Managing Healthy Livestock Production and Consumption

Managing Healthy Livestock Production and Consumption is a highly interdisciplinary resource based on scientific and empirical evidence. It is illustrated with best practices of low-input livestock systems from different continents and offers predictive modelling alternatives for a more resilient future. By addressing gaps of knowledge and presenting scientific perspective studies of livestock’s impact on the environment and the global food supply up to 2050, this book is useful for those advocating for sustainable food systems. Existing evidence of the effects of livestock production on food quality and nutrition is reviewed.

Livestock production and consumption is a highly diverse topic where current publications only include/focus a single aspect of the issues, for example, greenhouse gas emissions or health impacts, leading to unilateral decisions such as refraining from meat consumption. However, animals are necessary to soil fertility and ecosystems balance and a more realistic resource is necessary for researchers, scientists, and policy makers. This book clarifies perceptions by presenting sound scientific evidence across livestock landscapes for the scientific community to better appreciate the ecological web of life and the social web of community related to livestock production.

An edited work written by globally diverse scientists and practitioners, including field workers, technicians, and policy makers, this is a valuable resource for researchers, teachers, and development agents working in the area of sustainable livestock production and consumption of animal source foods. National, international organizations, policy makers, and donors interested in sustainable development of the livestock sector will also find the information here practical and applicable.

• Describes the public-health impacts of sustainable diets and livestock products
• Presents the impacts of livestock production on the environment and food supply
• Explores future scenarios (up to 2050) of low input livestock systems
• Includes current case studies of low input livestock systems that offer potential for scaling-up and replication for sustainable livestock futures

• Language: English
• Publisher: Academic Press
• Release date: Dec 2, 2021
• ISBN: 9780128230510

Book preview

Section 1

Introduction

Outline

Chapter 1 Introduction to livestock systems

Chapter 1

Introduction to livestock systems

Nadia El-Hage Scialabba,    Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, United States

Abstract

The multifunctionality of the livestock sector and its interdependence with ecological health and human wellbeing require a close consideration of the different types of livestock systems. From animal feeding operations, to cage farming, ranching, integrated crop-livestock, free range, organic, grassfed, biodynamic, permaculture, holistic planned grazing, silvopastoral and pastoral systems, different levels of external input use entail different contributions to food, livelihoods, health, and ecosystem services. This chapter suggests that we need to move from managing anonymous livestock supply chains toward building harmonious regenerative value networks.

Keywords

High external input systems; intermediate external input systems; low external input systems; livestock production systems; sustainable consumption and production; sustainable agriculture; regenerative agriculture

Chapter outline

Outline

Introduction 3

Centrality of livestock supply chains in our lives and on our planet 4

A multifunctional sector 4

Mutualism 5

Future demand 5

Global safety 6

Atomistic perspectives 6

Livestock production systems 7

Classification systems as reflection of specific mindsets 7

High external input systems 7

Intermediate external input systems 8

Low external input livestock systems 8

Animal feeding operations 9

Cage farming 10

Ranching 11

Integrated crop-livestock systems 11

Free-range 12

Organic agriculture 13

Grass-fed 13

Biodynamic agriculture 14

Permaculture 15

Holistic planned grazing 16

Silvopastoral systems 17

Pastoral systems 17

Livestock standards and labels 18

Sustainability pathways: from anonymous livestock supply chains into harmonious regenerative value networks 20

Improving livestock supply chains 20

From efficiency to harmony 21

From sustainability to regeneration 21

From quantity to quality 22

Hard questions 23

References 24

Introduction

Life is complex, and humans are an inextricable part of that complexity. To be successful as a species, we must recognize our place in the circular dance between animal and plant, between death and life, between taking and giving back. (Victoria Keziah, Managing Director, Savory Institute’s Land to Market program).

