COMMENT/COMMENTAIRE/COMENTARIO

The environmental debate

H. Steinfeld

Senior Officer
Livestock Development Planning
FAO Animal Production and Health Division

L'ENVIRONNEMENT AU COEUR DU DÉBAT

Opter pour une production animale compatible avec la protection de l'environnement est techniquement possible. La production de protéines animales ne comporte aucun élément susceptible de porter atteinte aux ressources qui ne puisse être surmonté. Les technologies existantes sont applicables à toute une série de conditions, mais la possibilité de les mettre en application sur le plan pratique est directement proportionnelle à l'intensité du processus de production et à l'apport d'intrants que celui-ci suppose. Ce ne sont pas tant les contraintes à caractère technologique qui risquent de compromettre la réussite de l'entreprise, mais plutôt les difficultés que comporte la mise en pratique de systèmes de production animale compatibles avec l'environnement, lorsque la volonté politique et le stade de développement économique n'y sont pas propices.

DEBATE SOBRE EL MEDIO AMBIENTE

La producción pecuaria inofensiva para el medio ambiente es una opción técnicamente viable. No hay ningún aspecto de la producción de proteínas animales que comprometa recursos que no pueda solucionarse. Existen tecnologías para diversos tipos de circunstancias, pero la viabilidad de la introducción práctica aumenta con la intensidad del proceso de producción y el volumen de insumos correspondiente. El éxito de la adopción no se ve impedido tanto por obstáculos tecnológicos cuanto por las dificultades para conseguir una producción animal inofensiva para el medio ambiente en situaciones en las que la voluntad política, y con ella la fase de desarrollo económico, induzca a hacerlo.

In contrast with the situation in the developed countries, the livestock sector in the developing world is growing at an unprecedented rate. The driving force behind the surge in demand for livestock products is a combination of population growth, rising incomes and urbanization. Both the population size and the real incomes of consumers in the developing countries have doubled since the early 1960s. There is a strong positive relationship between level of income and consumption of animal protein. As people become more affluent, the consumption of meat, milk and eggs increases. This rise in animal protein production translates into commensurate pressures on natural resources. Among the livestock-associated environmental problems, some hot spots stand out:

• Land degradation of semi-arid lands in Africa and India is caused by a complex set of factors involving humans and their stock, crop encroachment in marginal areas and fuelwood collection. Land tenure, settlement and incentive policies undermine traditional land use practices and contribute to degradation.
• Deforestation occurs when ranching pushes into the remaining rain forest frontiers. This is the case in Central and South America and, to a very limited extent, in Central Africa and Southeast Asia. Misguided policies, - the expedient use of ranching to obtain land titles and fiscal incentives - encouraged extensive grazing and large-scale clearance of forest. Significant biodiversity losses are associated with such deforestation.
• Nutrient surpluses result from human population pressure and livestock density, easy access to markets and feed and fertilizer incentive policies, aggravated by the lack of a regulatory response. In northwestern Europe, the northeastern United States and densely populated areas of Asia, animal waste production exceeds the absorptive capacity of the land and water resources. The continual importation of nutrients results in oversaturation, with a series of negative implications on the environment, including biodiversity losses, groundwater contamination, eutrophication and soil pollution.
• 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, and the nutrient and farm power balance runs into a widening deficit while disinvestment occurs as natural resources degrade. This process has been called the involution of the mixed farming system and can be observed in the eastern and central highlands of Africa, Java (Indonesia) and Nepal. Here, with the disappearance of the resource-enhancing role of livestock, the environmental balance is disrupted, often resulting in human conflict.
• 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.

In these hot spots, livestock interact mostly with the environment within the confines of a production system. In addition, livestock affect some global commons which are an essential part 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.
Livestock can also have beneficial effects on the environment. Grazing livestock can improve species wealth. Their integration into mixed farming systems can improve water infiltration and recharge groundwater reserves. Their biggest contribution, however, is 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. Without this environmental function, the intensification of agriculture could not have taken place and current populations could not be sustained.
Finding the balance between increased food production and 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 is the case at present. Arguably, the environmental problems associated with livestock production would best be resolved by reducing consumption of their products. The fact is, however, that millions of poor people still have a right to improve their diet. On the other hand, the consumption of meat and other livestock products is excessive in some countries and social classes, causing medical problems such as cardiovascular diseases and high blood pressure.
Therefore, within the limited resources available, all options must be explored to accommodate this expected and increased demand for livestock products. It is clear that the resource base for livestock production cannot expand at the same pace as that for other agricultural activities. First, across the world the most productive pasture lands are being turned into crop land, while degraded crop land is left fallow and reconverts into poor pastures. Second, through the application of research, the availability of crop residues for animal feed does not increase with rising yields. The same applies to the use of animal genetic resources. Traditional genotypes have provided the main mechanism for exploiting harsh environments. Now that the means exist to modify the biophysical environment, increasingly so in the tropics, exotic genotypes are being introduced, enabling higher returns for external inputs. Consequently, the contribution by indigenous breeds diminishes.
We are observing a radical change which does away with the conventional perception of livestock symbolized by cows on pastures. Grazing systems offer only limited potential for intensification, and livestock production is becoming increasingly crop-based. Thus, the importance of roughages as a feed resource is decreasing at the expense of cereals and agro-industrial by-products. There is an important shift towards monogastric species, mainly poultry and pigs. While ruminant meat accounted for 54 percent of total meat production in the developing countries in 1970, it fell to 38 percent in 1990 and is projected to decrease further to 29 percent by 2010.
Livestock production has become urbanized and separated from its land base and is steadily assuming more of an industrial scale. In recent years, industrial livestock production grew at twice the rate (4.3 percent) of that in mixed farming systems (2.2 percent) and more than six times that of the grazing system (0.7 percent). This trend has accelerated in the past five years.
With the so-called land-detached livestock production on the increase, land husbandry itself is becoming more and more important. We are forced to consider the livestock-environment issue in a broader perspective. No longer are we primarily concerned with the direct damage that livestock production may cause to the natural resource base. The management of the entire land resource and the generation of food and feed should be our real concern. Accepting this challenge presents a broad and formidable task for area-wide crop and livestock integration and related resource management, in order to satisfy human needs today and in the future.