BALANCING LIVESTOCK, THE ENVIRONMENT, AND HUMAN NEEDSElectronic Conference - 10 March to 24 May 1997
- the keynote paper
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There are massive pressures on animal production to satisfy the deeply rooted demand for high value animal protein. These pressures have transformed the livestock sector, away from a resource-driven sector, based on waste and surplus products to one that aggressively looks for new resources. The massive appetite of the growing urban populations for meat, milk and eggs often translates into environmental damage and disruption of traditional mixed farming. At the same time, livestock are squeezed into resource degradation where population pressure and poverty coincide, such as in pastoral areas. These shifts call for a different set of institutions, markets and policies. They also call for the development and adaptation of new technologies to make livestock environmentally more benign - the scope is enormous and so is the task. LIVESTOCK IN A CHANGING WORLD The association between humankind and animals dates back to prehistoric times. Livestock, until the industrial age, have been a tool to manage the environment, that while being intact by modern standards it was often also very hostile. Domesticated animals also, through their integration with crop agriculture, provided and continue to provide the main avenue for agricultural intensification and this, in turn, has allowed for unprecedented economic and human population growth. Livestock production, mainly as a result of pressures in this process, has become an important factor in environmental degradation. Large land areas have become degraded through overgrazing and deforestation followed by ranching. Biodiversity is affected by extensive as well as intensive livestock production. Water availability in low-rainfall areas is affected by livestock. Land and water is polluted through waste from animal production and processing where animal concentrations are high. Livestock are an important source of gaseous emission, contributing to global warming, projected to increase by 1.8C worldwide over the next 35 years (Houghton, et al, 1995). All these pressures on the environment are the result of a process of change where the role of livestock is changing due to rising and changing demands for livestock commodities and to a different role of the environment. In essence, the conflict between livestock and environment is a conflict between different human needs and expectations. The world's livestock sector grows at unprecedented rates. Livestock are not only important as producers of meat, milk and eggs which are part of the modern food chain, providing high value protein food.Other non-food functions, although of declining importance, still provide the rationale for keeping the majority of the world's livestock. For millions of smallholder farmers, animal draught power and nutrient recycling through manure compensate for lack of access to modern inputs such as tractors and fertiliser, and help to maintain the viability and environmental sustainability of production. Often, livestock constitute the main, if not the only, capital reserve of farming households, serving as a strategic reserve that reduces risk and adds stability to the overall farming system. As such, livestock are a tool to satisfy a large variety of human needs. Yet, in many places livestock production is growing out of balance with the environment or is under so much pressure that it leads to environmental degradation. The driving force behind the surge in demand for livestock products is a combination of population growth, rising incomes and urbanisation (see Tables 1 and 2 below). The world's population is currently growing at 1.5 percent; the growth rate is 1.8 percent in the developing countries and stagnating at less than 0.1 growth in the developed countries. The real incomes of consumers in the developing countries have doubled since the early sixties. With the exception of the 80s, per kaput GDP has grown annually over 3 percent per year.There is a strong positive relationship between level of income and consumption of animal protein. As people become more affluent consumption of meat, milk and eggs increase at the expense staple food. Diets become richer and more diverse, and the high-value protein that livestock food offers improves the nutrition by the vast majority of people in the world. Incomes have increased in most countries over the past five years, with growth most markedly in Asian countries. In the developed countries increasing incomes are no longer associated with incremental consumption of animal protein as markets have become saturated. On the contrary, increasing incomes often lead to a decrease in animal food consumption because of human health concerns associated with excessive consumption of animal fats. This concerns in particular the incidence of heart and blood circulation diseases.