Box 1.1

Definitions

Livestock: Livestock means any domestic or domesticated animal including bovine (including buffalo and bison), ovine, porcine, caprine, equine, poultry, and bees raised for food or in the production of food. The products of hunting or fishing of wild animals are not considered part of this definition (FAO Term Portal collection for Organic Agriculture, 2020)).

Livestock products: Livestock products are not limited to meat, dairy, or eggs for human consumption. Several other products are derived from animals including manure, medicines, lubricants, wool, leather and more. The increased use of inedible livestock by-products is seen as means of enhancing sustainability (CAST, 2013).

Livestock managers: Pastoralists manage rangelands according to customary practices that are characterized by mobility to adapt to climate variability. Farmers sedentarily use land to grow crops and animals are kept on-farm or in specialized animal houses. Rangers primarily use large land areas to grazing animals and in few cases where conditions permit, ranchers may grow grains and hey to feed animals.

Centrality of livestock supply chains in our lives and on our planet

Livestock is essential to life on Earth. Livestock is destroying the Earth. Actually, both statements are true, depending on the predominant type of animal husbandry model in action.

Wild and domestic ruminants are essential to grasslands’ health, which occupy 26% of ice-free terrestrial surface of Earth, regulate global nutrient and energy cycles by converting grass into food and sequestering greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the soil. On all other lands, whether arable or marginal drylands, livestock play a major role in maintaining soil fertility. Besides macro- and micronutrients, animal manure provides organic matter which is a key determinant of soil health. Soil organic matter supports crop production and ecosystem stability by improving water and nutrient retention, nutrient cycling, carbon transformation, soil biodiversity, soil structure and soil aggregation and the supply of animal manure is a well-tested strategy to increase soil organic matter (FAO, 2018), especially in dry areas with poor vegetative biomass.

Livestock land occupation also include 33% of the world’ arable lands which are used to produce grains for animal feed, as well as deforested lands for more pastures and arable lands to grow feed crops (Steinfeld et al., 2006). Eighty percent of deforestation is attributed to agriculture, generating adverse health and ecological impacts, such as climate change, reduced biodiversity, land degradation and chemical pollution, in both crop and livestock production areas.

While livestock products provide one third of humanity’s protein intake, land use change and human invasion of tropical forests have been estimated to be connected to the emergence of 31% of epidemics, such HIV, Ebola and zika (EcoHealth Alliance, 2019). Chiefly, 73% of all emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic (Woolhouse & Gowtage-Sequeria, 2005), with domestic animals (livestock and pets) contributing to the transmission of viruses to humans, such as flu viruses, especially from animals packed in intensive systems (Wells, Morand, & Wardeh, 2019). In fact, in mass rearing of genetically identical animals that are selected for high feed conversion, a pathogen turns quickly into a hyper-virulent disease within a flock or herd, affecting, when hygiene is inadequate, other farms and the food supply chain.

Animal agriculture uses far more land resources than any other human activity. Summing-up grazing lands and feed producing lands alone, it becomes clear that livestock systems are key players for the ecological health of at least two thirds of global lands, inevitably affecting, in good or bad, human health and the Earth system balance.

A multifunctional sector

The diversity of livestock systems presents a multifunctional sector, subject to the influence of many factors and players, which has an important role in our lives and on our planet. Rather than being mere meat/milk/egg machines, livestock performs crucial social, cultural, ecological and economic functions.

Social wellbeing and safety nets

Domesticated animals provide high quality food, wool and leather for clothing, as well as draught and transportation for humans since the Noelithic era. Nowadays, nearly 70% of the world’s rural poor depend on livestock, including 640 million farmers in rainfed areas, 190 million pastoralists in arid and mountain zones and over 100 million landless households. Livestock buffer price shocks in national and international markets and can be drawn upon in case of food shortages (Doreau, Makkar, & Lecomte, 2013). Since the dawn of time, livestock have constituted a form of social protection. Animals continue to boost community resilience in the face of disasters and climate chocks by enabling water and food collection from greater distance or relocating to rebuild infrastructures. Animals are also used for recreation and health care, such as horse therapy.

