Livestock in a Changing Landscape, Volume 1

Drivers, Consequences, and Responses

Henning Steinfeld, Harold A. Mooney, Fritz Schneider, Laurie E. Neville, Henning Steinfeld, Harold A. Mooney, Fritz Schneider, Laurie E. Neville, Harold A. Mooney

• Publisher: Island Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781597266710
  9781597266703
• eBook ISBN:
  9781597269261
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Ecology
• Index: Biological Sciences

The rapidly changing nature of animal production systems, especially increasing intensification and globalization, is playing out in complex ways around the world. Over the last century, livestock keeping evolved from a means of harnessing marginal resources to produce items for local consumption to a key component of global food chains. Livestock in a Changing Landscape offers a comprehensive examination of these important and far-reaching trends.

The books are an outgrowth of a collaborative effort involving international nongovernmental organizations including the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UN FAO), the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), the Swiss College of Agriculture (SHL), the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD), and the Scientific Committee for Problems of the Environment (SCOPE).

Volume 1 examines the forces shaping change in livestock production and management; the resulting impacts on landscapes, land use, and social systems; and potential policy and management responses.

Volume 2 explores needs and draws experience from region-specific contexts and detailed case studies. The case studies describe how drivers and consequences of change play out in specific geographical areas, and how public and private responses are shaped and implemented.

Together, the volumes present new, sustainable approaches to the challenges created by fundamental shifts in livestock management and production, and represent an essential resource for policy makers, industry managers, and academics involved with this issue.

Part I

Drivers of Change

Drivers: Perspectives on Change

Fritz Schneider

The world’s population is predicted to increase by 1% annually between 2000 and 2030; increasing from 6.1 billon in 2000 to 8.2 billion in 2030, with a somewhat slower growth rate to 9.0 billion by 2050. During the same time, the demand for livestock products will increase rapidly and disproportionately. This large increase is due to a number of major drivers of change: population increase, demographic shifts (urbanization, a higher percentage of women in the workforce), rising incomes, technology in food chains, and the liberalization of trade and capital. In these contexts, the rapid increase of intensive and confined livestock production and the land and livelihood needs of extensive production systems will be crucial challenges. Furthermore, the livestock sector will emerge as a very significant contributor to environmental problems at every level—from local to global—including land degradation, climate change, air pollution, water shortage, water pollution, and loss of biodiversity.

Part I introduces this two-volume set by putting the drivers of change in global agriculture and livestock systems into context with recent developments. Over decades, global agriculture has met the demand for food and nonfood products, as evidenced by growth in agricultural output and long-term decline in commodity prices. The sharp and sudden increase in commodity prices in late 2007 and 2008 was followed by an equally sudden decrease in early 2009 to the levels of 2007. Critical factors are briefly analyzed, and the interdependence between these massive price shocks (in both directions) and the major drivers of change in global agriculture and livestock systems are illustrated. The spike in food prices has forced millions of people into poverty and hunger, showing that such fluctuations dramatically and negatively influence the weakest sections of the human populations worldwide but mainly in developing countries.

The chapters in Part I on drivers of change offer an in-depth analysis and discussion of major driving forces of identified global regional and local changes and set the stage for Parts II and III on consequences and responses, respectively. In Chapter 1, the most important driving forces are illustrated, and the factors influencing these drivers and their interactions are analyzed. The chapter elaborates on trends in consumption, retail and supply chains, food production systems, and changes in trade patterns, mainly from the macroeconomic perspective.

In Chapter 2, the authors highlight the following facts: the share of all animal products in human diets is continuing to increase in developing countries, income growth is a major driver of increasing consumption, urbanization of populations accelerates consumption, and population growth and structure have impacts on total consumption. Global animal production is shifting from industrial to developing regions, and technological improvements will make livestock production more efficient and effective. The chapter also details health, nutrition, and food safety concerns and describes the trends in international trade of livestock and livestock products.

Chapter 3 provides a comprehensive analysis of drivers such as land, water, fossil fuels, climate, and climate change, illustrating their effects on livestock and feed production, and looks at the competition for these resources. The authors analyze productivity trends and briefly discuss trends and progress in production technology. Policies and institutions as well as the regulatory framework and incentives are important driving factors. The authors put these drivers into perspective in the context of economic, social, and ecological dimensions. The resulting structural changes within the production systems are described and discussed. In conclusion, the authors discuss the intensification of production and processing in order to leverage economies of scale and to strictly apply the “polluter pays, provider gets” principles.

In Chapter 4, the authors suggest that location matters when it comes to environmental, social, and health issues of growing livestock production and consumption. They explain that, on the one hand, land use intensification and clustering of operations is mainly associated with pig, poultry, and dairy production and, on the other hand, expansion and land marginalization are mainly associated with ruminant meat production in specific but large regions. This chapter concludes that the three major factors determining the transition are cheap transport costs, input prices, and shifting relocation of demand for animal products.

