Foro Global sobre Seguridad Alimentaria y Nutrición (Foro FSN)

Dear HLPE,

Thanks for the opportunity to provide inputs on the draft scope of the report. 

Llivestock is at the centre of current global food systems: 75% of all agricultural land is dedicated to grazing or growing feed crops, and 36% of global crop production (by calories) and 29% of all marine capture fisheries landings (by weight) are destined to feed animals. 

World Animal Protection is very grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the development of the scope of the HLPE study on Sustainable agricultural development for food security and nutrition, including the role of livestock.  From our perspective, the draft scope provides an excellent base for the study and it is our hope that undertaking the HLPE study, in and of itself, will allow for a growing recognition that the global adherence to animal welfare principles in livestock production will have significant positive impacts for sustainable development, including food security and nutrition as well as food quality and safety. We hope that the following comments will be helpful to the process.

Part A: Context: drivers and challenges

Whereas a critical assessment of drivers and challenges will be essential as a base for identifying pathways to sustainable agriculture and livestock production, the validity of the assessment and therefore the appropriateness of pathways identified will largely depend on the assumptions that ground the current debate.  Therefore clarifying what the assumptions have been and possibly assessing the validity of assumptions made should be part of the drivers and challenges section.

In this regard, World Animal Protection would like to raise two issues for consideration by the Project Team:

§  Should there be a linear relationship between the rapid escalation of demand for animal-source food and global livestock production levels?  In other words, does supply have to follow demand or does the sustainability of the overall agricultural sector, taking into account the relatively high water-, land- and climate footprint of animal-source foods, require that an appropriate balance between animal and crop-sourced foods be considered in the study.

§  Studies[i] show that 36% of the world’s human-edible crop calories are fed to animals but only 17%-30% of these calories are returned for human consumption as meat or milk.[ii] The effect of this is that 25%-30% (70%-83% of 36%) of the world’s crop calories are lost through livestock production.  However, the FAO currently defines food loss and waste as a reduction in food mass (rather than nutritional value) and specifically excludes from its definition human-edible food that is used as animal feed. [iii]  Changing the definition – nutritional value (calories) rather than mass and including all food even if unintended for human consumption – will therefore lead to substantially different conclusions, without depreciating the value of animal sourced foods in delivery of protein and micronutrients, especially in developing countries, and, as  such, the value of smallholder and pastoralist livestock production in ensuring nutritional sufficiency.

In terms of the challenges and opportunities areas identified, we believe that the following issues are missing from the current listing:

§  Animal welfare (including animal health) is increasingly recognized to have a direct impact on economic growth and viability (consumer choice, productivity increase, etc.) social concerns in terms of public health, food safety and quality (as recognized recently in the CFS Principles for Responsible Agricultural Investments), and environmental sustainability, including emissions, water and land-use, etc. Animal health and welfare should be added to what is currently item e. in paragraph 2. Alternatively, it could be added as a separate issue in this list. Since livestock production is a focus area of the report, this seems fitting as animal health and welfare is core to livestock production. This is recognized in definitions of sustainable livestock, such as those outlined by the FAO-led Global Agenda for Sustainable Livestock, the primary international high level multistakeholder platform addressing this issue.

Addressing the topic of animal welfare is also in line with the HLPE’s Note on Critical and Emerging Issues for Food Security and Nutrition (August 2014) which draws attention to the animal welfare concerns connected to industrial animal production and the need for policies that could significantly reduce the harm caused by some livestock systems while increasing the positive outcomes for nutrition and for livelihoods that the livestock sector can provide. Note also that the topic ‘Animal welfare and food security’ was part of the option ‘Livestock’ in the list of proposals for the HLPE report in 2016 as presented during CFS 41.

§  In addition to issues related to nutrition, wider concerns about the link between livestock production and public health (zoonotic disease, rising AMR due to antibiotic use in livestock production, in short the 'one health' approach) should be reflected.  Public health concerns could be reflected under what is currently item a. in paragraph 2.

Part B: Achieving sustainable agricultural development for food security and nutrition

In light of the potential importance of the envisioned HLPE report for incentivizing a new global approach to sustainable agriculture, World Animal Protection, encourages the Project Team to take a collective systems approach in addition to the more disaggregated individual systems approach as is suggested by the current language in paragraph 3. 

