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South Africa’s beefy impact: the road toward a just transition on climate, cattle, and equity

South Africa’s beefy impact: the road toward a just transition on climate, cattle, and equity
Beef cattle are by far the largest source of livestock and agricultural greenhouse gas emissions in South Africa. (Photo: Brandon Bell / Getty Images)
Lillian Roberts
By Lillian Roberts
30 Sep 2024
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South Africa is the 14th largest beef producer. We eat closer to a high-income country — but there’s stark inequality with consumption patterns. Ten feedlots produce about 70% of beef, showing high industry concentration. Workers are low wage, food insecure, and have little bargaining power, the Institute for Economic Justice has found.

“Beef cattle are by far the largest source of livestock and agricultural greenhouse gas emissions in South Africa. Agriculture is the source of about 11% of South Africa’s emissions, and livestock are responsible for 70% of agricultural emissions. In 2020 beef cattle were responsible for about 64.5% of direct livestock emissions, which amounted to about 6.7% of South Africa’s total emissions,” explains a Guidance Memo (supported by the Tiny Beam Fund) released on 25 September and Policy Brief by the Institute for Economic Justice, focusing on a just transition for food system policy making in South Africa, with learnings from the beef sector.

Why a just transition in the South African food system? 


According to Dr Andrew Bennie, the Climate Policy and Food Systems Senior Researcher for the Institute for Economic Justice, food systems are responsible for about a third of human-sourced emissions. 

He says the food system is vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, from production to consumption, especially on the poorest in South Africa.

“In terms of why a transition needs to be just, if we look at the economic and political structure of the food system, it’s highly unequal from production all the way through to processing, distribution and retail,” Bennie says. 

While our food system is large, industrialised, and modernised — there are high levels of food insecurity, Bennie outlines.  

“On commercial farms, farm labour still tends to be the lowest paid sector in South Africa, most farm worker households are in the category of food insecure (that is linked to low wages), and there’s been a shift away from permanent labour to more flexible and precarious jobs,” Bennie says. 

Why focus on the beef sector? 


Indirect beef sector emissions come from things like deforestation (such as in the Amazon) to create grazing land, and feed sources like soy and maize. About 53% of maize grown in South Africa goes towards all types of animal feed, says Dr Andrew Bowman, a lecturer in International Development at the University of Edinburgh and Research Associate at Rhodes University.  

Emissions also come directly from methane and nitrous oxide from cattle. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas in terms of its warming impact, and reducing it quickly (because methane’s impact is short lived and intense) is a good way to meet the Paris targets, Bennie says.  

vaccine crisis Workers drive cattle into pens at the Karan Beef feedlot in Heidelberg, outside Johannesburg, in 2018. (Photo: Waldo Swiegers / Bloomberg via Getty Images)



South Africa is the 14th-largest producer of beef in the world, Bennie says.

There are at least 100,000 people employed on red meat farms. On farms with both crops and livestock, another 185,000 people are employed. In processing (abattoirs, preserving of meat) there are another 37,000 jobs. 

The system is dualistic with commodity beef production, and cattle production. The first is large scale commercial farms, still mostly white-owned, raising cattle to maximise beef output. The second is cattle raised on former homelands, communal lands, and commonages, raised by smallholders for functions such as food, income, investments and cultural purposes.  

“Estimates are hazy, but the government thinks there’s about 3 million households that own cattle,” says Bowman, referring to smallholder owners.  

How much beef do we eat? 


In South Africa, 95% of beef produced is eaten within the country.

Beef consumption in South Africa is high. Most middle income countries eat about 11kg per capita, but in South Africa it is 18kg, which is closer to the high-income countries’ consumption of 21kg per capita.

“There’s about 18kg available per capita… so this doesn’t necessarily mean that all of that will be consumed, some of it might be wasted, some of it might go into industrial uses,” says Bowman. 

While it is much higher than recommended nutritional guidelines suggest, consumption is also unequal: the top 10%of income earners spend more than 14 times as much per year per person on beef than the poorest 10%.

The Guidance Memo also states that “on average, South Africans consume 50% less than the global average consumption of fruits, vegetables, legumes, and nuts, 44.2% of households in South Africa are food insecure, and about 60% of them cannot afford a healthy diet.” 

Government and industry focus on growth 


Bennie says the research was also spurred by the government pushing industry masterplans — specifically, promoting the growth of the livestock sector. 

The masterplan idea is to increase the output of beef by at least 24% through exports, mostly by incorporating 250,000 young cows from smallholder and medium-sized farmers into the feedlot system by 2030. Consumption is stagnant in South Africa, and exports would be a way to deal with some of the economic pressure the industry is experiencing. 

There’s challenges with including smallholders, however, as cows grown in communal areas don’t have the same genetics, veterinary medicine, or physical advantages of commercial cattle. Another difficulty smallholders face is selling into the commercial-beef value chain —  sales are often into informal markets or to exploitative speculators, as Bowman explains. 