1

Drivers of Change in Global Agriculture and Livestock Systems^a

Prabhu Pingali and Ellen McCullough

Main Messages

• Over the past four decades, agricultural growth has contributed to poverty reduction and economic growth in the developing world, while also allowing food supplies to keep pace with growing demand.
• Economic, demographic, and technological factors have been responsible for the transformation of food systems. These drivers include income growth, urbanization and rising female employment, technological change, and the liberalization of trade and capital.
• Due to rising incomes and falling food prices over the last 40 years, consumers’ diets in developing countries have diversified out of staples and toward higher-value foods, such as fruits and vegetables, meat and dairy, and foods consumed in processed forms. This dietary shift has fueled and been fueled by major changes in the food retail sector, most notably the rapid spread of supermarkets throughout the developing world.
• From retailers to wholesalers, processors, and input providers, major organizational changes have taken place throughout the food chain. Growing concentration is apparent at all levels, and a greater emphasis is placed on forward and backward linkages between food chain players.
• With major shifts in the types of products demanded and the terms by which they are procured, small-scale farmers are facing difficulty complying with product standards and meeting buyers’ requirements.
• A major challenge across food systems is to increase farmers’ productivity with respect to factors of production, so that farmers can stay afloat despite rising input costs.
• Global meat production has tripled in the past three decades and should double its present level by 2030. The livestock sector is marked by intensification and a shift from pasture-based ruminant species to feed-dependent monogastric species.
• The global value of traded agricultural goods has grown tenfold since the 1960s, with composition shifting toward higher-value and more-processed products. Many farmers in developing countries have diversified into higher-value crops in response.

Introduction

Over the past four decades, global agriculture has met the demand for food and nonfood products, as evidenced by growth in agricultural output and a long-term decline in commodity prices. Though prices for major commodities spiked sharply between the fall of 2007 and 2008, they returned to their pre-spike levels by early 2009 (FAO 2008a). Some evidence suggests the world may be experiencing a reversal of the sustained decline in commodity prices due to structural shifts in demand, such as rising demand for food and animal feed in emerging economies and for biofuels stock. However, the speed at which prices rose and fell indicate that the acute price crisis cannot be attributed to changing demand alone. Critical factors in the food price spike were supply shocks, especially drought in important export-oriented bread baskets, and commodity speculation, which may have been partially fueled by expectations of demand for biofuels stock. Reactionary policy measures, such as banning exports and grain hoarding, exacerbated the problem. The food crisis forced an estimated 100 million people into poverty and 70 million people into hunger (FAO 2008b, Ivanic and Martin 2008). Low income food deficit countries, such as Haiti, were hit hard by rising food import bills. Over the medium to long term, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) predict that prices for major food commodities will increase some relative to 2000 levels, but much less dramatically than what was experienced in 2008 (OECD/FAO 2008). One important outcome of the food crisis was the unprecedented media and political attention paid to the agricultural sector, which resulted in substantial financial commitments to the sector. The attention faded as prices began to fall and as the financial crisis began to unfold.

Agricultural growth has contributed to improvements in food security, poverty reduction, and overall economic growth in much of the developing world. The success in increasing agricultural production has not, however, been shared uniformly across regions and countries. Many of the least developed countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, and marginal production environments across the developing world continue to experience low or stagnant agricultural productivity, rising food deficits, and high levels of hunger and poverty. Economic development is almost always accompanied by a falling share of agriculture in GDP. Globally, the share of agriculture in total GDP has fallen from 9% in the early 1970s to 4% in recent years (World Bank 2006a). This number is considerably higher in developing countries, although it is also on the decline. Countries can be characterized by the extent to which agricultural growth has contributed to economic growth, and the extent to which the poor people in a given country depend on agriculture for income (World Bank 2008).

Agricultural economies are those in which growth in agriculture is a large contributor to GDP growth and where the majority of poor people are found in rural areas and are largely concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa. Failed states and areas of conflict are almost always marked by low per capita GDP and a high share of agriculture in the economy. Transforming economies are also characterized by rural poverty, but their economic growth no longer results predominantly from agricultural growth. Most transforming economies are found in Asia. Finally, urbanized economies are those in which the majority of poor people live in urban areas and agriculture is not a major source of economic growth. These urbanized economies are concentrated in Latin America. In agricultural economies, agricultural growth is a means of achieving both economic growth and poverty reduction. In transforming economies, agricultural growth is essential for poverty reduction but not necessarily for economic growth. In urbanized economies, there are still many opportunities for agricultural growth to contribute to poverty reduction, and there is also a compelling need to manage large labor flows out of the agricultural sector (World Bank 2008).

The process of agricultural development also occurs amidst a major organizational transformation of food systems that was well under way by the 1990s. These changes have been led by consumption trends but were reinforced by transformation in the retail sector as well as innovations in production, processing, and distribution technologies.

Drivers of Change

Four important driving forces in agriculture are together responsible for major global shifts in c...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Executive Summary
• Introduction
• Part I - Drivers of Change
• Part II - Consequences of Livestock Production
• Part III - Responses
• Acronyms and Abbreviations
• Chemical Symbols, Compounds, and Units of Measurement
• Glossary
• List of Editors and Contributors
• Index
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