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Sustainable global animal agriculture: Building on India’s successes

  1. Sustainable global animal agriculture: Building on India’s successes Jimmy Smith ILRI Director General National Dairy Research Institute 14th Convocation Karnal, India 5 March 2016
  2. Animal agriculture matters globally
  3. Demand for milk, meat and eggs is rising globally
  4. Developing countries are where all the action is
  5. Livestock matters are big opportunities
  6. India is responsive to those changing opportunities
  7. India is a world leader in livestock development
  8. India responded to the livestock revolution
  9. India responded with research excellence
  10. India built an exemplary smallholder dairy sector
  11. India leads the world in milk and meat production
  12. India’s smallholder livestock sector still rules
  13. India’s livestock sector is making a positive transition
  14. More that remains to be done
  15. Increase India’s livestock efficiencies
  16. Create jobs for millions of youth
  17. Balance Indian diets
  18. Enroll youth as livestock entrepreneurs
  19. Empower India’s women
  20. Protect India’s natural resources
  21. Thank you Images throughout are via Instagram
  22. The presentation has a Creative Commons licence. You are free to re-use or distribute this work, provided credit is given to ILRI. better lives through livestock ilri.org

Editor's Notes

  1. I’m going to remind you of four things today, four things that I hope instill in you pride about the profession you have chose. The first is that global animal agriculture matters.
  2. The latest figures from the UN say the planet is heading towards a population of some 11 billion in the next four decades, after which total population numbers are expected to begin to decline. In all cultures, when people begin earning a little disposable income (just over $2/capita/day), when they move from rural to urban areas, and when they move up in socio-economic terms, they begin to diversify their diets away from coarse grains, buying and consuming greater quantities of energy-dense animal-source foods—milk, meat and eggs. Globally by 2050, the world will need 1 billion tonnes more of dairy and half a billion more tonnes of meat than were needed in 2000. As demand for milk, meat and eggs rises, so does consumer demand for higher quality and safer foods, and eventually for better animal welfare.
  3. As noted, much of the rising demand comes from many, many more people being able to afford just a little more dairy, eggs or meat. But while the rising demand is occurring mostly in developing countries, the average per capita levels of consumption in those countries is likely to remain at less than half the consumption levels in the developed world for many decades to come. Within the next decade, for the first time ever, there will be more people who are classified as ‘middle class’ than any other income group and by 2050 over two-thirds of the earth’s inhabitants will live in cities. India itself will have some 1.3 billion ‘middle class’ citizens by 2030, which will be almost one-quarter of the entire world’s middle class –and these are the people increasing their amounts of milk, eggs and meat in their diets.
  4. The rising demand for livestock products represents big business. The rising demand is opening major economic opportunities for individual livestock producers, processors and marketers, as well as for businesses of all sizes, including multinational companies. Five of the highest value commodities globally are animal-source products (including fish). The total value of this group of five in 2013 was more than US$700 billion.
  5. Over a billion people today earn at least part of their living from the livestock sector. Most of them still produce livestock at small scales. But things are changing fast—faster than our policies can keep up with. Meeting the demand for livestock commodities is affecting foreign exchange, economic growth, environmental sustainability. We’re going to need to develop and use many research-based options to help us meet the demand without sacrificing economic equity or public health, for example, or global food and nutritional security. What will be key to our success is getting our policies and economic incentives right as well as coming up with new technologies.
  6. My third point is that India has taken the lead in smallholder dairy development. India is one of the few countries in the world where a sustainable, equitable response to the demand for animal source foods is already being realized, and indeed recognized globally.
  7. India is outstanding as one of the few regions in the world to heed and respond to predictions of the ‘livestock revolution’. Allow me to review with you just a few of the well-known facts about India pre-eminence in livestock development.
  8. India is outstanding as one of the few regions in the world to heed and respond to predictions of the ‘livestock revolution’. Allow me to review with you just a few of the well-known facts about India pre-eminence in livestock development.
  9. Such opportunities will not happen by chance, though. Fundamental to the transition desired is the underlying productivity of the animals themselves, an area where many of you, and this institute, have an immense amount to offer. Beyond more efficient production of milk, eggs and meat, your skills in economics, extension education and other disciplines so necessary to ensure appropriate market, policy and institutions combine to bring about a transformation to sustainable livestock value chains are invaluable.
  10. Milk production: India is currently the World’s largest producer of milk accounting for 19 percent of global production, and milk production is expected to grow 4.5% annually – more than twice that of the rest of south Asia. In 2012-13 India produced 132 million MT milk. (Production figures: Department of Animal Husbandry, Dairying & Fisheries, Ministry of Agriculture, GoI)
