Pierre J. Gerber

World Bank Group / Wageningen University

Carbon sequestration in grasslands has been proposed as an important means to offset greenhouse gas emissions from ruminant systems. To understand the potential and limitations of this strategy, we need to acknowledge that soil carbon sequestration is a time-limited benefit, and there are intrinsic differences between short- and long-lived greenhou...

Feeding animals more low-opportunity-cost feed products (LCFs), such as food waste and by-products, may decrease food–feed competition for cropland. Using a feed allocation optimization model that considers the availability of feed sources and animal requirements for protein and energy, we explored the perspectives of feeding more LCFs to animals i...

This paper illustrates the way in which systems dynamic model can be used to appraise measures designed to improve resilience. The result identify potential synergies and tensions between the goals of resilience and climate smart agriculture, and raises the question of whether fully climate-smart goals are viable in these systems.

This brief provides methodological guidance on the quantification of animal health interventions and their impact on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, on the basis that they deliver multiple benefits to individual farmers and society which could outweigh the costs of the intervention, particularly when considering reduced GHG emissions.

Important mitigation outcomes and other co-benefits could be at reach if rural communities and policy makers in low- and middle-income economies overcame the obstacle of access to finance in the livestock sector. The traditional sources of financing have long been difficult to access for livestock smallholders who often do not hold collateral excep...

The difference between the theoretical maximum (potential) production and the actual production realized by farmers is referred to as the yield gap. The objectives of this study are to develop a mechanistic model for dairy cows that allows yield gap analysis in dairy production systems and to evaluate model performance. We extended and adapted an e...

Despite the importance of the role of Climate Finance to comply with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change 1.5°C objective, there is no consensus on the definition of Climate Finance and the estimated assessment of its aggregated flows and effects remains challenging. Despite being a major emitter and having a significant and co...

Global livestock supply chains have significantly altered nitrogen (N) flows over past years, thereby threatening environmental and human health. Here, we provide a disaggregated assessment of the livestock sector’s impacts on global N flows and emissions, including international trade. The results show that the sector currently emits 65 Tg N yr−1...

86% of livestock feed is not suitable for human consumption. If not consumed by livestock, crop residues and by-products could quickly become an environmental burden as the human population grows and consumes more and more processed food. Animals also consume food that could potentially be eaten by people. Grains account for 13% of the global lives...

The global pork sector contributes to food security and supports livelihoods for millions of households but also causes nitrogen (N) pollution. Here we assess N flows, losses, and N use indicators for global pork supply chains, from “cradle-to-primary-processing-gate” and for three production systems: the backyard, intermediate and industrial syste...

Increasing the production of meat and milk within sub-Saharan Africa should provide significant food security benefits. However, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions represent a challenge, as cattle production in the region typically has high emissions intensity (EI), i.e., high rates of GHG emissions per unit of output. The high EI is caused by the rela...

The need for more sustainable production and consumption of animal‐source food is central to the achievement of the sustainable development goals: within this context, wise use of land is a core challenge and concern. A key question in feeding the future world is: how much animal‐source food should we eat? We demonstrate that livestock raised under...

The objectives of this research are to assess the greenhouse gas mitigation potential of carbon policies applied to the ruminant livestock sector [inclusive of the major ruminant species—cattle (Bos Taurus and Bos indicus), sheep (Ovis aries), and goats (Capra hircus)], with particular emphasis on understanding the adjustment challenges posed by ma...

The Global Livestock Environmental Assessment Model - interactive (GLEAM-i) is an open, user-friendly and livestock specific calculator of greenhouse gas emissions from the livestock sector. It was designed by FAO and partners to support governments, project planners, producers, industry and civil society organizations to calculate greenhouse gas e...

Several global datasets are available for environmental modelling, but information provided is hardly used for decision-making at a country-level. Here we propose a method, which relies on global sensitivity analysis, to improve local relevance of environmental indicators from global datasets. This method is tested on nitrogen use framework for two...

The livestock sector is one of the fastest growing subsectors of the agricultural economy and, while it makes a major contribution to global food supply and economic development, it also consumes significant amounts of natural resources and alters the environment. In order to improve our understanding of the global environmental impact of livestock...

Gaseous emissions from animal manure are considerable contributor to global ammonia (NH3) and agriculture greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Given the demand to promote mitigation of GHGs while fostering sustainable development of the Paris Agreement, an improvement of management systems is urgently needed to help mitigate climate change and to improv...

Livestock contribute to food security by supplying essential macro- and micro-nutrients, providing manure and draught power, and generating income. But they also consume food edible by humans and graze on pastures that could be used for crop production. Livestock, especially ruminants, are often seen as poor converters of feed into food products. T...

Livestock can contribute to climate change mitigation by reducing their greenhouse gas emissions and by increasing soil carbon sequestration. Packages of mitigation techniques can bring large environmental benefits as illustrated in six case studies modeled in the Global Livestock Environmental Assessment Model developed by FAO. With feasible techn...

p>Livestock contribute to food security by supplying essential macro- and micro-nutrients, providing manure and draught power, and generating income. But they also consume food edible by humans and graze on pastures that could be used for crop production. Livestock, especially ruminants, are often seen as poor converters of feed into food products....