Economic resilience and livelihoods

Livestock contributes to 36% of gross agricultural value (HLPE, 2016) and globally, meat and milk products represent 3.5 times the value of wheat and rice. Domesticated animals provide income to 1.3 billion people and livelihoods for over 800 million food insecure people. Cattle have long been considered a measure of wealth and farmers keep animals as a livelihood option, even in the face of drought and famine. In Asia and Africa, women prioritize ownership of homestead animals as a strategy for income generation, relief from domestic burdens and recognition within their communities. Draught animals are used in 52% of cultivated lands in developing countries, facilitating food production and distribution and powering global economies. Animals are also a form of insurance for formal credit and social contracts, such as marriage.

Ecological integrity and vibrant landscapes

The livestock sector occupies 30% of the world’ ice-free land and is hard to argue that manure is not crucial for soil fertility. Ruminants convert (by grazing) grass and shrub unsuitable for human consumption into food of high nutritional quality. Animal activity (trampling, excavating, grazing, defecating) is crucial to recycling nutrients in soils and enhancing water flow and plant biodiversity. Well managed grazed pastures have the ability to capture carbon in soils and hence, mitigate climate change.

Good governance and stewardship

Common lands, especially in the vast marginal areas of the world are best sustained by livestock production as the mainstay of local customs and rural economies. Traditionally, small groups using the same well and adjacent pastures, and larger groups using a single mountain or river valley. Customary grazing rights have evolved as a set of social customs regulating behavior within and between such groups, including informal mechanisms to allocate pastures to households, to monitor and enforce compliance and to resolve conflicts. Farmers and animal breeders have developed over 5000 breeds and 9 out of the 14 most important species—cattle, horse, ass, pig, sheep, buffalo, goat, chicken and duck—account for 4000 breeds.

Mutualism

Interdependence and reciprocity is at the center of a healthy livestock enterprise. Life processes do not follow the laws of cause and effect, but rather the law of simultaneity, or synchronicity. All beings are in the service of all other beings, like a cell among many others in a given organism, or the different organs that constitute a body. Nature’s wisdom of global self-regulation constantly heals shortages and discordances and only a farming approach in harmony with natural laws offers a prosperous future for the Earth and human health.

Through millennia, farmers have learned to engineer ecological processes in order to establish the necessary conditions for plants and animals to thrive. A central element is manuring (the best for soils is cow manure from pastures, not from stalls), along with maintaining an ecological balance by creating the right temporal and spatial plant and animal associations. In a healthy farm, the soil, plants, animals and farmers interact in a harmonious manner to promote species diversity, increase plant and animal vitality and hence, harvest food with increased nutritive values.

Efficient farm nutrient cycling improves soil structure, while avoiding soil erosion phenomena. The organic matter content of the world’s agricultural soils is reported to typically be 50%–66% of precultivation levels (Lal, 2004). Strategies to increase soil organic matter (and the carbon within it) include the integration of livestock in agricultural and silvicultural production, along with a sound animal rotation over patches of land. When cattle are properly grazed, they aerate the soil with their hooves, allowing more oxygen to enter the soil and helping grasses and plants grow better. If soil is not aerated, it develops a hard crust, which decreases the amount of water and nutrients it can absorb. Grazing cattle also press grass seed into the soil and provide natural fertilizer in the form of manure. When cattle graze, they reduce the length of the grass, which helps reduce the spread of wildfires.

Interactions between livestock and plants form complex networks that structure ecological communities and maintain essential ecosystem functions (such as seed dispersal or biological control), where a loss of functional diversity in one trophic level may cause increased competition for mutualistic partners in the other trophic level. The different types of mutualistic plant-animal networks depend on functional relationships between plant and animal, according to size matching, energy provisioning of plants and energy requirements of animals, as well as foraging stratum and mobility.

Animal husbandry provides also symbiotic relationships between animals and the people who care for them. Ruminants (cattle, sheep, and goats) graze areas that are unsuitable for growing crops, transforming grass, which people cannot digest, into protein (meat) that people can eat. People do their part in this mutualistic relationship by protecting the animals from predators, by caring for the pastureland and by providing food when pasture is unavailable.

Plant-livestock interactions increase farm productivity and improve the agroecosystem resilience. Animals produce manure that is used to amend soils or provide fuel, while crop by-products are a useful source of animal feed. Livestock keeping can improve health and nutrition in small households and generate additional income and employment, even when households have limited resources such as land, labor and capital.

Future demand

Global demand for meat, milk and eggs is projected to increase into the future, driven by population growth and the greater demand is facilitated by the increasing purchasing power in developing countries. Global human population is expected to increase from its current 7.2 billion to more than 9.7 billion people in 2050; relative to 2010, developing countries will increase the milk demand by 58% and the meat demand by 73% (Gerber et al., 2013).

The improving living standard in developing and emerging countries, coupled with urbanization and globalization, is driving an imitation of the western style of life in terms of consumption of animal-sourced foods (meat, milk and eggs). On the other hand, developed countries that have followed diets rich of animal proteins are now cutting back on their consumption, eventually from 40% to 20% of proteins from animal source, due to noncommunicable diseases concerns.

The Livestock Revolution, on-going in developing countries, is characterized by a shift from livestock being kept for multiple purposes (including hides, fibers, draught power, fertilizer) and local food supply, to animals being raised using industrial methods to supply food as a global commodity. In this process, small farmers are being displaced to the benefit of few national and multinational companies.

Further intensification of livestock production to meet future population demand will have substantial consequences on land-use, depending whether management practices will follow a business-as-usual mode, or convert to more nature-based and humane practices. This implies massive land use change and more intensive use of arable lands, with the potential to destroy or to heal the current food production base.

Global safety

Livestock production has been, is currently, and will continue to be central to food systems’ development, sustainability and global health security. Historically, most zoonotic diseases emerged in the animal industries (with a wildlife component), as high density of animals in intensive systems, along with their genetic homogeneity, exposure to stress and the use of antimicrobials, foster disease emergence (Jones et al., 2013).

Through scientific breakthroughs, new ways to grow more food has rapidly increased to more quickly yield hundreds of thousands of hybrids, each animal being genetically identical to the next, packed together in mega-barns, then slaughtered and shipped overseas. Less well known are the deadly pathogens mutating in, and emerging out of, these specialized agro-environments. In fact, many of the most dangerous new diseases in humans can be traced back to such food systems, among them Campylobacter, Nipah virus, Q fever, hepatitis E, and a variety of novel influenza variants (Wallace, 2016).

Recognizing the existence of a range of uncertainties and compounding factors, what is sure is that the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic will bring major changes to understanding and managing livestock production and consumption. The pandemic also offers a window of opportunity for the promotion of regenerative forms of livestock production that yield high quality food and better incomes to pastoralists, farmers and ranchers.

Atomistic perspectives

The livestock sector is often accused of largely contributing to climate change. Ruminants are indeed major emitters of methane and consumers are led to believe that eating a beefsteak will compromise their children’s future. Citizens, producers and decision-makers that enact incentives or disincentives on production systems are often misinformed by statistics. Item-focused statistics are inherently meaningless when taken out of context. For instance, one could calculate a perfect cow carbon footprint while leaving aside soil biodiversity and hence, missing out on the soil carbon sequestration potential of grazing lands.

Furthermore, methodological choices often miss representing the full picture, with consequent perpetuation of ill practices. The most common misleading performance metric is yields of meat/milk/egg, as if livestock only produced edible commodities, without balancing food production with the life span of the animal and its overall contribution to ecological health and social wellbeing.