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Source: Ingco et al (1996), World Bank ****************************************************
Currently, over 80 percent of the world's population growth occurs in cities of developing countries. World-wide, urbanisation has risen from 30 percent of the population to 45 percent in 1995 and is projected to reach 60 percent by 2025 (UNFPA, 1996). In the developed countries, urbanisation rates have leveled at 80 percent while in the developing world urbanisation still averages 37 percent with marked differences between the regions: 74 percent in Latin America but only 34 percent in Africa and Asia. In the past, many governments tried to slow down urbanisation but it is now increasingly recognised as a rational pattern of development as economic activity at higher levels of development benefit from agglomeration. Urban populations differ from rural populations in a higher consumption of animal products in their diets, further fueling the demand. (IFPRI 2020) The rapidly increasing demand for livestock products pushes against a traditional resource base for livestock production that cannot expand at the same pace. Diversity is a main characteristic of traditional livestock production. A wide array of feed resources are being used, most of which have no or only limited alternative value. These include pastures in marginal lands, crop residues and agro-industrial by-products. The scope for increasing the traditional feed resource base is limited Firstly, across the world the most productive pasture lands are being turned into crop land as the demand for high-potential arable land keeps increasing. Likewise, degraded crop land is left fallow and revert into poor pastures. As a result, the overall pasture area may not change much but the aggregate land productivity is likely to be lower. Technologies that increase pasture productivity have shown impressive results in Latin America, but globally productivity growth is rather marginal. Secondly, the basic principles of crop research are to optimize the transformation of land resources, solar energy and inputs into high-value products, for example, into grains. Consequently, the availability of crop residues for animal feed does not increase with raising yields. What is shown for changes concerning the traditional feed resources applies to changes in the use of animal genetic resources. The development of traditional genotypes towards higher productivity does not progress at the same pace of the sector's expansion. Traditional genotypes have provided the main mechanism of exploiting harsh production environments. Now that the means exist to modify the bio-physical environment, increasingly also in the tropics, exotic genotypes are being introduced which enable higher returns to external inputs. Consequently, the contribution by indigenous breeds diminishes. As the world economy develops and many countries industrialize, people seek different uses of livestock. The association between man and livestock has undergone many changes over time and will keep changing.For example, the empire of largest geographical expansion ever was based on transport and communication by horses (the Tartars in the 14th century). Today, non-food functions are generally in decline and are replaced by cheaper and more convenient substitutes. The following trends may be depicted: * The asset, petty cash and insurance function that livestock provide is being replaced by financial institutions as even remote rural areas enter the monetary economy; * With the notable exception of sub-Saharan Africa and some areas in Asia animal draught is on the decline as more farmers mechanize. * Manure continues to be important for nutrient management in mixed farming but its role in overall nutrient supply is declining because of the competitive price and ease of management of inorganic fertiliser. * Although the demand for natural fibers is still high, and in some places even increasing, there are increasingly more synthetic substitutes for wool and leather. The opportunities that arise from strong market demand conflict with the limited potential to expand the conventional resource base. This results in an extremely dynamic situation in terms of technology and resource utilisation. Technological progress has achieved over the past 30 years a doubling of productivity per animal in OECD countries.A major productivity gap remains in developing countries. Closing this productivity gaps could offer opportunities to relieve the strain on natural resources but it is clear that this cannot be obtained by expanding the conventional resource base. Increasingly, the world livestock sector resorts to external inputs, notably high quality feed but also breeds, animal health and general husbandry inputs. We observe a radical change which does away with the conventional perception of livestock symbolised by cows on pasture. Grazing systems offer only limited potential for intensification and livestock production becomes increasingly crop-based. Thus, the importance of roughages as a feed resource is decreasing at the expense of cereals and agro-industrial by-products. There is an important species shift towards monogastric animals, mainly poultry and pigs. While ruminant meat accounted for 54 percent of total meat production in the developing countries in 1970, this has gone down to 38 percent in 1990 and is projected to further decrease to 29 percent in 2010 (FAO, 1995). This species shift reflects the better conversion rates for concentrate feed provided to monogastrics. Livestock production becomes separated from its land base, urbanized and assumes more and more features of industrial production . In recent years, industrial livestock production grew at twice the rate (4.3 percent) of that in mixed farming system (2.2 percent) and more than six times of the grazing system production growth (0.7 percent) (SerBH and Steinfeld, 1996). This trend has accelerated in the past five years. In agro-ecological terms livestock production grows more rapidly in humid and sub-humid zones; it is here where pressure on the environment will builds up more rapidly. The growth rate is reduced in arid tropical zones and the highlands. The growing human population largely explains the expansion into the more humid areas, removing the animal disease constraint that until recently largely precluded them from being used for livestock production.
