Update: Animal agriculture drives 79% of deforestation in Australia.

Rearing livestock for food and fibre is responsible for more than three-quarters of forest clearing across the country.

‘Most forest land converted in Australia is used for cattle grazing…’

– Australian Government Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources.¹

Animal agriculture is one of the biggest drivers of deforestation worldwide. Each year millions of hectares of forest land are cleared to expand pastures and grow crops (e.g., soy²) to feed livestock animals. Livestock grazing on its own is behind 38% of global deforestation.³ Here in Australia, animal agriculture’s impact on forest destruction is even more extreme. It has been responsible for the vast majority of clearing over the past fifty years.⁴ Today, farming livestock for food and fibre drives 79% of deforestation nationwide.

The federal government’s latest figures,⁵ covering 2016 to 2020, reveal that 1.6 million hectares of forest land were cleared to rear livestock, an average of 310 thousand hectares per year. This accounts for 79% of all land cleared across the five-year period. For comparison, crop production was responsible for only 4% of land clearing over this duration. All other activities that contribute towards deforestation, from timber plantations to mining to residential infrastructure, amounted to 17% when combined.

Knowing which activities contribute to deforestation (and by how much) is important as it remains a major policy problem for the country. Australia is the only developed nation to be listed among the world’s hotspots for forest destruction.⁶ It kills millions of mammals, birds and reptiles each year,⁷ threatens over a thousand native species,⁸ and is a big source of carbon emissions.⁹ Any effective action to curb widespread forest clearing will need to target its main drivers. As it turns out, more than three-quarters of deforestation in Australia has one cause: animal agriculture.

Steps to calculate animal agriculture’s contribution to deforestation:

1. Access ‘Table 6.L.2 Activity in ABARES Land Use regions, 5 years to June 2020 (kha),’ available in the National Inventory Report 2020 and elsewhere.¹⁰
2. This table sections Australia’s land cover according to its purpose of use (e.g., for grazing, infrastructure, mining, horticulture, etc.) and reports on the extent of annual forest conversion, re-clearing and regrowth within each committed area. This data can be used to measure the extent of deforestation associated with each type of activity and identify which of these particular activities are the biggest contributors overall.
3. The scale of annual forest clearing is calculated by adding together the ‘primary conversion’ and ‘reclearing’ columns for a given year.¹¹
4. To work out the sum total of deforestation across Australia, see the row labelled ‘All Lands’. For the year 2016, as an example, 485.6 thousand hectares (kha) of forestland were cleared across the country (68.9kha of primary conversion + 416.7kha of reclearing). Over the five-year period (2016 to 2020), total forest clearing reached 1,956 thousand hectares.
5. Calculating deforestation related to animal agricultural activities: the ‘livestock’ category covers the primary and secondary clearing of forests for the following activities: grazing native vegetation, grazing modified pastures, grazing irrigated modified pastures, and intensive animal production. The sum total of forest clearing for livestock production over the five-year period reached 1,550 thousand hectares, accounting for 79.3% of deforestation.
6. Calculating deforestation related to non-animal agricultural activities: the ‘crops’ category covers the primary and secondary clearing of forests for the following activities: cropping, perennial horticulture, seasonal horticulture, land in transition, irrigated cropping, irrigated perennial horticulture, irrigated seasonal horticulture, irrigated land in transition, and intensive horticulture. The sum total of forest clearing for crop production over the five-year period reached 73 thousand hectares, accounting for 3.7% of deforestation.
7. Calculating deforestation related to non-agricultural activities: The ‘other’ category covers the primary and secondary clearing of forests for all activities listed in the table that are not included in the livestock and crops categories. The sum total of forest clearing for other (non-agricultural) activities over the five-year period reached 333 thousand hectares, accounting for 17.0% of deforestation.

Infographics to share:

Notes:

[1] Australian Government Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources. (2022). National Inventory Report 2020: Volume 2. https://www.dcceew.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/national-inventory-report-2020-volume-2.pdf. See p. 11.

[2] Around 75% of global soy production is fed to livestock animals. For further details, see: Frannje, W., & Garnett, T. (2020). Soy: food, feed, and land use change. (Foodsource: Building Blocks). Food Climate Research Network, University of Oxford. https://tabledebates.org/sites/default/files/2021-12/FCRN%20Building%20Block%20-%20Soy_food%2C%20feed%2C%20and%20land%20use%20change%20%281%29.pdf. See pp. 4, 6.

[3] Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). (2022). FRA Remote Sensing Survey. FAO Forestry Paper №186. Rome. https://www.fao.org/3/cb9970en/cb9970en.pdf. See p. xii.

[4] For an examination of the drivers and trends of deforestation in Australia from 1972 to 2014, see: Evans, M. C. (2016). Deforestation in Australia: drivers, trends and policy responses. Pacific Conversation Biology 22, https://www.publish.csiro.au/pc/pdf/PC15052. See pp. 132, 133, figure 3(a).

[5] Australian Government Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources. (2020). National Inventory Report 2020: Volume 2. https://www.dcceew.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/national-inventory-report-2020-volume-2.pdf. See pp. 296–297.

[6] Cox, L. (2021, 13 January). Australia the only developed nation on world list of deforestation hotspots. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/13/australia-the-only-developed-nation-on-world-list-of-deforestation-hotspots

[7] Cogger, H., Dickman, C., Ford H., Johnson, C., & Taylor, M. (2017). Australian animals lost to bulldozers in Queensland 2013–15. https://www.wwf.org.au/ArticleDocuments/353/pub-australian-animals-lost-to-bulldozers-in-queensland-2013-15-25aug17.pdf.aspx?Embed=Y

[8] WWF — World Wide Fund for Nature and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). 2015. ‘Saving Forests at Risk’. In WWF Living Forests Report, eds. Rod Taylor. Gland, Switzerland: WWF –World Wide Fund for Nature. https://c402277.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/publications/793/files/original/Report.pdf?1430147305. See pp. 33–34.

[9] Emissions from forest land converted to cropland, grassland, wetlands and settlements amounted to 40.8 million tonnes CO2-e in 2020, an 8.4% share of Australia’s net emissions that year. See: Australian Government Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources. (2022). National Inventory Report 2020: Volume 2. https://www.dcceew.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/national-inventory-report-2020-volume-2.pdf. See p. 2.

[10] Australian Government Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources. (2022). Activity Table 1990–2020 — LULUCF [Datafile and codebook]. Australian Greenhouse Emissions Information System. https://www.dcceew.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/ageis-activity-table-1990-2020-lulucf.xlsx. See Table 2.

[11] Australian Government Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources. (2022). National Inventory Report 2020: Volume 2. https://www.dcceew.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/national-inventory-report-2020-volume-2.pdf. See pp. 11–12, 165.

Originally published at https://vstats.substack.com on January 31, 2023.