Discussions over the contribution of livestock to climate change provide one example of leaky statistics that drive unilateral decision-making. The livestock sector is reported (Gerber et al., 2013) to be responsible of 14.5% of anthropogenic GHG emission, including land use change, feed production and transport, with feed accounting for 45% of the sector’ emissions.

Most worryingly, mainstream statistics glorify the better performance of feedlots over grazing systems, as carbon emissions are compared by unit of animal product. However, comparisons of livestock ecosystems, whereby methane emissions are offset by soil carbon sequestration unveil totally different, carbon neutral, scenarios of global warming potential.

In mainstream statistics, the feed count excludes GHG emissions from grassland conversion to cropland or fertilized grassland in order to feed intensive livestock systems, thus it omits changes in soil carbon above and below ground, changes in soil nitrogen which is lost as reactive nitrous oxide (Van Middelaar, Cederberg, Vellinga, van der Werf, & de Boer, 2013), and the suppression of soil methanothrophic bacteria that regulate soil’s methane sink (Nazaries, Murrell, Millard, Baggs, & Singh, 2013). The contribution of soils to carbon sequestration, especially of undisturbed and unfertilized grasslands as a methane sink, and the role of ruminant populations in recycling carbon and methane through grassland plant’s photosynthesis cannot be underestimated. Also, land use change (e.g., conversion of forest or savanna) accounts for a relatively recent period (a decade) without taking into consideration existing land use, or the sequestration potential of croplands converted to grasslands.

In order to capture the full picture of livestock carbon footprint, carbon counting must distinguish between different production systems and also consider historic land use change emissions. More importantly, the multifunctional role of livestock in the natural, social and economic spheres requires full-cost accounting in order to value—and act upon—the constraints and opportunities achieved by the various forms of animal husbandry.

Livestock production systems

Classification systems as reflection of specific mindsets

Livestock systems are usually classified according to feeding and stocking rates and the FAO (Steinfeld & Mäki-Hokkonen, 2017) classification is the following:

Landless livestock production systems: Subset of the solely livestock production systems in which less than 10% of the dry matter fed to animals is farm-produced and in which annual average stocking rates are above ten livestock units (LU) per hectare of agricultural land.

Grassland-based systems: Subset of solely livestock production systems in which more than 10% of the dry matter fed to animals is farm-produced and in which annual average stocking rates are less than ten LU per hectare of agricultural land.

Mixed-farming systems: Livestock systems in which more than 10% of the dry matter fed to animals comes from crop by-products or stubble or more than 10% of the total value of production comes from nonlivestock farming activities. Mixed systems can be of two kinds: a subset of rain-fed mixed-farming systems, in which more than 90% of the value of nonlivestock farm production comes from rain-fed land use; a subset of irrigated mixed-farming systems, in which more than 10% of the value of nonlivestock farm production comes from irrigated land use.

This classification system prioritizes the spatial environment (landless, grasslands, farm) that determines feeding strategies without highlighting land use in feed production areas. For mixed farming only, the classification distinguishes between water sources (rainfed vs irrigated) without considering the quality and quantity of freshwater connected to landless livestock operations. Stocking rates follow a cut-off rate of ten LU per hectare for landless operations and grasslands (leaving-out mixed farming that produces the bulk of livestock products), while the temporal scale is as important as (if not more important) the spatial scale, as demonstrated by properly managed herd rotations.

An important consideration for any livestock classification system is whether inputs are primarily engineered by humans (e.g., feed concentrates) or nature made (e.g., grass), or the extent of technological substitution of ecosystem services. Therefore the broad categorization adopted in this chapter parallels that of the Global Agro-Ecological Zone Assessment (IIASA/FAO, 2010) that classifies farming activities according to high, intermediate and low external-input systems.

The low/high external input distinction prioritizes among heavily anthropogenized systems and natural or seminatural systems, without trading-off farm productivity. This implies hardware-like technologies, such as mechanization and synthetic inputs, and software-like technologies, such as agroecology-based management and traditional knowledge.

