Reconsidering the contribution of Canadian poultry production to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions: returning to an integrated crop–poultry production system paradigm

Public discourse around “greenhouse gases” (GHG) has led to the application of life-cycle assessments to ascertain the “global warming potential” of human activities. Life-cycle assessments applied to agricultural systems typically do not consider positive contributions (i.e., fixation of atmospheric carbon dioxide [CO₂]) or consider complex interrelationships among commodities within the larger agricultural sector. The purpose of this article is to present an argument for a paradigm shift and that poultry production should be considered as a value-adding activity within modern crop production systems for GHG foot-printing purposes. To this end, a case study based on 2018 production data is presented where poultry production (chicken and eggs) was contextualized as a sub-component of wheat and corn production in the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Ontario, respectively. Total GHG footprint was calculated to be 3.05 and 3.29 million tonnes (MT) of CO₂ equivalent (eq) for Alberta wheat and Ontario corn production, respectively. The GHG footprint of chicken production was calculated to be 0.39 and 1.38 MT CO₂ eq in Alberta and Ontario, respectively. The GHG footprint of egg production calculated to be 0.12 and 0.47 MT of CO₂ eq in Alberta and Ontario, respectively. When carbon (C) fixation as crop biomass is included in the scenario, the combined crop–poultry system C balance in 2018 favored net fixation of 40.70 and 35.15 MT of CO₂ eq in Alberta and Ontario, respectively. The calculated total GHG footprint of poultry production in Alberta and Ontario corresponded to only 1.2 and 5.5% of the calculated total net CO₂ fixation of their respective cropping systems. This case study demonstrates that by failing to acknowledge real world estimates of C fixation by crop biomass, GHG foot-printing exercises largely misrepresent reality and can thus perpetuate faulty assumptions about the environmental footprint of animal agriculture. The authors propose that the calculations presented herein provide grounds to postulate the hypothesis that modern, integrated crop-livestock agricultural systems in Canada (and elsewhere) act as net sinks for atmospheric CO₂.