The complexity of livestock-environment interactions makes generalisations difficult and has left a void in the development of comprehensive policies in this regard. Livestock ownership is in some regions, such as the Americas severely skewed and, as a consequence, livestock development tends to favour the wealthier groups of society. Typically, livestock products have a high elasticity of demand but traditionally a low elasticity of supply, particularly in land-based smallholder production. Because of this demand pattern it has been argued that livestock development tends to favour the higher-income sectors of society - an isolated view, yet one that has deterred potential donors - but does not adequately take account of benefits on the supply side. These factors have created a policy void which is further exacerbated by the general move, in developing and developed countries alike, to reduce the presence of governments and to liberalize markets and trade.
THE ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGES The balance between human needs and natural resource requirements will depend, to a significant extent, on what we do with animal production. Over the last 35 years large land areas have become degraded. In many parts of the world, water resources have fallen to dangerously low levels or became unsafe to drink. Global temperatures have risen by about 0.5 Celsius since the beginning of the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century. Over the last three centuries 160 bird and 100 mammalian species are known to have become extinct. Focusing on the livestock-associated environmental problems, some hot spots stand out: * LAND DEGRADATION OF SEMI-ARID LANDS in Africa and India, caused by a complex set of factors involving man and his stock, crop encroachment in marginal areas and fuelwood collection.Land tenure, settlement and incentive policies have undermined traditional land use practices and contributed to degradation. * Livestock follows deforestation where ranching pushes into the remaining RAINFOREST FRONTIERS. This is the case in Central and South America, and, to a very limited extent, in Central Africa and South-East Asia. Misguided policies, where the expedient use of ranching to obtain land titles and fiscal incentives encouraged extensive grazing and large-scale clearance of forest. Significant biodiversity losses are associated with such deforestation. * In northwestern Europe, northeastern USA, and in densely populated areas of Asia animal waste production exceeds the absorptive capacity of land and water. Continuous nutrient import results in over-saturation of nutrients with a series of negative implications on the environment, including biodiversity losses, groundwater contamination, eutrophication and soil pollution. NUTRIENT SURPLUS situations are a result of high animal concentrations caused by human population pressure and livestock density, access to markets, and feed and fertilizer incentive policies, aggravated by lack of regulatory response. * In many highland areas of the tropics, high human population densities are traditionally sustained by complex mixed farming systems. Continuing human population pressures lead to decreasing farm sizes to a point where the system disintegrates. Livestock, often large ruminants, can no longer be maintained on the farm.The nutrient and farm power balance runs into a widening deficit and disinvestment occurs as natural resources degrade. This process has been called INVOLUTION OF MIXED FARMING SYSTEMS (Ruthenberg, 1980) and can be observed in the eastern and central highlands of Africa, Java and Nepal. Here, with the disappearance of the resource-enhancing role of livestock, the environmental balance is disrupted, often resulting in human conflict. * Mainly in the developing countries, SLAUGHTERHOUSES release large amounts of waste into the environment, polluting land and surface waters as well as posing a serious human health risk. Because of weak infrastructure, slaughterhouses often operate in urban settings where the discharge of blood, offal and other waste products is uncontrolled. In these hot spots, livestock interacts mostly with the environment within the confines of a production system. In addition, livestock affect some global commons which are essential parts of our support system. Biodiversity is affected indirectly through concentrate feed requirements and the resulting intensification and expansion of crop agriculture. Related environmental effects may be disguised because livestock production and feed production are geographically separated and only linked through international trade. Furthermore, livestock and livestock waste emit important quantities of greenhouse gases such as methane and nitrous oxide, contributing to the phenomenon of global warming. Livestock also can have beneficial effects on the environment. Grazing livestock can improve species wealth. The integration of livestock into mixed farming systems can improve water infiltration and recharge of ground water reserves. The biggest contribution of livestock to the environment, however, has to be seen in providing the main avenue for sustained intensification of mixed farming systems which is bound to continue even when crop and livestock activities specialize into separate activities as they often do under developed market conditions.his resource-enhancement and resource-sparing effect continues to be underestimated as it is indirect and does not catch people's eyes.Without this environmental function, intensification of agriculture could not have taken place and current populations could not be sustained. Increased attention to livestock-environment interactions is therefore of critical importance in sustaining the world's resource base. These interactions have been the subject of much conjecture, often lacking objectivity and over-simplifying complex relationships. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the scapegoat is an animal. Statements like:"Livestock have been criticised for damaging the environment in a number of ways" (FAO, 1995) and "Livestock have been charged with wholesale devastation of African rangelands and irreversible destruction of soils - desertification" (Winrock International Institute, 1992). It would appear as if livestock themselves go out and decide to destroy or not to destroy our environment; two centuries after the age of enlightenment some people are still in need of a scapegoat, literally. Livestock do not move, produce or reproduce without human intervention. Livestock do not degrade the environment - humans do. As a result of these misconceptions about livestock development, institutions and governments continue to miss opportunities which would permit the livestock sector to make its full contribution to human welfare and economic growth. Such scarcity of informed decision- making has often exacerbated the negative effects. For example, the misperceptions regarding overgrazing in the arid areas led to measures which controlled stocking rates and movements, thereby causing more, rather than less, land degradation. A better understanding of the complementarity of domesticated and wild animals would have led to greater species wealth and improved well-being of local human populations. Finding the balance between increased food production and the preservation of the world's natural resources remains a major challenge. It is clear that food will have to be produced at less cost to the natural resource base than at present. Arguably, the environmental problems associated with livestock production would best be resolved by reducing consumption of their products, as many environmentalists (see, for example, Goodland, 1996) suggest. We believe that chances for lowering the overall demand are close to nil and that the billions of poor people have a right to improve their diet. We acknowledge that consumption of meat and other livestock products is, in some countries and social classes, excessive causing medical problems such as cardiovascular diseases and high blood pressure. For the large majority of people, however, particularly in the developing countries, livestock products remain a desired food for taste and nutritional value. This, as well as the developing needs of the majority of countries need to be respected. LITERATURE CITED
FAO. Alexandratos, N. (Ed.) 1995. World Agriculture: Towards 2010.
Goodland R. 1996. Environmental Sustainability and Eating Better.
Houghton, J.T. et. al (Eds) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
IFPRI. 1995. A 2020 Vision for Food, Agriculture and the Environment.
Ruthenberg, H. 1980. Farming Systems in the Tropics. Third Edition. Sere, C. and Steinfeld, H. (1996) World livestock production systems - Current status, issues and trends. FAO Animal Production and Health Paper No. 127. Rome, Italy. UNFPA - United Nations Fund for Population Activities. 1995. State of World Population. New York. Winrock International Institute 1992. Assessment of Animal Agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa. Morrilton, Arkansas, USA.
