Research Methodology

Explanatory study design is used as a research design for understanding and explaining the effects of sustainability for specific company. The explanatory design is supported by the problem solving theory under which different literature and theoretical framework is developed for developing analysis (Shabbir, 2014). The data is collected using secondary sources because the investigation is being made at macro-level. Documentary data is gathered from databases like Google Scholar, Procedia, Science Direct and JStor for evaluating the consumption and production patterns of livestock products for them to remain sustainable. The role of technology and institutional framework will also be examined through previous literature and reports published in renowned journals.

This study uses the “Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses” (PRISMA) guidelines for reviewing the existing studies related to sustainability and livestock sector (Moher et al., 2010; Tranfield et al., 2003). Secondary data will be collected through review of relevant materials including the theses, peer-reviewed articles, conferences and other documents available on the internet. The documents will be searched by using keywords and terms associated with livestock sustainability and corporate governance. The key words include sustainability, development, sustainable development in livestock industry, environmental sustainability and corporate governance in livestock industry. No date restrictions will be imposed on the search. The priority will be given to the studies that have high relevance in terms of the substantial contribution to ongoing research on role of sustainability in livestock industry.

Literature not related to sustainability and livestock industry will be excluded from the search. Reference list of the selected articles will also be scanned for finding the relevant literature. The general inclusion strategy will be based on authority, accuracy and relevance (Browning & Rigolon, 2019). Authority will be defined by the publication of the article while accuracy will be checked in terms of how the study contributed to the sustainable development discourse in livestock industry (Wolf, et al., 2014). The full studies will be thoroughly reviewed for extracting the relevant information. Important information will be gathered and analyzed combine with qualitative content analysis and recursive abstract technique. Pieces of relevant information found will be synthesized and paraphrased for making it more condense, coherent, manageable and concise (Browning & Rigolon, 2019). The end result that is expected to be obtained from the review will be the refined summary of relevant literature regarding the key issues and relevant accounting theories related to sustainable development applied for livestock industry in Australia.

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Ethical Considerations

The ethical issues related to sustainability in livestock industry are dependent on the environment and culture rather than on the productivity efficiency.

Relevant Accounting Theories

In order to apply sustainable development in livestock industry of Australia, it is important to get a grip of underlying relevant theories in accounting genre. Brundtland Report (WCED, 1987) defined sustainable development as the way with which the needs of present population is met without compromising the needs of the future generation. With passing days, the human population is expanding while pushing the need for sustainable agriculture and livestock in order to fulfill the requirement relevant to global development (Herrero & Thornton, 2013). In the given scenario, the agricultural approach to Sustainable Development goals will be discussed under three lenses i.e. resource sufficiency, ecological sustainability and social sustainability.

Resource sufficiency

This theory describes the rate at which the resources have to be consumed for them to stay sustainable. It provides the consumption pattern so that the resources do not drop to zero (Thompson & Nardone, 2010). The main focus of resources efficiency is on calculation of rates at which the input resources are being produced and utilized (Karlsson & Röös, 2019). It also gauge the strategies required for sustainable growth and regeneration of insufficient resources. With use of resource efficiency, the livestock industry (especially ACCo) can predict the maintenance and substitution of the resources that are in short supply so that their use can be extended on a longer time frame (Shabbir, 2014).

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Ecological Sustainability

This concept is defined under the broad theory of functional integrity that outlines the exogenous factors directly affecting ecological sustainability such as growth in human population and dietary trends (Moraine, et al., 2017). In order to explain the output of environmental quality, the analysis of waste generation from livestock plays an important role. According to Fitzhugh (1993), for solving sustainable livestock production system, functional integrity can be used as it can overcome the problem of resource sufficiency. Kurkel and Hegevoort (1994) presented the concept of environmental production system that broadly discusses the soil fertility and impact of animal manure on soil. After summarizing the approach of sustainable livestock, such biological processes can be developed that can solve environmental issues while examining the consumption/production patterns by utilizing several innovative techniques (Rae & Nayga, 2010).

