemented across the industry. Results from this analysis suggested that replacing NSW dairy production if emissions reductions strategies are put in place will result in a net increase in GHG emissions of 0.57 Mt CO2-e. This work has important messages for setting climate change mitigation strategies including net-zero targets.