How does the industry work? 


There’s been an increased concentration in the red meat value chain in recent years. It’s happening in farming in general too, Bennie says, where the drive to scale and cost pressures on farmers, as well as stagnant prices, means that margins are thin economically.

Bennie quotes the Competition Commission, which found that over the past decade about 56% of commercial beef farmers dropped out of industry. The top 10 feedlots produce close to 70% of South Africa’s beef. 

A worker drives a cow into a pen at the Karan Beef feedlot in Heidelberg, outside Johannesburg, South Africa, in November 2018. (Photo: Waldo Swiegers / Bloomberg via Getty Images)



“That also translates to power, in the sense of shaping how production happens in the system. Because feedlots are the main market outlet, most farmers grow their cattle on grazing land and then at about six to eight months they sell them mostly to feedlots,” Bennie says. They are grown using genetics and scientifically formulated feeds. 

For another 110 to 120 days, cows are grown quickly, putting on a few kilogrammes of weight daily, before being slaughtered at about a year old. 

He uses the example of Heidelberg feedlot, considered to be the biggest in the southern hemisphere, with a capacity of about 150,000 cattle at any one time. 

Because of the economic pressures, there is an intensification of production, meaning animals are concentrated in small areas, using science and technology to boost growth. 

Will more jobs translate to a better standard of life? 


These dynamics of economic concentration and industrialisation make it difficult for smallholder farmers to be included in the system, especially because of how feedlots shape what is required at the farm level, Bennie says. 

He says the industry and government growth strategy is positioned around job creation, but if one looks at the labour conditions on livestock farms, workers exist in a secondary and segmented labour market. Secondary means that they are low-wage and considered low skill, and with little bargaining power for workers, and little training or prospects for upward mobility. They are segmented by gender as well.  

“Those jobs would not necessarily be decent because of existing labour market conditions. But apart from the inclusion and job issue there’s the climate issue and the ecological issue,” Bennie says. 

Most work on cattle farms is done outside, placing workers  in the line of climate variability; so facing heat stress, drought, and heavy rainfall. Workers also carry a large responsibility of running operations as owners and farmers are not always present, outlines Dr Lalitha Naidoo, the Director of the East Cape Agricultural Research Project and Research Associate in the Department of Sociology at Rhodes University.  

“They work long hours and over weekends, the work is often demanding, requiring a fair degree of skill, knowledge and abilities to care for cattle, and with climate variability and climate change, we find an intensification of strenuous work,” explains Naidoo. 

While the work is regarded as unskilled, these workers are essential to the production of meat, yet they are underappreciated and socially devalued, and this is reflected in the wages they receive, Naidoo says.

Complexities with emissions 


Bennie spoke with a Department of Agricultural Official on 26 September while attending a Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment workshop on the Sectoral Emission Targets for the country linked to the Nationally Determined Contributions.

“While the last Nationally Determined Contributions we submitted to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change does not contain mitigation targets for agriculture, the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment has realised the necessity to do so, and so has included agriculture in the Sectoral Emission Targets, and is working with the Department of Agriculture to get clearer plans and policies going on the mitigation aspect for agriculture,” he says. 

Beef cattle are by far the largest source of livestock and agricultural greenhouse gas emissions in South Africa. (Photo: Brandon Bell / Getty Images)



Emissions per cow from feedlots are lower than emissions per cow in grazing land, but even the cows on grazing land have less emissions intensity than communal area cows, because of conditions like feed and quality, and how far cows have to walk to find food, Bennie explains.  

As the guidance memo explains, “In South Africa’s unequal agrarian structure, most cattle owning households are poor and therefore in the bottom 50% of income earners in South Africa, who only emit on average 3.5 tons of CO2e, compared to 27.8 tons of CO2e of the top 10% of income earners.” 

Vulnerable to climate change


At the same time, cows, industry, and smallholders are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, and this has the potential to worsen inequalities in the country along lines of gender, race and class. 

Industry response to economic conditions and the climate argument is a market-centred one, Bennie says, focusing on including more people into the commercial value chain and using technology to deal with ecological implications. While the industry is prepared for climate change impacts, the research informing the knowledge base is quite heavily funded by the industry, Bennie adds.  

He says there is no scientific proof that lowering emissions per kilogramme of meat will deal with the climate change question, as overall production can still outpace technological achievements. 

We need to think beyond emissions, Bennie says, as there is also the question of environmental impacts of intensive animal production, animal welfare issues, water and air pollution, and human health concerns. 

Bennie says we should be pushing for a food system that is ecologically regenerative, climate resilient, with decent work and equitable livelihoods, and it should achieve the right to food and nutrition. 

At discourse and policy level, food systems are reduced to agriculture, but when thinking about resilience and equity, we need to be speaking about consumption and nutrition issues, and the economics of what shapes food system outcomes, he says. DM 

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