Thailand’s livestock sector now emits more than 20 million tonnes of CO₂-equivalent every year as methane from enteric fermentation alone — a figure that has nearly doubled in a decade. One species explains almost all of the rise.
Across fourteen years of inventory data, beef cattle have moved from a 64% share of livestock methane in 2013 to over 75% in 2025. Buffalo are the second-largest contributor; dairy cattle and swine are far smaller and have stayed broadly flat.
The shape of the chart matters: the dip in 2013 is real, and most years from 2017 onward have trended upward — driven by herd expansion under Thailand’s livestock-development programmes. Mitigation policy that does not name beef cattle directly will not move the national curve.
Of every tonne of methane Thailand’s livestock sector burps into the atmosphere, three out of four come from beef cattle. 15.1 million tonnes CO₂e in 2025 alone — and total enteric methane has more than doubled since 2013.
The picture repeats in manure management: beef cattle & swine dominate, total emissions have climbed from ~2.8 Mt CO₂e in 2019 to ~3.9 Mt in 2025.
The totals look the way they look because per-head emission factors are wildly uneven. A single lactating dairy cow produces nearly 93 kg of CH₄ a year; a pregnant buffalo, almost as much. A pig produces 1.5 kg.
That 60-fold gap is why Thailand’s beef and buffalo herds dominate the inventory even though pigs outnumber cattle. It is also why the policy and finance levers that work — herd quality, feed additives, anaerobic digesters, breed substitution — are species-specific.
Three things follow directly from the data on these pages: