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Livestock: On our plates or eating at our table? A new analysis of the feed/food debate
Abstract
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. This paper analyses global livestock feed rations and feed conversion ratios, with specific insight on the diversity in production systems and feed materials. Results estimate that livestock consume 6 billion tonnes of feed (dry matter) annually – including one third of global cereal production – of which 86% is made of materials that are currently not eaten by humans. In addition, soybean cakes, which production can be considered as main driver or land-use, represent 4% of the global livestock feed intake. Producing 1 kg of boneless meat requires an average of 2.8 kg human-edible feed in ruminant systems and 3.2 kg in monogastric systems. While livestock is estimated to use 2.5 billion ha of land, modest improvements in feed use efficiency can reduce further expansion.
Supplementary resource (1)
Data
June 2020
... While agriculture aims to feed over 7.9 billion people currently and 9.6 billion by the year 2050, the demand for food is expected to rise by at least 60%, and the agriculture sector faces a crisis in terms of sustainability [1,2]. Agriculture uses almost 30% of all consumed energy globally [3]. ...
This paper discusses how integrating renewable energy, AI, and IoT becomes important in promoting climate-smart agriculture. Due to the changing climate, rise in energy costs, and ensuring food security, agriculture faces unprecedented challenges; therefore, development toward innovative technologies is emerging for its sustainability and efficiency. This review synthesizes existing literature systematically to identify how AI and IoT could optimize resource management, increase productivity, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions within an agricultural context. Key findings pointed to the importance of managing resources sustainably, the scalability of technologies, and, finally, policy interventions to ensure technology adoption. The paper further outlines trends in the global adoption of renewable energy and smart agriculture solutions, indicating areas of commonality and difference and emphasizing the need for focused policies and capacity-building initiatives that will help, particularly in the developing world, the benefits of such innovations. Eventually, this research covers some gaps in understanding how AI, IoT, and renewable energy could jointly contribute to driving towards a greener and more resilient agriculture sector.
... However, as the demand for livestock-derived foods (LDFs) is increasing, there is a necessity to manage their production (projected that the demand for milk and meat will increase by 48% and 57% between 2005 and 2050 globally) (Mottet et al., 2017). Globally, strategic investment in the livestock sector is crucial, as it ensures sustainable development, enhances resource productivity, and supports the resilience of the manufacturing systems. ...
The agri-food sector is pressured to produce more livestock products with fewer resources due to global drivers like rapid population growth and challenging climate changes. Food insecurity can lead to hunger, malnutrition, and famine over time. Recently, half of Afghanistan’s population has been food insecure due to COVID-19 and climate change, as highlighted by current food price shocks. One of the factors contributing to food insecurity is the decline of livestock production for many reasons. Meanwhile, by 2050, we will need to produce 50-70% more food to feed an additional 2 billion people, and the demand for animal-source foods (ASFs) will double. Ruminant livestock are crucial for food security by converting non-edible products into nutritious food. Still, they pose a challenge to sustainability due to resource-intensive practices and greenhouse gas emissions. In Afghanistan, empowering livestock farmers to build capacity for sustainable food security and implementing region-specific strategies for sustainable livestock production and consumption is crucial. However, creating and developing an efficient whole value chain system can help maximize dairy production and improve nutritional security in Afghanistan. Nonetheless, a single player cannot achieve livestock-based food security in Afghanistan. All stakeholders need to collaborate and recognize the significance of livestock in ensuring food security. This paper reviewed the role of livestock resources and the required percentage of ASF in human diets for sustainable nutritional security and resulting productive livelihoods in Afghanistan.
... Currently, the shortage of high-quality raw protein sources poses a challenge to the feed industry, and their increased prices reduced the economic efficiency of farming (Mottet et al., 2017). Although, high-protein diets cause more nitrogen deposition, leading to environmental pollution (Hernandez et al., 2012). ...
The current study aimed to explore the suitable starch: protein ratios under different dietary protein levels for goslings. A total of 360 male 1-day-old Jiangnan White goslings were randomly divided into 6 groups with six replicates containing ten goslings each. The experimental design consisted of a 3 × 2 factorial array of treatments. Three protein levels (18%, 16%, 14%) and two starch: protein ratio (S: P ratio) types (standard, reduced) were formulated. The results showed that: reducing the S: P ratio at the same dietary protein level increased weight gain (WG), average daily gain (ADG), and average daily feed intake (ADFI) of goslings (P < 0.05). Lowering the protein level increased feed-to- gain ratio (F/G) at the same dietary S: P ratio type. Both decreasing dietary protein levels and reducing S: P resulted in an increase (P < 0.05) in the serum albumin (ALB) content of goslings. Protein at 18% level, minimized serum total cholesterol (TC) in goslings. Reducing the dietary S: P ratio elevated serum lipid concentration. In reduced S: P ratio diets, serum Leucine (Leu) decreased and Threonine (Thr) concentration increased. The reduction in dietary protein level and S: P ratio significantly affected the amino acid composition of muscles. The varied levels of protein and S: P ratio types interacted to influence the starch digestibility of distal jejunum. In addition, the reduced S: P ratio attenuates α-amylase activity of jejunal chyme. Moreover, SGLT1 and GLUT2 genes expression were generally down-regulated, and SLC7A5 gene expression was up-regulated in reduced S: P ratio groups. In summary, the diet with 14% protein level, and 2.97 starch: protein ratio is recommended to use in gosling's growth phase of 1 to 28 days.
Ruminant livestock provide a rich source of products, such as meat, milk, and wool, and play a critical role in global food security and nutrition. Over the past few decades, genomic studies of ruminant livestock have provided valuable insights into their domestication and the genetic basis of economically important traits, facilitating the breeding of elite varieties. In this review, we summarize the main advancements for domestic ruminants in reference genome assemblies, population genomics, and the identification of functional genes or variants for phenotypic traits. These traits include meat and carcass quality, reproduction, milk production, feed efficiency, wool and cashmere yield, horn development, tail type, coat color, environmental adaptation, and disease resistance. Functional genomic research is entering a new era with the advancements of graphical pangenomics and telomere-to-telomere (T2T) gap-free genome assembly. These advancements promise to improve our understanding of domestication and the molecular mechanisms underlying economically important traits in ruminant livestock. Finally, we provide new perspectives and future directions for genomic research on ruminant genomes. We suggest how ever-increasing multiomics datasets will facilitate future studies and molecular breeding in livestock, including the potential to uncover novel genetic mechanisms underlying phenotypic traits, to enable more accurate genomic prediction models, and to accelerate genetic improvement programs.
Reducing animal‐based food production would not only reduce agricultural greenhouse gas emissions but also free land that could sequester carbon. We examine the efficiency of a subsidy to cattle farmers for setting aside land for natural ecosystem regeneration. We develop a partial equilibrium model of the cattle sector that integrates land use, greenhouse gas emissions, and animal feeding. We compare the subsidy to alternative policies: a meat tax and a standard on animal feeding. We identify the conditions under which the subsidy is the best alternative to these other second‐best policies. The efficiency of the subsidy lies in its effects on both the extensive margin (reduced quantity of meat) and the intensive margin (production intensification, which reduces both the emission and land‐use intensities of meat). An empirical application to France, where spontaneous regeneration corresponds mostly to forest regrowth, shows that the subsidy dominates the other alternative policies considered for a wide range of parameter values but is sensitive to carbon leakage when the economy is open to trade.
In 2000, the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) projected that global demand for animal source food (ASF) would double by 2050 (Alexandratos and Bruinsma, 2012). Although these projections were revised slightly during recent years, they form the basis of many scientific and policy documents related to livestock production. Those projections, however, are based on global trends for a growing population and increasing incomes and urbanization, but not based on ensuring global nutrition security in a sustainable way. Currently, the world’s livestock sector adds to the total anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases and competes for scarce resources, such as land, water, and fossil-energy. Without changes to reduce the environmental impact, concerns about the environment will only increase further.
We asked ourselves, how and why livestock production is essential and what would be the proportion of ASF in human diets to ensure nutrition security in a sustainable way? As land is a strict limitation of nutrition security, we took a land-use perspective, irrespective of socio- economic or technical constraints.
Livestock contributes directly to the livelihoods and food security of almost a billion people and affects the diet and health of many more. With estimated standing populations of 1.43 billion cattle, 1.87 billion sheep and goats, 0.98 billion pigs, and 19.60 billion chickens, reliable and accessible information on the distribution and abundance of livestock is needed for a many reasons. These include analyses of the social and economic aspects of the livestock sector; the environmental impacts of livestock such as the production and management of waste, greenhouse gas emissions and livestock-related land-use change; and large-scale public health and epidemiological investigations. The Gridded Livestock of the World (GLW) database, produced in 2007, provided modelled livestock densities of the world, adjusted to match official (FAOSTAT) national estimates for the reference year 2005, at a spatial resolution of 3 minutes of arc (about 5×5 km at the equator). Recent methodological improvements have significantly enhanced these distributions: more up-to date and detailed sub-national livestock statistics have been collected; a new, higher resolution set of predictor variables is used; and the analytical procedure has been revised and extended to include a more systematic assessment of model accuracy and the representation of uncertainties associated with the predictions. This paper describes the current approach in detail and presents new global distribution maps at 1 km resolution for cattle, pigs and chickens, and a partial distribution map for ducks. These digital layers are made publically available via the Livestock Geo-Wiki (http://www.livestock.geo-wiki.org), as will be the maps of other livestock types as they are produced.
Significance
This report is unique in presenting a high-resolution dataset of biomass use, production, feed efficiencies, and greenhouse gas emissions by global livestock. This information will allow the global-change research community in enhancing our understanding of the sustainability of livestock systems and their role in food security, livelihoods and environmental sustainability.
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 in combination with these models to establish grazing area boundaries and to parameterize links between forage consumption, animal production and animal GHG emissions. This study provides an alternative to the usual approach of extrapolating from a small number of field studies and by modeling the linkage between soil, forage and animals it sheds new light on the net mitigation potential of C sequestration practices in the world’s grazing lands. Three different mitigation practices are assessed in this study, namely, improved grazing management, legume sowing and N fertilization. We estimate that optimization of grazing pressure could sequester 148 Tg CO2 yr−1. The soil C sequestration potential of 203 Tg CO2 yr−1 for legume sowing was higher than for improved grazing management, despite being applied over a much smaller total area. However, N2O emissions from legumes were estimated to offset 28% of its global C sequestration benefits, in CO2 equivalent terms. Conversely, N2O emissions from N fertilization exceeded soil C sequestration, in all regions. Our estimated potential for increasing C stocks though in grazing lands is lower than earlier worldwide estimates (Smith et al., 2007 and Lal, 2004), mainly due to the much smaller grazing land area over which we estimate mitigation practices to be effective. A big concern is the high risk of the practices, particularly legumes, increasing soil-based GHGs if applied outside of this relatively small effective area. More work is needed to develop indicators, based on biophysical and management characteristics of grazing lands, to identify amenable areas before these practices can be considered ready for large scale implementation. The additional ruminant GHG emissions associated with higher forage output are likely to substantially reduce the mitigation potential of these practices, but could contribute to more GHG-efficient livestock production.
Eating meat has been an important component of human evolution and rising meat consumption has made a major contribution to improved nutrition. Expanding the current practices of meat production would worsen its already considerable environmental consequences but more environmentally sensitive ways of meat production are possible. Although they could not match the current levels of meat supply, they could provide nutritionally adequate levels worldwide. This would mean a break with historical trends but such a shift is already underway in many affluent countries and demographic and economic factors are likely to strengthen it in decades ahead.
A sustainability transition will require a clear understanding of the environmental impacts of human food needs. To this end, accurate data on the feed requirements of livestock production are essential. Unfortunately, approaches used to estimate overall feed conversion ratios per unit output of livestock product vary and the reported values used in environmental analyses may be inconsistent. This paper presents a spreadsheet model for determining the aggregate, herd (flock) level feed needs of six major livestock commodities (beef, chicken, dairy, eggs, pork, and turkey) based on contemporary U.S. production practices. In this model, each system is represented as a set of stocks and flows, each of which is estimated based on performance metrics, such as reproduction and mortality rates. Parameter estimates were made primarily from U.S. government surveys or comparable peer-reviewed literature. Nutritional needs of livestock were based primarily from National Research Council reports. The model estimates the feed intake and ration composition for each life stage of each livestock system. Results were summarized as feed conversion ratios per unit output, herd (flock) average ration composition, and land use requirements for all feed ingredients. The findings confirm conventional wisdom that the total feed use efficiency of livestock products varies widely across livestock systems. However, the differences appear more subtle when the requirements for individual feed ingredients are considered. Similarly, the land requirements of livestock production also vary widely, but the differences are more nuanced when viewed in light of the land quality required to supply each feed ingredient. While the findings are consistent with some other past efforts to determine feed and land use efficiency of livestock production, greater transparency and consistency is needed in this area of research.
Growing global population figures and per-capita incomes imply an increase in food demand and pressure to expand agricultural land. Agricultural expansion into natural ecosystems affects biodiversity and leads to substantial carbon dioxide emissions. Considerable attention has been paid to prospects for increasing food availability, and limiting agricultural expansion, through higher yields on cropland. In contrast, prospects for efficiency improvements in the entire food-chain and dietary changes toward less land-demanding food have not been explored as extensively. In this study, we present model-based scenarios of global agricultural land use in 2030, as a basis for investigating the potential for land-minimized growth of world food supply through: (i) faster growth in feed-to-food efficiency in animal food production; (ii) decreased food wastage; and (iii) dietary changes in favor of vegetable food and less land-demanding meat. The scenarios are based in part on projections of global food agriculture for 2030 by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, FAO. The scenario calculations were carried out by means of a physical model of the global food and agriculture system that calculates the land area and crops/pasture production necessary to provide for a given level of food consumption. In the reference scenario - developed to represent the FAO projections - global agricultural area expands from the current 5.1 billion ha to 5.4 billion ha in 2030. In the faster-yet-feasible livestock productivity growth scenario, global agricultural land use decreases to 4.8 billion ha. In a third scenario, combining the higher productivity growth with a substitution of pork and/or poultry for 20% of ruminant meat, land use drops further, to 4.4 billion ha. In a fourth scenario, applied mainly to high-income regions, that assumes a minor transition towards vegetarian food (25% decrease in meat consumption) and a somewhat lower food wastage rate, land use in these regions decreases further, by about 15%.