Low/high external inputs should not be confused with intensity levels, as intensification can be achieved either through the intensification of external input use (as in concentrated animal feeding operations), or intensification of animals per hectare (as is the case in holistic planned grazing).

High external input systems

Inputs

High external input systems are designed to produce the highest output at the lowest cost, usually using economies of scale, and global trade for financing, purchases and sales. These are characterized by market-orientation and high reliance on external inputs, with relatively low labor inputs. The introduction of penicillin and other antibiotics in the 50s, coupled with grain-based diets (boosted by hybrid sorghum), triggered quick animal fattening at high stocking densities. High external-input systems include the use of feed concentrates, synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides and GMOs grains for feedstuff, improved high yielding breeds and genetic manipulation, pharmaceuticals, and mechanization based on capital-intensive technologies, with all related biodevices, diagnostics and data analytics.

Global food supply and occupation

The contribution of high external-input livestock systems to world food supply includes about 17% of ruminants, 66% of pig and poultry and 7% of milk (Steinfield, Mooney, Schneider, & Neville, 2010). These systems are usually operated by well-endowed producers, especially in terms of availability of financial flows, and relatively fewer workers. They range from barns with a few confined animals to units with thousands of animals.

Challenges

The proliferation of high external input livestock systems in the last decades was triggered by advanced genetics and breeding programs, private input producers, public subsidies for synthetic inputs and consequently, cheaper feed grains. The increasing cost of energy and water is however leading to a loss of economic efficiency. Climate change and water scarcity may become major constraints to expansion, especially if environmental and health externalities are considered in production costs. High external input systems face environmental challenges resulting from intensification, animal welfare concerns, harm to human health created by antimicrobial resistance, social consequences of rural abandonment, and economic risks due to dependence on input price volatility (e.g., feed, energy) and more recently, demand volatility due to noncommunicable and zoonotic diseases.

Intermediate external input systems

Inputs

Intermediate external input systems are characterized by partial market-orientation, with both subsistence use and commercial sales. Thus, input usage varies widely, from traditional to improved breeds, from medium to high labor inputs (both manual and mechanized), use of veterinary drugs, mixed feeding with concentrate and locally available biomass, as well as agroecological knowledge-intensive practices. Generally, these systems rely on partially enclosed housing, a medium level of capital input requirements and locally sourced feed materials for 30%–50% of the ration (Gerber et al., 2013).

Global food supply and occupation

Intermediate external-input livestock systems constitute the bulk of food and agriculture systems, occupying 2600 million hectares, of which 200 million ha are irrigated. Their contribution to the world food supply includes 70% of ruminants, over 33% of pig and poultry and 90% milk. Their performance is location- and scale-specific, depending on the local environmental, social and economic endowments. These systems involve around 430 million smallholders.

Challenges

The transition of intermediate external input systems toward greener systems will most likely be triggered by consumer demand and eventually accelerated by financial support for targeted conversion in order to meet several targets of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Low external input livestock systems

Inputs

Low external input livestock systems include both traditional pastoral systems and modern approaches seeking to optimize the management of local resources, with minor use of external nutrients, synthetic chemicals and drugs. In the last two decades, the proliferation of low external input livestock standards (e.g., grass-fed) and sustainability claims has shifted the traditional subsistence focus of these systems. Thus, low-external input systems can be both poorly productive and highly performing, depending on producers’ ecological knowledge and the intensity of local resources management.

Global food supply and occupation

Low external-input livestock systems are practiced by about one quarter of the world's population, with different levels of success, in terms of productivity, diversity, income generation and environmental footprint. Their contribution to global food supply does not appear in statistics, as traditional systems are primarily subsistence-based, while the standard-based livestock systems are still emerging (though growing). However, they provide livelihoods to the majority of the poor, with pastoralists only counting 180 million livestock-dependent