******************************************************************* Dear LxEers,
thank you all for taking the time to read through the keynote paper and for your comments. We have looked at the comments received to date 21 March 10.00 UST and would like to reply, in brief. Several issues have been raised which will be dealt with in more detail in the following discussions in the "parallel sessions" or groups. It is clear that when limited to six pages on such a complex issue and looking globally, we had to be rather general. The triangle of LIVESTOCK, ENVIRONMENT and HUMAN NEEDS obviously has some magic. We all tend to lean to one angle. Some attribute sinister motives to those who attack livestock. Others foster "demand management" as the solution to livestock-environment problems. BELINDA WALKER stresses the need to slow population growth and to reduce the demand for livestock products as an important measure to address livestock- environment imbalances. Population growth, urbanization and increasing incomes all contribute to the surge in demand for livestock products. Demand management is certainly an option: for the developed countries per caput consumption can be regarded excessive and it is, indeed, in decline as a reaction to health concerns. In the developed countries, per caput consumption will still increase for many years to come but population is slowing down, at least in percentage terms.
BRENT AUVERMANN disagrees with our blame on those who blame livestock rather than people. We are aware that phrases like "livestock cause " may be shorthand for the obvious to many. But it is still helpful to point to sloppy language where it may lead to sloppy thinking. We very much enjoyed SIMON ANDERSON's comments on the dialectical nature of the process of livestock environment interaction and related human expectations. He also links environmental degradation to the livelihood status of those using the environment, and concludes that the trade-off between increased livestock productivity and (negative) environmental impact needs to be optimized. Fortunately, there are not always such trade-offs as there are a number of win-win situations, where environmental benefits and productivity increases (or individual economic benefits) coincide. Examples, which will be described later are nutrient recycling in the mixed farming system, the potential synergies between wild life and livestock and livestock and plant bio-diversity, and waste conversion into energy . In that regard SMITH calls for a paradigm shift, and we fully agree: acknowledging that much of the degradation attributed to livestock can be restored by livestock - if properly managed. DON NICOL rightly stresses the importance of minerals in livestock products, such as iron and zinc, for human nutrition. We also agree with his statement that "it is the diet that is unhealthy (in developed countries) not the livestock product. With regard to the overgrazing issue, ALEX SCHUMACHER is right in saying that Northern Asia (Mongolia and Inner Mongolia) too have severe problems of land degradation. Other areas include Central Asia and parts of the Near East. While we have talked about the limited potential of grazing systems to contribute to the surging demand in the global context, RAUL VERA provides evidence that, in Latin America, there is still lot's of scope for increasing production and technologies are being applied that successfully intensify those systems (Argentina, Uruguay and Southern Brazil). A similar point is made by RONALD NIGH who states that for tropical areas of Mexico, it would be possible to increase livestock production while reducing a the area currently devoted to pasture. We do not quite agree with Alex Schumachers statement that "an important social factor... in N. Asia as it is with Sub-Saharan, is the maintenance of large herds as indicators of wealth and social status rather than for purely commercial purposes." In fact, there is ample evidence that while wealth and status are important motives for keeping animals this is in line with economic objectives. This means that animals of low productivity are held where the costs for this are low, typically in areas where communal range provides feed of no costs to the individual. The same issue is raised by LAWRENCE TAWAH, stressing the role of land tenure systems in this regard. We would like to point to the summary paper on grazing systems to be released next week where these issues will be discussed in more detail. The important comments made by MICHEL BIGRAS-POULIN and JOHANN HESSE on the complex nature of interactions between grazing livestock and eco-systems as well as on our perception of related degradation problems are well taken. Particularly important is the proposed analysis of why certain technologies known to halt degradation or to improve the environment have found little adoption in many countries. DAN BROCKINGTON'S comments, mainly referring to pastoralists in semi-arid Africa, question whether degradation is occurring at all, what livestock's role is in that process and how outside forces interfer. We have, in our study dealt with these issues, and will present the findings in the summary paper on grazing systems to be released next week. We certainly agree with the resilience of these arid lands. To answer your question about livestock being squeezed into