In order to measure and analyze the sustainability of livestock system in Australia, following criteria will be implicated as discussed below (Shabbir, 2014).

Criteria	Sustainability Problem	Factors Affecting Livestock in Australia
Land Used for Agriculture	Soil Degradation, Land Shortage & Global Warming	Crop-Livestock Interaction
Nutrient Issues	Efficient Resource & Energy Usage	Nutrient Balances
Water Availability	Efficient Nutrient Use	Effects on Soil
Food Distribution	Food Shortage	Feed Processing & Income Elasticity of Demand

Literature Review

Cattle and beef production have the potential of being an important area of sustainable agriculture globally. Aspects like preservation of landscape, maintenance of rural communities, long-term feeding of growing population and problems of pollution are closely interlinked together in this industrialized world (Pelletier & Tyedmers, 2010). In order to exploit the sustainable production of beef and cattle, problems of pollution (soil degradation, water and land shortage and ozone destruction) related to cattle and beef production are critically reviewed in this study using relevant literature (Birthal & Negi, 2012).

Rapidly increasing populations coupled with the rising demand for food requires either extensive expansion of agricultural land or sufficient amount of production grains from the existing resources (Shabbir, 2014). According to Fitton et al. (2019), the reduction in land and water availability might undermine the improvement in grass, feed and crop productivity in many parts of the world. Fitton et al. (2019) pointed out that on global scale; approximately 11% of crops and 10% of grass lands are vulnerable to reduction in terms of water availability. McDaniel et al. (2017) discussed that agriculture accounts for 61% of water withdrawals in Australia hence indicating the impact of livestock production on water availability.

As the population is growing, the companies in the livestock industry have to find ways for using resources efficiently rather than depleting or using all the resources. Pingault (2019) argued that resource efficiency in livestock production has to be improved for maintaining the production systems and preserving the ecosystem services. The report by HLPE (2016) also pointed out that the livestock sector is directly and indirectly contributing to the 14.5% GHG emissions. According to Shabbir (2011), one of the major concerns in global livestock economics is the ever increasing human population more than the increase in food supplied. It is argued by Shabbir (2011) that the resources required for the sustainable livestock can be attained through introduction of modern technologies in the feed availability. Many countries use the water resources for raising the livestock (Bell & Moore, 2012). The livestock production should be motivated by developing water use reforms and efficient plans for managing water usage by livestock industry (Amede, et al., 2009). Australia being one of the major suppliers of livestock products is already focusing on development of effective water management plans so that high fodder production could be achieved (Bell & Moore, 2012). In order to get an idea of the required productive water, Wackernagel and Rees (1995) developed the Ecological Footprint (EF) indicator that gives the livestock industry an idea on amount of water area required for supporting a population at its current level of consumption. By using this indicator, AACo can measure the amount of fresh water required for cattle and beef production without having to waste the water inefficiently.

Many studies have also found that livestock industry is a prominent cause of excess emission of CO2 that leads to the depletion of the ozone layer as well as increasing the pollution/toxic waste (Rojas-Downing et al., 2017; Sakadevan & Nguyen, 2017; Liang et al., 2013;. Hence, in context of increasing resource scarcity and with the urgent requirement of reducing GHG emissions, numerous studies have already identified livestock as a key area for action. AACo being a leader in the sustainable beef production, has to look at sustainability issues underpinned by water shortage, land shortage, resource depletion and environmental pollution in order to remain a leader in the livestock industry in Australia. It has been found that the livestock companies with a strong sustainable and corporate governance framework tend to enjoy reputable position in the market (Van Wessel, 2018).

References

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Bell, L. W. & Moore, A. D., 2012. Integrated crop–livestock systems in Australian agriculture: Trends, drivers and implications. Agricultural Systems, Volume 111, pp. 1-12.

