Sustainable
Livestock –
Integrated
Approaches for
Multiple Benefits
Henning Steinfeld, FAO
TropAg2017 Conference
Brisbane, 20-22 November 2017

Growing tension between human demands and declining environment
Human activities have become the main driver of environmental change
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1950 2010 2050
Millionpersons

Bio-physical dimension
• Energy capture, photosynthesis, fuels (fossil, biofuels)
• 65,000 TW reaches the hydrosphere, but less than 1% is converted to Net Primary Productivity
• The food sector currently accounts for 30% of the world’s total energy consumption (FAO, 2011)
• Livestock energy conversion typically ranges from 1.0 to 4.3 MJ of fossil fuel per MJ of animal
product (Giampietro, 2002)
• Land use
• Livestock systems occupy 29% of the global surface area
• 3.3 billion hectares for rangelands; 25% of total land area
• Biodiversity
• Livestock have direct impacts on biodiversity through trampling, grazing, and defecation, the larger
indirect impacts - through deforestation, GHG emissions, feed trading, and water pollution (Reid et
al, 2009)
• Potential to deliver benefits at multiple levels for biodiversity: land restoration, animal genetic resource
preservation, biodiversity conservation
• Water
• About 70% (2769 km3/year) of fresh water is used for agriculture (AQUASTAT, 2016)
• Water use for livestock represents 31% of the total agriculture water use (de Fraiture et al., 2007)

• Nutrients
• Livestock is an important source of soil nutrients, where reliance on fertilizer is low, like in Sub- Saharan Africa
(Goulding et al., 2008; Rufino et all., 2006). Globally 23% nitrogen for crop production comes from manure.
• Nutrient use efficiency (NUE) for Nitrogen ranges from 27-48% for the livestock supply chain in Europe (Uwizeye et
al., 2016), and from 46-121% in crop-livestock systems in Africa (Rufino et al., 2006)
• Climate change
• Livestock supply chains emitted 8.1 gigatonnes CO2-eq in 2010 (GLEAM 2007 Version 2.0)
• Emission intensities vary greatly among species and production systems (GLEAM 2007 Version 2.0)
• Livestock sector significantly impacted by climate change/variability
• Diseases
• More than 70% of human and emerging infectious diseases derive from animals
• Burden of zoonotic diseases falls mainly on the poor: 2.4B cases of illness and 2.2M of deaths / year
• Inappropriate use of AM in animals production and health contributes to the rising trends in AMR of human
infections
• Biomass production
• Humans appropriate 25% of the total net primary production (HANPP) (Krausmann et al., 2013)
• Agriculture represents 84–86% of total appropriation of HANNP, with 42–46% on cropland and 29–33% on grazing
land (Krausmann et al., 2013).
Bio-physical dimension

Socio-economic dimension
• Food and Nutrition
• Livestock products contribute 17% to global calorie consumption and 33% to protein
consumption globally
• Consumption of animal source foods provides high energy and quality diet,
micronutrients and improves nutrition, immune competence, physical cognitive
development and reduces stunting and death
• Overconsumption of animal source foods may contribute to non-communicable
disease
• Value, income and employment
• Agriculture (primary production) contributes $5.2 trillion or 6% to world’s GDP
• Livestock global asset is valued at least $3.1 trillion
• Employs at least 1.3 billion people globally and directly support the livelihoods of 750
million poor smallholder farmers (Perry and Sones, 2007; Thornton et al., 2006)

Socio-economic dimension
• Rural growth and linkages, political stability
• Livestock sector has vertical and horizontal multiplier effects boosting economic
growth in both the agricultural sector and the rest of the economy (Acosta &
Barrantes, 2017)
• Valuable “hanging in” strategy for rural households to increase their level of
resilience to cope with shocks
• Investments in the sector can act as an engine of stabilization and recovery for
people living in fragile contexts
• Important asset which remains both productive and moveable in case of conflicts
• Environmental services and cultural values
• Directly linked to regulating and supporting environmental services due to direct
interaction with land, vegetation and soil and habitat
• Preservation of traditional landscape
• Livestock as part of culture and social traditions
• Key role in identity construction of individuals, clans, and ethnic groups

Classical Production Factors
Natural resources
Raw materials for
production
Agriculture
workforce
Capital stocks

Global map of agricultural population density
Global map of GDP per agricultural person
Global map of land for livestock-based agriculture – number of livestock
units per agricultural person
Livestock systems
characterization based
on classical production
factors

Livestock systems characterization
Land (green) is proxied by the number of livestock units (LU) per agricultural person; labour (blue) by agricultural
population density and capital (red) by GDP per agricultural person

 Each system has its own
particularities – benefits,
trade-offs, externalities
 All systems can be improved
(in terms of sustainability,
efficiency, human needs &
benefits, adaptation) while
protecting natural resources

Balancing policy objectives
Food safety
Environment
Livelihoods
Food security
extensive labour capital
Externalities, synergies and
trade-offs
Examples:
 Resources have value but are
often not priced
 Crop-livestock integration and the
recycling of carbon and nutrients
 CO2 emissions vs. economic
growth; maximum productivity vs.
AMR, etc

Guiding principles for
Sustainable Livestock
 Extensive: Links to markets,
payment for environmental services,
protection and inclusion of traditional
& pastoralists users
 Labour: Close efficiency gap,
promote diversification and create
alternative employment
 Capital: Pricing of antibiotic use and
GHG emissions, waste management

An integrated approach to analyze the externalities,
synergies and trade-offs
‘optimizing’ = multiple benefits
Farmer
Branding and
marketing
Shipping and
distribution
Processing
Manufacturing
Services
Commodityflow
Flowofvalue
Life-cycle analysis Value chain analysis One Health
‘Molecules’ ‘Money’ ‘Microbes’

Key messages
 Livestock at the interface of common
pool resources
 Livestock are produced under very
diverse circumstances, solutions for
sustainability need to be equally
diverse
 Policies should take account of very
different livestock trajectories and the
varying trade-offs, incentives
 Diverse factors – money, molecules
and microbes – need to be included in
designing development interventions
at the design phase