Livestock, Environment & Human needs

Previous section Livestock in a changing world

The environmental challenges

The balance between human needs and natural resource requirements will depend, to a significant extent, on what we do with animal production. Over the last 35 years large land areas have become degraded. In many parts of the world, water resources have fallen to dangerously low levels or become unsafe to drink. Global temperatures have risen by about 0.50 Celsius since the beginning of the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century. McNeelyet al., (1990) estimate that more than 3,000 plant species and more than 500 animal species are in immediate danger of extinction.

Focusing on the livestock-associated environmental problems, some hot spots stand out:

- Land degradation of semi-arid lands in Africa and India, caused by a complex set of factors involving man and his stock, crop encroachment in marginal areas and fuelwood collection. Land tenure, settlement and incentive policies have undermined traditional land use practices and contributed to degradation through overgrazing. (Map 1)
- Livestock follows deforestation where ranching pushes into the remaining rainforest frontiers. This is the case in Central and South America, and, to a very limited extent, in Central Africa and South-East Asia. Misguided policies, where the expedient use of ranching to obtain land titles and fiscal incentives, have encouraged extensive grazing and large-scale clearance of forest. Significant biodiversity losses are associated with such deforestation. (Map 2)
- In northwestern Europe, northeastern USA, and in densely populated areas of Asia, animal waste production exceeds the absorptive capacity of land and water. Continuous nutrient import results in over-saturation of nutrients with a series of negative implications on the environment, including biodiversity losses, groundwater contamination, eutrophication and soil pollution. Nutrient surplus situations are a result of human population pressure and livestock density, access to markets, and feed and fertilizer incentive policies, aggravated by lack of regulatory response. (Map 3)
- In many highland areas of the tropics, high human population densities are traditionally sustained by complex mixed farming systems. Continuing human population pressures lead to decreasing farm sizes to a point where the system disintegrates. Livestock, often large ruminants, can no longer be maintained on the farm. The nutrient and farm power balance runs into a widening deficit and disinvestment occurs as natural resources degrade. This process has been called involution of the mixed farming system (Ruthenberg, 1980) and can be observed in the eastern and central highlands of Africa, Java and Nepal. Here, with the disappearance of the resource-enhancing role of livestock, the environmental balance is disrupted, often resulting in human conflict (Map 4).
- Mainly in the developing countries, slaughterhouses release large amounts of waste into the environment, polluting land and surface waters as well as posing a serious human health risk. Because of weak infrastructure, slaughterhouses often operate in urban settings where the discharge of blood, offal and other waste products is uncontrolled.

Box 1.1 Scapegoats and missed opportunities.
Perhaps it is no coincidence that the scapegoat is an animal. Statements like: "Livestock have been criticised for damaging the environment in a number of ways" (FAO, 1995) and "Livestock have been charged with wholesale devastation of African rangelands and irreversible destruction of soils - desertification" (Winrock International Institute, 1992). It would appear as if livestock themselves go out and decide to destroy or not to destroy our environment; two centuries after the age of enlightenment we are still in need of a scapegoat, literally. Livestock do not move, produce or reproduce without our wanting it. They are completely dependent upon us and inseparable. Livestock do not degrade the environment- humans do. As a result of these misconceptions about livestock development, institutions and governments continue to miss opportunities which would permit the livestock sector to make its full contribution to human welfare and economic growth.

In these hot spots, livestock interacts mostly with the environment within the confines of a production system. In addition, livestock affect some global commons which are essential parts of our support system. Biodiversity is affected indirectly through concentrate feed requirements and the resulting intensification and expansion of crop agriculture. Related environmental effects may be disguised because livestock production and feed production are geographically separated and only linked through international trade. Furthermore, livestock and livestock waste emit important quantities of greenhouse gases such as methane and nitrous oxide, contributing to the phenomenon of global warming. Livestock can also have beneficial effects on the environment. Grazing livestock can improve species wealth and the integration of livestock into mixed farming systems can improve water infiltration and recharge of groundwater reserves. The biggest contribution of livestock to the environment, however, is to be seen in providing the main avenue for sustained intensification of mixed farming systems. This is bound to continue even when crop and livestock activities specialize into separate activities as they often do under developed market conditions. This resource-enhancement and resource-sparing effect continues to be underestimated because it is indirect and does not catch people's eyes. Without this environmental function, intensification of agriculture could not have taken place and current populations could not be sustained.

Increased attention to livestock-environment interactions is therefore of critical importance in sustaining the world's resource base. These interactions have been the subject of much conjecture, often lacking objectivity and over-simplifying complex relationships (Box 1.1). Such scarcity of informed decision-making has often exacerbated the negative effects. For example, the misperceptions regarding overgrazing in the arid areas led to measures which controlled stocking rates and movements, thereby causing more, rather than less, land degradation. A better understanding of the complementarity of domesticated and wild animals would have led to greater species wealth and improved well-being of local human populations.

Finding the balance between increased food production and the preservation of the world's natural resources remains a major challenge. It is clear that food will have to be produced at less cost to the natural resource base than at present. Arguably, the environmental problems associated with livestock production would best be resolved by reducing consumption of their products, as many environmentalists suggest (see, for example, Goodland, 1996). We believe that chances for lowering the overall demand are close to nil and that the billions of poor people have a right to improve their diet. We acknowledge that consumption of meat and other livestock products is in some countries and social classes excessive, causing medical problems such as cardiovascular diseases and high blood pressure. For the large majority of people, however, particularly in the developing countries, livestock products remain a desired food for nutritional value and taste. This, as well as the developing requirements of the majority of countries need to be respected.

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