degradation (perhaps not the most fortunate language) we refer to outside forces, such as policies, settlements, infrastructure development, etc. that interfere with opportunistic management of pastoral resources under highly variable conditions (arid grazing lands). This point is also made by MOHAMED SALEEM who stresses the ecological and economic rationale of traditional land use of grazing lands as part of a "coherent, adaptive response". Lawrence Tawah states that "the issue of intensification of livestock production and its consequences can only partially be attributed to livestock production in the developing world" and that "the predominant production systems in sub-Saharan Africa is pastoral". During the study we had to correct our own perception on the proportions of pastoral systems, mixed crop livestock systems and what we now call "industrial" production. As part of the study we conducted an analysis of world livestock production systems, trying to quantify the three major groups and even further sub-divisions by agro-ecological zones. In terms of meat production, land-based systems still provide a large share of the total output; 89 percent of the beef, 61 percent of the pork, and 20 percent of the poultry meat, representing about 60 percent of the total meat production. Among the land-based production systems, the mixed farming systems contribute about 90 percent of the meat production. Production based on pure grazing systems is therefore relatively unimportant, and grows also at the lowest rate. Pastoral systems production grows at 1 percent, mixed farming at 3 and industrial production at more than 7 percent. It is clear that the balance is changing in sub-Saharan Africa too and that intensification is on its way, although in certain areas horizontal expansion may still be an option. In response to DARWIN MURRELL's question, the expansion of production into more humid areas is not so much the result of disease control but of population pressure which is progressively destroying the habitat of the tse-tse as the carrier of the African Animal Trypanosomiasis. Moving to MIXED FARMING SYSTEMS, WILLIAM LAZARUS asks for clarification on the section of the keynote paper which addresses "the biggest contribution of livestock to the environment to be seen in providing the main avenue for sustained intensification of mixed farming systems". First of all, mixed farming systems are defined over the integration of crop and livestock activities on the same farm, one providing inputs to the other. What we mean is that if livestock's input functions (manure, draught) had to be substituted by other means (inorganic fertilizer, tractors) this would be at high environmental costs and it would even be, in some cases, impossible. We would even go as far as saying that, historically, agricultural intensification and hence, human development, would not have taken place were it not for this millennia-old association of humans, animals and crops. ASLAM REVEZ UMRANI stresses the need to develop different strategies for different stages of development and different agro-ecological settings. This is obvious, as resource use, demand, and technological opportunities differ. Umrani calls for low input extensive farming for livestock production for the temperate zones. The counter-argument would be that much more land would be required to meet current demand, which again would limit the approach to situations where there is over-production or it would result in even greater environmental damage. Umrani makes a number of valuable suggestions on straw treatment and remote sensing which will be discussed in the working groups starting next week. We are particularly looking forward to the discussion on opportunistic management of pastoral resources. RONALD NIGH also calls for a return to "cows on pasture", to reduce the dependence on feed crops, especially those produced by energy and chemical-intensive methods." The question, however, arises, whether current and future production levels can be sustained by cows on pasture, as these are in continuous decline as providers of animal protein. ROBERTO LANGSTROTH, too, suggests that "the cow is better than the plow" in terms of biodiversity and that developing countries need to develop policies that rationalize land use. FINDLAY PATE disagrees with the emphasis given to greenhouse gases. We would very much like to leave this discussion to the group dealing with cross-sectional issues where this can be discussed in more detail. While "the world's animal population has changed little over time" (Findlay Pate) the share of domesticated animals is now larger than that of wildlife and, thus, has become anthopogenic. This needs to be acknowledged and addressed (without assisting "radical movements for sinister purposes"), and there are technologies to reduce emissions per animal product. THOMAS SAUER and MICHAEL UNDI had an exchange on the emissions of methane by livestock. According to background work conducted for the multi-donor study led by MICHAEL GIBBS (IFC) the total methane emissions by livestock amount to 86.6 million tons, of which more than 80 percent (74.5 million tons) comes from digestive fermentation, mainly in ruminants. We are looking forward to an inspired discussion in the working groups.
Henning Steinfeld
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