1.
Improving environmental sustainability of
livestock systems in the developing world
Agri4D annual conference on agricultural research for development
Uppsala, Sweden, 25−26 September 2013
Jimmy Smith, ILRI Director General

2.
Key messages
• Smallholder livestock systems can help us meet
the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG),
including those related to:
– Reducing environmental harms
– Exploiting environmental opportunities
• Different trajectories of livestock systems in
developing countries are opportunities for:
- Improving natural resource use efficiency
- Restoring value to grasslands
- Reducing harmful livestock waste

3.
Livestock and the sustainable development goals

4.
Sustainable Development Goals
01 End poverty
02 Empower girls and women and achieve gender equity
03 Provide quality education and lifelong learning
04 Ensure healthy lives
05 Ensure food security and good nutrition
06 Achieve universal access to water and sanitation
07 Secure sustainable energy
08 Create jobs, sustainable livelihoods and equitable growth
09 Manage natural resource assets sustainably
10 Ensure good governance and effective institutions
11 Ensure stable and peaceful societies
12 Create a global enabling environment & catalyze long term finance

5.
Livestock and the Sustainable Development Goals
01 End poverty 
02 Empower girls and women and achieve gender equity 
03 Provide quality education and lifelong learning
04 Ensure healthy lives 
05 Ensure food security and good nutrition 
06 Achieve universal access to water and sanitation []
07 Secure sustainable energy []
08 Create jobs, sustainable livelihoods and equitable growth 
09 Manage natural resource assets sustainably 
10 Ensure good governance and effective institutions
11 Ensure stable and peaceful societies
12 Create a global enabling environment & catalyze long term finance

6.
Reduce poverty with livestock: SDG01
• 1 billion people rely on livestock for their livelihoods
• Livestock give poor households reliable cash income
• Livestock demand is highest in developing countries
- Over 50% increase in demand for milk, meat, eggs
in the next three decades in developing countries

7.
Empower women with livestock: SDG02
• Women undertake up to 70% of agricultural work
in many parts of the world
• Almost two-thirds of the world’s 1 billion
poor livestock keepers are rural women
• In the Gambia:
52% of sheep owners,
67% of goat owners, are women
• In Chiapas, Mexico:
sheep husbandry is women’s business
• In Afghanistan:
traditional poultry raising is carried out entirely by women

8.
Ensure healthy lives with livestock: SDG04
• Animal-source foods (meat, milk, eggs)
present food safety risks
• 60% of human infectious diseases and 75%
of other emerging diseases (e.g., bird flu),
are ‘zoonotic’ (come from animals)
• ‘Top 13′ zoonoses each year kill 2.2 million
people and make 2.4 billion people ill
• We need better disease surveillance, animal
husbandry and marketing; risk-rather than
rule-based health controls; pro-poor policies.

9.
Ensure food/nutrition security with livestock: SDG05
• Milk, meat, eggs provide essential
protein, energy, micronutrients
• Consumption of even small
amounts of animal-source foods:
- combats under-nutrition
- improves cognitive development
- increases physical growth
• Developing countries lead
in global food production
- 500 million smallholders support
more than 2 billion people
- smallholder crop-livestock systems
produce about 50% of global food
Conway 2012; Herrero et al. in press

10.
Enable sustainable livelihoods with livestock: SDG06
• Livestock make cropping possible,
and sustain it over the longer term
• Smallholder producers are competitive:
More than 85% of Kenyan milk is
produced by 1 million smallholders
• Livestock provide means for women to
earn incomes, for households to save and
build assets, for farmers to plough their land

11.
Manage natural resources with livestock: SDG07
• Livestock are a main user of land and source of GHGs
• Importance of manure: 23% of nitrogen for
crop production comes from manure
• Crop residues contribute up to 70% of the diets
of ruminant animals in developing countries
• Grass still makes up 50% of all the biomass
consumed by the world’s livestock
• We can improve livestock efficiencies
in poor countries without moving
to industrial grain-fed systems