  11. In 2011 Indian livestock contributed about 26% of agricultural GDP and 4% of total GDP valued at INR4,59,051 crore (US$74 billion today). 121 million dairy farms in the world in 2014: 76 million are in India (IFCN database) And this happened with 70% or more of the production of milk and meat in the hands of some 130 million smallholders who raise over 80% of the country’s animals. The livestock sector expected to grow annually at about 5.5 % in India against the total agriculture sector growth of 3.7%. In the next decade global production of milk will increase by more than 125 million tonnes with more than 65 percent of this increase in the Asia Pacific region (with India alone accounting for 45 percent of this growth).
  12. More efficient production Greater market participation New business models Increased food safety in informal markets Mitigation of environmental harms Political and policy support
  13. And there is more that needs to be done.
  14. Tackling challenges to the livestock sector in India includes: Technology Despite the impressive successes, in general yields per animal are low. Part of the increase in production to date may have come from growth in the number of animals. Assessments show thought that there is considerable variation in the magnitude of the yield gap for livestock production in India, meaning that there are real opportunities for improved competitiveness and suggests that some producers may be significantly underperforming their potential. This underperformance should be a priority target for research and development, while controlling costs. Addressing this will be underpinned by the fundamental technology aspects of animal productivity, improved nutrition through better feeds and forages, better access and delivery of improved genetics and addressing animal health challenges. These need to be coupled with improved, viable, input and output markets that work for the small producers. Recognition that ‘private sector’ includes especially small and medium scale actors, especially women and youth means that innovative approaches are needed to leverage and address their roles.
  15. Demand could, for example be addressed through significant importation of animal source foods. A major, but by no means the only implication of this would be on the foreign exchange bill. Already resource hungry and environmentally unfriendly production systems would potentially expand in the source countries, as well as having high environmental impacts through transportation. They’d fail dramatically to address the unemployment challenges, especially amongst the youth in many emerging nations.
  16. Tackling challenges to the livestock sector in India includes: Technology Despite the impressive successes, in general yields per animal are low. Part of the increase in production to date may have come from growth in the number of animals. Assessments show thought that there is considerable variation in the magnitude of the yield gap for livestock production in India, meaning that there are real opportunities for improved competitiveness and suggests that some producers may be significantly underperforming their potential. This underperformance should be a priority target for research and development, while controlling costs. Addressing this will be underpinned by the fundamental technology aspects of animal productivity, improved nutrition through better feeds and forages, better access and delivery of improved genetics and addressing animal health challenges. These need to be coupled with improved, viable, input and output markets that work for the small producers. Recognition that ‘private sector’ includes especially small and medium scale actors, especially women and youth means that innovative approaches are needed to leverage and address their roles.
  17. We need to enroll the next generation in the exciting possibilities of livestock entrepreneurship.
  18. Tackling challenges to the profile of the livestock sector So as you graduates go out there – here is what you must and can do: - Raise the profile of animal agriculture - Get political will and policy support - To do this you need supporting facts and figures that resonate across society, including the sector’s contributions to food security, nutrition, employment and economic growth - You need to be able to make the case that taking advantage of the opportunities presented by the livestock sector will be supported by existing and new solutions ranging from technical, through economic to political and institutional.
  19. Given a considerable portion of the livestock commodities are purchased through informal markets, there are also major opportunities for upgrading informal markets by working directly with informal market actors to increase both their capacity for improved hygiene and food safety. This may include training and certification approaches (which have been successfully implemented in Assam) Important issues not to be ignored for the livestock sector are the potential negative impacts on the environment and health. And the transformation of smallholder production systems offers opportunities to mitigate such harms. Globally dairy farms contribute some 1.4 gigatonnes CO2 eq from the production, processing and transportation of milk. South Asian dairy is estimated to contribute 120 million tonnes CO2 eq per annum. Nevertheless, improving animal performance, and thus productivity as already described presents opportunities for reduced per unit milk (or meat) emissions and is thus an important win-win opportunity (less GHG and more milk or meat) for reduced GHG emissions. GHG emissions can also be mitigated by enhanced use of local feed resources, balancing dairy cow rations for improved digestibility, improved manure management, and anaerobic manure digester technology. FAO estimates that a 38% reduction of the GHG emissions from south Asia dairy is feasible through such combinations of interventions.
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