Pig supply chains are developing rapidly in East and Southeast Asia (ESEA), fuelled by population growth, growing incomes and urbanization that lead to increased demand for animal produce. Pig supply chains, however, are associated with losses of reactive nitrogen (Nr) to the environment at various stages of the chain. To benchmark livestock supply...

The study aims to illustrate a method to identify important input parameters that explain most of the output variance of environmental assessment models. The method is tested for the computation of life-cycle nitrogen (N) use efficiency indicators among mixed dairy production systems in Rwanda. We performed a global sensitivity analysis, and ranked...

Decision makers increasingly use Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as a tool to measure the environmental sustainability of products. LCA is of particular importance in globalized agricultural supply chains, which have environmental effects in multiple and spatially dispersed locations. Incorporation of impacts on biodiversity that arise from agricultur...

More than 100 countries pledged to reduce agricultural greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (Richards et al., 2015a) in the 2015 Paris Agreement of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Yet technical information about how much mitigation is needed in the sector versus how much is feasible remains poor. We identify a preliminary globa...

The livestock sector supports about 1.3 billion producers and retailers, and contributes 40-50% of agricultural GDP. We estimated that between 1995 and 2005, the livestock sector was responsible for greenhouse gas emissions of 5.6-7.5 GtCO2 e yr â'1. Livestock accounts for up to half of the technical mitigation potential of the agriculture, forestr...

Carbon sequestration (C-seq) in grassland has been proposed as a strategy to reduce the net contribution of livestock to climate change. Carbon stored in soils, however, can easily be re-emitted to the atmosphere if soil conditions change. The aim of this study was to evaluate the importance of C-seq for reducing the impact of dairy production on c...

The livestock and environment nexus has been the subject of considerable research in the past decade. With a more prosperous and urbanized population projected to grow significantly in the coming decades comes a gargantuan appetite for livestock products. There is growing concern about how to accommodate this increase in demand with a low environme...

This study provides estimates of the net GHG mitigation potential of a selected range of management practices in the world’s native and cultivated grazing lands. The Century and Daycent models are used to calculate the changes in soil carbon stocks, soil N2O emissions, and forage removals by ruminants associated with these practices. GLEAM is used...

Livestock [inclusive of ruminant species, namely cattle (Bos Taurus and Bos indicus), sheep (Ovis aries), goats (Capra hircus), and buffaloes (Bubalus bubalis), and non-ruminant species, namely pigs (Sus scrofa domesticus) and chickens (Gallus domesticus)] are both affected by climate change and contribute as much as 14.5 % of global anthropogenic...

Due to the significant contribution of the livestock sector to nitrogen (N) losses, improving N use efficiency (NUE-N) along the life cycle of livestock products is an important step towards increasing of production performance and reduction of its environmental impacts. We developed a comprehensive framework and relevant metrics to assess NUE-N a...

Livestock sector contributes to global nitrogen (N) cycles. Nevertheless, livestock supply chains are increasingly internationalized, spanning across borders and continents. Therefore, new indicators and approaches are required that are applicable to longer and more complex supply chains and can assist in improving the performance of the entire liv...

Le Sahel connaît aujourd’hui un retour des pluies qui améliore la production moyenne de biomasse herbacée. Malgré ce phénomène, les auteurs de l’article pointent des changements de composition botanique des steppes sahéliennes, qui appauvrissent leur valeur pastorale, mais ils relativisent l’impact sur des infrastructures pastorales modernes. Afin...

Theme 2: Food, agriculture and fisheries, and biotechnologies

This review analyzes published data on manure management practices used to mitigate methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions from animal operations. Reducing excreted nitrogen (N) and degradable organic carbon by diet manipulation to improve the balance of nutrient inputs with production is an effective practice to reduce CH4 and N2O emissio...

The goal of this review was to analyze published data related to mitigation of enteric methane (CH4) emissions from ruminant animals to document the most effective and sustainable strategies. Increasing forage digestibility and digestible forage intake was one of the major recommended CH4 mitigation practices. Although responses vary, CH4 emissions...

The goal of this review was to analyze published data on animal management practices that mitigate enteric methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions from animal operations. Increasing animal productivity can be a very effective strategy for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per unit of livestock product. Improving the genetic potential...

By the end of the XXIst century, a global temperature rise between 1.5 and 4°C compared to 1980-1999 and CO2 concentrations in the range 550-900 ppm are expected, together with an increased frequency of extreme climatic events (heat waves, droughts, and heavy rain) that is likely to negatively affect grassland production and livestock systems in a...

Animal production is a significant source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions worldwide. Depending on the accounting approaches and scope of emissions covered, estimates by various sources (IPCC, FAO, EPA or others) place livestock contribution to global anthropogenic GHG emissions at between 7 and 18 percent. The current analysis was conducted to ev...

Although livestock production accounts for a sizeable share of global greenhouse gas emissions, numerous technical options have been identified to mitigate these emissions. In this review, a subset of these options, which have proven to be effective, are discussed. These include measures to reduce CH4 emissions from enteric fermentation by ruminant...