12.
Livestock and the environment

13.
Smallholder livestock keepers and the environment
Livestock as
CAUSE?
Livestock as
SOLUTION?
Livestock as
VICTIM?

14.
Global greenhouse gas efficiency
per kilogram of animal protein produced
Large livestock production inefficiencies
in the developing world present an opportunity
Herrero et al PNAS (in press)

15.
Growth scenarios for the livestock sector
Strong growth Fragile growth High growth
with externalities

16.
Waste to worth
Different trajectories demand
different environmental solutions
Strong growth
Fragile growth
High growth
Restoring value to
grassland
Closing the
efficiency gap

17.
Closing the efficiency gap

18.
Production efficiency – developed countries
Source: Capper et al., 2009
Feed, breed,
health =
4 fold milk
increase

19.
Possible GHG opportunities
• Develop capacity for quantifying
GHG emissions from agricultural sources
• Develop ILRI into a ‘competence centre‘
for GHG measurements in Africa
• Build network of GHG labs across Africa and
elsewhere to allow developing countries
to obtain country-specific information
about their agricultural GHG emissions
• Identify pro-poor mitigation options for
smallholder agriculture in the developing world

20.
Developing countries can mitigate GHG emissions
without moving to industrial grain-fed systems:
e.g., through improved efficiencies
(e.g., better feeds and feeding systems)
Feed opportunities

21.
Water opportunities
Feed, water and
livestock
management;
integrated crop-
livestock systems
0
0.05
0.1
0.15
0.2
0.25
0.3
0.35
local breed
(natural
pasture)
cross bred
(natural
pasture)
local breed
(sorghum)
cross bred
(sorghum)
livestock water productivity $/m3 (for milk)

22.
Restoring value to grasslands

23.
Potential carbon sequestration by 2040
Source: adapted from:
Thornton and Herrero, PNAS (2010)

24.
Potential carbon sequestration (Tg C/yr) in global
rangelands by grazing severity and continent
Light Moderate Strong Extreme Total
Africa
Australia/Pa
cific
Eurasia
North
America
South
America
Total
1.9
4.5
0.8
0
6.1
13.3
8.6
-0.1
3.2
1.6
11.3
24.4
6.1
0.0
0.6
0.7
7.4
0.1
0.3
0.4
16.7
4.4
4.3
2.2
18.1
45.7
Moderate grazing
improves carbon storage
Source: Conant and Paustian 2002

25.
Pay livestock keepers for wildlife conservation
Payments for wildlife conservation can provide pastoral communities
with income to pay for livestock vaccines, food and school fees

26.
Pay livestock keepers for environmental services
Payments for environmental services may help developing countries
‘green’ their livestock sectors through better climate regulation,
watershed management and biodiversity conservation

27.
Waste to worth

28.
Manure problems/management
Manure problems
• Livestock disconnected from land in intensive systems
• Concentrated livestock produces local nutrient overloads
• Handling manure is difficult
• Anaerobic digestion can have trade-offs
Manure management
• Technical solutions are available but need to be tailored
• Better integration of livestock-crop farming
• Improved composting
• Recovering nutrients and other valuables
• Biogas production (fermentation)
• Manure refinery (bio-enzymes)

29.
Opportunities for manure management
• Manage manure and
nutrient cycling to maximize
the use of nutrients and
capture of methane
• Make and support policy
and institutional changes
that promote responsible
waste management
• Improve breeds to reduce
GHG emissions from manure
Source: Butterbach-Bahl, 2012

30.
Key messages
• Smallholder livestock systems can help us meet
the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG),
including those related to:
– Reducing environmental harms
– Exploiting environmental opportunities
• Different trajectories of livestock systems in
developing countries are opportunities for:
- Improving natural resource use efficiency
- Restoring value to grasslands
- Reducing harmful livestock waste

31.
Conclusions
Opportunities
to address
environmental issues
through research
livestock development
are huge − and as yet
largely untapped