ABSF Explained: Biodiversity

In the context of the Australian Beef Sustainability Framework (ABSF) biodiversity refers to ensuring the conservation and enhancement of plant and animal species, genetic diversity, and natural ecosystems – including the control and minimisation of the spread of invasive non-native species. It is one of the ABSF’s 24 priority issues, falling within the Environmental Stewardship theme, and is likely to attract similar scrutiny to climate change impacts in the near future.

The data

The 2022 ABSF Annual Update reported 43% of cattle-producing land in Australia was managed for biosecurity outcomes through active management. These types of measures include weed and pest control, prescribed burning, revegetation, erosion control, and fencing for spelling or protecting waterways.

Additionally, 7,600,000 ha of cattle-producing land is set aside for conservation protection purposes. This is 2.33% of total grazing land, and larger in area than Ireland. Industry is well aware conservation of significant sites is important, and is trying to find the correct balance of land set aside and land used for production*.

Snapshot of activities

Accurately measuring biodiversity across a landscape is notoriously difficult, and there is currently no agreed, consistent way to do this.

As part of the Carbon Storage Partnership, Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA) and Queensland University of Technology have commercial research into accounting for biodiversity as a co-benefit associated with grazing management. Acoustic sensors are being installed at 10 producer sites across Australia to enable animal sound recording for ecological information such as species absence/presence, population density, population structure, community structure, landscape architecture, animal phenology, reproduction period, migration period, species interactions or ecosystem functions.

In addition, MLA is leading the creation of an online tool for grassfed beef producers to verify their biodiversity credentials on-farm. The tool forms part of the Environmental Credentials of Australian Grassfed Beef project, designed to grow trust in Australian grassfed beef and fostering practice change. 

New revenue for managing biodiversity

Industry has actively encouraged producers to participate in Round 2 of the Carbon + Biodiversity Pilot, to be run in six Natural Resource Management regions. The Caron + Biodiversity Pilot uses market-based mechanisms to provide additional payments to farmers who undertake plantings for carbon sequestration and work to maximise the biodiversity benefits from this activity, by planting a mix of species – and looking after that vegetation.

*Source: https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/industry/agriculture/agricultural-commodities-australia/latest-release#data-download