Increased attention to livestock-environment interactions is of critical importance in sustaining the world's resource base. Finding the balance between increased food production and the preservation of the world's natural resources remains a major challenge. The location or activity where livestock interaction with the environment is considered adverse to the sustainability of an ecosystem or human activities relying on it, is defined as a hotspot. Focusing on the livestock-associated environmental problems, some LEAD Global Livestock and Environment Hotspots stand out: Wildlife/Biodiversity, Deforestation, Involution of farming systems, Industrial pollution, Global environmental effects, Land degradation.

Wildlife/Biodiversity

Particularly in Africa and Central Asia, livestock often share grazing lands and habitat with wild ungulates and other large mammals.
Although the people in such areas have had to absorb the damage caused by wild animals through disease transmission, predator losses and crop destruction, they have, generally, not shared in the benefits reaped from wildlife conservation through tourism or trophy hunting.

What can be done?

There is growing recognition that, if carefully managed, harmonious co-existence between wildlife and livestock is possible. In some areas, local management of wildlife, in combination with livestock production, is already increasing the income of pastoralists and ranchers as well as biodiversity. Most livestock-wildlife combinations require a reduction of 20 percent of the cattle stocking rate in order to create a niche for most wildlife species to prosper. This is a classic example of how both livestock owners and the environment can benefit.

In collaboration with the African Wildlife Foundation, the Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement and the International Livestock Research Institute, LEAD is guiding an initiative in Sub-Saharan Africa with that aims to develop further strategies to profitably integrate livestock production and wildlife in communal lands adjacent to protected areas.

Deforestation

Since 1950, more than 200 million hectares of rainforest have been lost. In many cases, livestock have been indicated as an important reason for these developments, especially in Latin America. In the past, deforestation was often encouraged by land registration and ownership policies, credit and tax breaks that favoured ranch development and land speculation schemes. Many of these inappropriate incentives have now been removed. The main causes now are the demand for food of a growing population and, possibly the financial attraction of ranching when soil fertility has been depleted by crop production following logging.

What can be done?

Land use intensification, through a combination of fiscal incentives and the introduction of economically viable technologies will be a main strategy for the rehabilitation of degraded areas and the slowing down of deforestation.

LEAD has developed a project with the Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza (CATIE), the Nitlapan Institute for Research and Development of the University of Central America (Nicaragua) and the Centre for Research on Sustainable Agricultural Production Systems (Colombia) that rehabilitates degraded pastures through the development of more intensive silvopastoral systems thus providing local social and economic benefits as well as global environmental gain through carbon sequestration and the conservation of biodiversity.

Involution of farming systems

Most farming in the world is carried out in mixed crop-livestock systems that cover about 2.5 billion hectares of land. Historically, mixed crop-livestock systems have been the basis for agricultural intensification and increased production. In these systems, livestock not only provide farmers with the capacity to convert plant biomass into high value foods, draught power and a form of asset accumulation, but they also provide a mechanism to import and concentrate nutrients, which is key to the sustainability and intensification of these smallholder farming systems. Mixed farming offers the best opportunity for intensifying agricultural production without causing environmental harm.
Less often recognized are the benefits to biodiversity of more varied land use in crop - livestock systems. Fodder trees, grass strips and other landscape features provide a diversity of habitats for many kinds of wildlife including micro-fauna and flora.

The closer integration of crops and livestock in smallholder farming systems has been widely advocated as an appropriate means to improve their sustainability. As each generation needs land, however, farm sizes reduce until a point is reached when the system collapses. Livestock, often large-ruminants, can no longer be maintained on the farm, thus depriving the farming household of draught power and the soil of available nutrients. Furthermore, as natural resources become ever more degraded and poverty increases, human tensions develop.

What can be done?

In these systems progress can be made by increasing access to outside inputs, such as animal feed and fertilizer, to maintain the nutrient balance. The integration of crop and livestock can be encouraged with the removal of subsidies on feed, fertilizer and mechanization as this would result in better use of homegrown feed, animal draught and manure. Even in developed countries, where mixed farming is more intensive and therefore more likely to be suffering from a surplus than a shortage of nutrients, removal of subsidies on feed and fertilizer would help to reduce damage to the environment.

Industrial pollution

Industrial production of pork, poultry, beef and mutton is growing faster than any other livestock production system. More than half the world's pork and poultry, one-tenth of its beef and mutton and more than two-thirds of its egg supply currently come from industrial production. Developed nations dominate the intensive pig and poultry industries, but in recent years there has been a trend towards more large-scale, industrial production units in developing countries as well.