Purpose The assessment of water footprints of a wide range of products has increased awareness on preserving freshwater as a resource. The water footprint of a product was originally defined by Hoekstra and Hung (2002) as the sum of the volumetric water use in terms of green, blue and grey water along the entire life cycle of a product and, as such...

There is an urgent need to understand what approaches are most effective in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and where to target such efforts in global dairy production. This chapter takes a food chain approach to the estimation of GHG emissions from the dairy cattle sector, assessing emissions from the production of inputs into the production pro...

FULL TEXT can be downloaded via: http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/i3288e/i3288e.pdf Animal production is a significant source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions worldwide. Depending on the accounting approaches and scope of emissions covered, estimates by various sources (IPCC, FAO, EPA or others) place livestock contribution to global anthropogenic GH...

Over the last 30 years, Sahelian pastoral livestock farming has undergone major institutional, socioeconomic, climatic and agroecological changes, which have had a profound impact on the lifestyle of increasingly vulnerable rural people. For this atlas, SIPSA and partners collected and analysed information products which confirmed these trends, but...

Recent research has shed light on the cost-effective contribution that agriculture can make to global greenhouse gas abatement; however, the resulting impacts on agricultural production, producer livelihoods, and food security remain largely unexplored. This paper provides an integrated assessment of the linkages between land-based climate policies...

Depuis une trentaine d’années, l’élevage pastoral sahélien traverse de grands changements institutionnels, socio-économiques, climatiques et agroécologiques qui bouleversent le mode de vie des populations rurales ; celles-ci deviennent de plus en plus vulnérables. Le SIPSA et ses partenaires ont collecté et analysé pour cet atlas des produits infor...

The livestock sector has a key and growing role in the agricultural economy. It is a major provider of livelihood support for a large part of the world's poor. It is also an important determinant of human health and diet. Over the last three decades, the global livestock sector has rapidly evolved in response to human population growth, income grow...

This review outlines livestock's major emission pathways and production trends, and explores the challenges and options for livestock in addressing and coping with climate change. Ruminant production is, and will continue to be, the chief source of the livestock sector's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, mainly as a result of deforestation, land degr...

This paper explores the relationship between productivity of dairy production and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions on a global scale. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology was used to assess GHG emissions from dairy production and processing chains. Milk yield expressed as kg fat and protein corrected milk (FPCM) per animal was chosen as a proxy...

Estimates of global greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions attributable to livestock range from 8 to 51%. This variability creates confusion among policy makers and the public as it suggests that there is a lack of consensus among scientists with regard to the contribution of livestock to global GHG emissions. In reality, estimates of international scien...

Les productions animales sont engagées dans un rapide processus de croissance et de transformation. Cette tendance devrait se maintenir dans les prochaines décennies, principalement alimentée par la croissance du pouvoir d’achat des populations urbaines. L’analyse comparée de l’élevage et de l’aquaculture fait émerger des similitudes et des différe...

Animal production undergoes rapid growth and structural changes. This trend will continue over the coming decades, driven primarily by an increasing purchasing power among urban populations. A comparative analysis of livestock production, including terrestrial animals, and aquaculture, brings out both similarities and differences between these two...

Whereas the Green Revolution was a concerted political and scientific response to rapidly growing populations, the Livestock Revolution currently underway in developing countries is driven by growing incomes or the world’s emerging middle class (1). Recently, a number of studies have underscored the impact of livestock on the global environment, in...

Between 2000 and 2030, the total GHG emissions from agriculture are expected to increase by about 50% (Verge et al., 2007). Mitigation techniques such as improved feed quality, improved manure management, improved fertilizer use and greater applied N efficiency, and improved water management in rice paddies all have to be considered in order to min...

Agriculture can make significant contributions to climate change mitigation by (a) increasing soil organic carbon (SOC) sinks, (b) reducing GHG emissions, and (c) off-setting fossil fuel by promoting biofuels. The latter has the potential to counter-balance fossil fuel emissions to some degree, but the overall impact is still uncertain compared to...

There are many opinions on the potentials for GHG mitigation in agriculture, but it is not always clear which among these are the most reliable and useful. The issues are complex, and the opinions as many and varied as those who have been brave enough to put their ideas forward. This collection of case studies and supporting documentation, prepared...

There is a great potential to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions related to livestock production. For achieving this potential will require new initiatives at national and international levels that include promoting research and development on new mitigation technologies; deploying, diffusing and transferring technologies to mitigate emissions;...

Livestock production systems will inevitably be affected as a result of changes in climate and climate variability, with impacts on peoples’ livelihoods. At the same time, livestock food chains are major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. Agriculture and livestock in particular will need to play a greater role than they have hitherto in redu...

The growth of the livestock sector is being achieved at substantial environmental costs. Today, livestock are a major stressor of the global environmental, occupying a quarter of emerged land (including a third of arable land), contributing close to a fifth of the anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, using eight percent of all water resources an...

Livestock provide many benefits to society, but at the same time, they generate considerable pressure on land, water and biomass resources and are responsible for 18 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions. The total demand for livestock products may almost double by 2050, mostly in the developing world due to increases in population density, urb...