Birthal, P. S. & Negi, D. S., 2012. Livestock for higher, sustainable and inclusive agricultural growth. Economic and Political Weekly, pp. 89-99.

Browning, M. & Rigolon, A., 2019. School green space and its impact on academic performance: A systematic literature review. International Journal of Environmental Research And Public Health , 16(3), p. 429.

Fitton, N. et al., 2019. The vulnerabilities of agricultural land and food production to future water scarcity. Global Environmental Change, Volume 58.

Fitzhugh, H. A., 1993. Appropriate global strategies for developing animal agriculture. Proceedings: VII World Conference on Animal Production, Volume 1, p. 499–512.

Herrero, M. & Thornton, P. K., 2013. Livestock and global change: emerging issues for sustainable food systems. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , 110(52), pp. 20878-20881.

HLPE, 2016. Sustainable agricultural development for food security and nutrition: what roles for livestock? , Rome: High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition of the Committee on World Food Security.

Karlsson, J. O. & Röös, E., 2019. Resource-efficient use of land and animals—Environmental impacts of food systems based on organic cropping and avoided food-feed competition. Land use policy , Volume 85, pp. 63-72.

Kunkel, H. O. & Hagevoor, G. R., 1994. Construction of science for animal agriculture. Journal of Animal Science, 72(1), pp. 247-253.

Liang, L. et al., 2013. Estimation of nitrous oxide and methane emission from livestock of urban agriculture in Beijing. Agriculture, ecosystems & environment , Volume 170, pp. 28-35.

McDaniel, R. L., Munster, C. & Nielsen-Gammo, J., 2017. Crop and location specific agricultural drought quantification: Part III. Forecasting water stress and yield trends. Transactions of the ASABE , 60(3), pp. 741-752.

Moher, D., Liberati, A., Tetzlaff, J. & Altman, D. G., 2010. Preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses: the PRISMA statement. Annals of Internal Medicine , 151(4), pp. 264-269.

Moraine, M., Duru, M. & Therond, O., 2017. A social-ecological framework for analyzing and designing integrated crop–livestock systems from farm to territory levels. Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems , 32(1), pp. 43-56.

Pelletier, N. & Tyedmers, P., 2010. Forecasting potential global environmental costs of livestock production 2000–2050. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(43), pp. 18371-18374.

Rae, A. & Nayga, R., 2010. Trends in consumption, production, and trade in livestock and livestock products. Livestock in a changing landscape, Volume 1, pp. 11-34.

Rojas-Downing, M. M., Nejadhashemi, P., Harrigan, T. & Woznicki, S. A., 2017. Climate change and livestock: Impacts, adaptation, and mitigation. Climate Risk Management , Volume 15, pp. 145-163.

Sakadevan, K. & Nguyen, M.-L., 2017. Livestock production and its impact on nutrient pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Advances in agronomy, Volume 141, pp. 147-184.

Shabbir, R., 2014. Institutional Development and Sustainable Growth for Livestock Sector in Pakistan. International Journal of Economics and Empirica, 2(10), pp. 394-404.

Thompson, P. B. & Nardone, A., 2010. Sustainable livestock production: methodological and ethical challenges. Livestock production science, 61(2-3), pp. 111-119.

Tranfield, D., Denyer, D. & Smart, P., 2003. Towards a methodology for developing evidence-informed management knowledge by means of systematic review. British Journal of Management, Volume 14, pp. 207-222.

Van Wessel, M., 2018. Depoliticisation in Livestock Farming Governance: Turning Citizen Concerns into Consumer Responsibilities. Sociologia Ruralis , 58(3), pp. 422-542.

Wackernagel, M. & Rees, W., 1998. Our ecological footprint: reducing human impact on the earth. s.l.:New Society Publishers.

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Wolf, J. et al., 2014. Systematic review: assessing the impact of drinking water and sanitation on diarrhoeal disease in low‐and middle‐income settings: systematic review and meta‐regression. Tropical Medicine & International Health, 19(8), pp. 928-942.

 

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