Industrial production brings in large quantities of nutrients in the form of concentrate feed. This can create serious land and groundwater pollution problems because the resultant manure is often disposed of on nearby land. Key forces encouraging this trend are subsidized concentrate feed, poor infrastructure and weak regulations. Where roads are inadequate and transport costs high, industrial units are usually located close to urban centres. This has happened in Asia, for example, where industrial livestock production has developed very quickly and where a weak regulatory structure compounds the risks to human health, especially those associated with inadequately regulated slaughterhouses and other processing industries.

What can be done?

Improvements in transport will make it possible to return nutrients to the land from which they were taken. It is likely that economic realities will force livestock production to specialize in order to make use of efficient technologies. However, urban livestock production systems, which are mushrooming in fast developing nations, will not be sustainable in the long run, and livestock production needs to be brought back to rural areas. Institutional and infrastructure development, together with a higher appreciation of environmental values vis-à-vis food commodities, will mean that agriculture in the future will look like a large mixed farm composed of specialized enterprises.

In collaboration with the Research Centre for Rural Economy (China); Department of Livestock Development and the Faculty of Agriculture of Kasetsart University (Thailand); the University of Agriculture and Forestry (Vietnam); the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and the Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Forestales, Agrícolas y Pecuarias (Mexico); LEAD is coordinating a number of initiatives in East and Southeast Asia and Latin America. These initiatives are evaluating different technologies and policy options, based on the "polluter pays, provider gets" principle, to integrate crop and livestock activities in an area-wide context to correct nutrient balances without jeopardizing efficient production.

Global environmental effects

Greenhouse gases: livestock and livestock waste produce gases. Some are local, such as ammonia, whereas others, such as carbon-dioxide, methane and nitrous oxides, affect the world's atmosphere by contributing to global warming. Livestock's contribution to that effect can be estimated at between 5 and 10 percent.

What can be done?

Limiting the emission of greenhouse gases, particularly nitrous oxides and methane, is a major concern but technical solutions are available. For example, methane can be recovered from lagoons and used directly as fuel or to generate electricity. The trend to intensive production of pigs and poultry has changed the ration of monogastrics to ruminants. This has helped to keep livestock emissions of greenhouse gases steady because unlike ruminants, pigs and poultry do not emit significant amounts of methane as part of the digestion as ruminants do. Virtually all efforts that improve animal productivity will reduce methane emissions. Thus, livestock, emissions are stagnating despite a strong overall increase in production. The challenge will be to ensure that the rapid expansion of intensive production in developing countries does not result in damaging pollution. As the West has found to its cost, once present this is very difficult to deal with.

LEAD is working with the US Environment Protection Agency, the Colorado State University and the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE) in order to develop simple, interactive computer-based systems to support greenhouse gases mitigation policy decisions related to mixed agricultural and livestock systems.

Land degradation

For an estimated 200 million people, grazing livestock are the only possible source of livelihood. Grazing livestock allow the conversion of low quality biomass into high quality products and the exploitation of common-property resources for private gain. Rangelands are dynamic and highly resilient, provided that the number of people and animals that the land supports remains in balance with the environment.

Many of the world's grazing areas are threatened with degradation, especially in the semi-arid and sub-humid zones. Increased population pressure and policies introduced for social or economic reasons that favour cropping, but whose environmental impact has either been ignored or not recognized, has led to much of the best pasture being turned over to crops. Not only is the available grazing area reduced by this, but it also restricts animal movement between grazing lands, an essential strategy used by pastoralists to optimize resource use. Lack of ownership rights to grazing lands often prevents individual investments in land improvement. This has been exacerbated by the replacement of customary land use practices by 'free for all' access. What was once sustainable balance between livestock and the environment has been seriously disturbed.

What can be done?

To encourage stewardship of resources, the people that depend on the land for their livelihood must have a say in, and more responsibility for, its management. In order to have a significant impact, and to stimulate a quicker turn-over of animals, measures must also be adopted that: improve marketing and institutions for drought preparedness, establish realistic prices for grazing rights, water and livestock services; and, where appropriate, ensure rights to grazing and water resources.

LEAD is actively testing such concepts in a number of dryland areas of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia in collaboration with the Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement, The Centre de Suivi Ecologique and the Institut Senegalais de Recherches Agricoles.