Environmental Issues
in Livestock Development

Demand for livestock products, largely meat, milk and eggs is increasing globally. As a result, the world's livestock sector is also growing. This increase puts pressures on the global natural resource base on which the livestock sector ultimately depends. As demand continues to grow, ways need to be found by which livestock production can still be increased without damaging the environment which supports that production.

Changing Demands for Livestock Products Changed Pressures on the Livestock Sector Environmental Impacts Development Options References and Further Reading

Changing Demands for Livestock Products

The consumption of livestock products is growing at a faster rate than the increase in world population. Increasing availability of disposable income, particularly in the developing countries, means that more people can afford the high-value protein that livestock products offer and which are traditionally seen by society as desirable food items. Increasingly these people are living in towns and cities and over 80% of the world's population growth occurs in the cities of the developing countries. In general, urban populations consume more animal products than those based in rural areas.

The increasing demand for livestock products is an important driving force resulting in changing pressures within the livestock sector. These modified pressures induce responses by the livestock sector and a number of general changes or shifts in state can be observed:

Changed functions and/or species:

• From non-food to food functions.
• From multi-purpose to single purpose livestock production
  (e.g. utility chickens to broiler hens) .
• From ruminant to non-ruminants
  (e.g. moves towards pigs and poultry).

Geographical shifts:

• From marginal areas to humid and sub-humid zones.
• From rural areas to urban areas.

Structural and technological shifts:

• From resource-driven to demand-driven livestock production.
• From small scale to large scale (economies of scale and industrial production).
• From horizontal to vertical integration.
• From low input to high input livestock production.

 

About one quarter of the world's total land area is used for grazing livestock. In addition, about one fifth of the world's arable land is used for growing cereals for livestock feed. Livestock production is the world's largest land user and may soon be its most important agricultural activity in terms of economic output. This change is accompanied by a large number of potential environmental threats. However, it is not the animals who are the culprits. Livestock do not destroy the environment, people do.

Individual livestock owners, particularly in developing countries have in many cases very few options. It is up to policy makers to ensure that the options available to poor livestock keepers, and to the industrial scale livestock keepers, are environmentally sound. Uninformed policies are responsible for environmental degradation. The following list provides examples where livestock and environment interactions are particularly critical:

	Overgrazing and degradation of grazing lands	This occurs mainly in the zones between grazing areas and cropping areas. The pure grazing areas of the arid and semi-arid zones show a much greater potential for resilience than expected and are less vulnerable to permanent degradation than the grazing lands which are accessed both by pastoralists as well as livestock keeping crop farmers.
	Deforestation	Deforestation for livestock purposes is relevant mainly in Latin America. The causes are complex and are often the result of policy distortion and less by livestock production in the narrow sense. Deforestation in Asia and Africa is mainly due to expansion of cropping area and plantation crops.
	Wildlife and livestock interactions.	Often, in particular in Africa, livestock and wildlife are grazing the same lands and a large part of wildlife is living outside the protected areas. The traditional park idea without livestock inside the parks is unimaginative. This and the non-sharing of profits from tourism with the local population leads to conflicts.
	Upsetting the balance between crops and livestock.	The balance between crops and livestock can easily be upset, leading to land degradation. In many highland areas of the tropics, high human population densities have been sustained by complex farming systems. As each generation needs land, farm sizes become smaller and smaller until a point is reached where the system collapses.
	Soil and water pollution	Soil and water pollution because of excess nutrients in industrial livestock production. Industrial production can create enormous pollution problems because it brings in large quantities of nutrients in form of concentrate feed and then has to dispose of the manure to nearby land which quickly becomes saturated. As a result, land and groundwater are polluted.
	Climate Change	Greenhouse gases contributing to global warming. Greenhouse gases, of which about 5–10 percent are produced by livestock and livestock waste, contribute to global warming.
	Nutrient imbalances	Feed production areas are not directly linked with livestock feed use, leading to a transfer of nutrients from feed producing areas to areas with high livestock concentration. On the one hand there is a nutrient deficit (this can be thought of a mining the nutrients) and on the other hand there is nutrient surplus - which leads to pollution.
	Reduction of domestic animal diversity	Industrial livestock production in particular and also livestock production in mixed systems use a very limited range of animal breeds. This has already led to the extinction of some local livestock breeds and the genetic erosion of others. Specific genetically determined capacities in local breeds to cope with the climatic, nutritional and disease challenge may already have been lost.
	Disease transmission	The widespread use of antibiotics, not only to prevent or cure diseases but also to promote animal growth, leads to the development of resistant bacteria and germs and may jeopardize the possibilities to use antibiotics to cure infections in humans. This is a particular risk in intensive, industrial systems of animal production. Also new diseases, such as BSE, and the increasing salmonella infections of food are mainly linked to industrial systems.

Development Options

A multi-donor initiative (LEAD) has identified a number of major potentials to improve the situation exist in the following areas of intervention:

• Provision and dissemination of of up-to-date information on livestock and environment interactions.
  
• Development of livestock production technologies which, by satisfy the demand for livestock products, whilst at the same time focus on livestock and environment interactions.
  
• The scope for increasing livestock production, while simultaneously reducing the use of natural resources per unit of products, is still considerable and has to be further exploited. Here research and development will have to play a major role and it will be essential to improve the sharing of technology innovation among all concerned

FAO (1998). Livestock and the Environment. Meeting the Challenge. Rome.

Fleischhauer, E., Bayer, W. and Von. Lossau, A. Assessing and Monitoring Environmental Impact and Sustainability of Animal Production. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Livestock and the Environment held in Ede/Wageningen, the Netherlands 16 - 20 June 1997, organized by World Bank Food and Agriculture Organization International Agricultural Centre.