World Animal Protection strongly encourages the Project Team to explore some of the following options as possible pathways towards sustainable agriculture:

· Supporting animal welfare (including animal health) as tool to advance FSN and sustainable development, including by implementation of good animal health and welfare standards in livestock production to improve productivity and resilience;

· Considering limits on the usage of human-edible food for purposes other than food, including animal feed.

· Focus on increasing sustainable consumption to ensure nutritional sufficiency for all, and to drive forward sustainable livestock production.

See attahed further comments in a background paper plus, in track-changes, World Animal Protection's suggested additions to the scope. 

AGA welcome the opportunity to provide comments to the HLPE report’s scope on “Sustainable agricultural development for food security and nutrition, including the role of livestock”. The livestock sector has been often poorly understood and absent from the global policy debate, and this report could provide a good opportunity to highlight the discussion about the role of livestock as a critical component of sustainable agricultural development.  However previous reports have also addressed similar concerns, therefore it will be important that this report carefully identify the key aspects that will add value to the discussion. 

I.                 General Comments:

a.      Build on forthcoming revisions of the sustainability concept. The report should address the sustainability concept taking into account, the Post-2015 Sustainable Development Agenda, and the coming SOFA 2016 on “Enhancing the sustainability of food and agriculture”.

b.     Not to over-emphasize the relationship between sustainable development and food markets projections.  Although the expected increase in the demand for food will be a main driver, the factors that are threatening the sustainability of the system go beyond how food markets will behave in the future, including governance issues, inequality, the presence of market and policy distortions, the gender perspective of poverty, and unemployment among others. Contextualizing the sustainable development discussion solely on future trends might jeopardize the identification of key factors threatening the economic, social, and environmental sustainability of the agricultural sector for food security and nutrition.

c.      Some important general features related to livestock to be consider. The economic importance of livestock (contributing a growing share of agricultural GDP, in developed countries more than half) and economic opportunities; The social dimension (incidence of poverty and importance for livelihoods) but also diets; The resource and climate dimension (resource requirements, climate gas emissions and exposure to climate change, food-feed competition); The health dimension (contribution to healthy diets, but also food safety and zoonoses),  The narrative developed by the Global Agenda for Sustainable Livestock (under livestockdialogue.org) could serve as an important reference.

d.      Provide an integrated sectorial perspective. Although the report will particularly focuses on livestock it should link the role of fisheries/aquaculture and forestry.

II.               Specific Comments

A.     Context: drivers and challenges

A1a. Address food projections and drivers from the demand and supply side. Section A1 should not only deal with demand drivers but also include supply drivers such as growing resource scarcity (land, water, energy, nutrients) and climate change, and drivers outside the agricultural sector (e.g. competition for resources), paying particular attention to the demand and supply of animal feeds.

A1b. Special attention should be given to the analysis of livestock projections.  Previous projections have been criticized for not sufficiently address the complexity of the livestock sector. This report should look not only livestock commodities, but pay particular attention to different types of productions systems, discussing their response capacity of the sub-sector by production system, the technological boundaries of intensification, the role of grasslands and the potential changes in land use, what regions and type of producers are likely to benefit or lose.

A2. Specific section that looks at livestock’s markets concentration trends. The report should include another item under A2 to raise the attention of the increasing concentration in livestock markets, assessing the potential consequences and implications for smallholders and pastoralists and their effects on equality.

A2b. Trade-offs and externalities. The trade off and internalization of environmental and other externalities and their impacts on prices and markets should be addressed for different production systems.

B.     Achieving sustainable agricultural development for food security and nutrition.

B2.  Describe sustainability as continuous improvement. Contrary as what the terms “achieving sustainable development” and “transition to sustainable systems” would suggest, this session should describe sustainability as a continuous improvement and not as an end point.

B2a. Although the title mentions nutrition, the nutrition aspects are not evident. In the preparation for the CGRFA special event on genetic diversity and food security it appeared that modern crop varieties have less protein and nutrients than traditional ones; same seems to be the case in aquaculture. The report could look at nutrition composition of animal sources of food from different production systems and breeds.

B.5 Employ the principles developed within the SFA framework. This section could usefully employ the “five principles” developed within the SFA, namely improve efficiency, protect resources, improve livelihoods and social well-being, enhance resilience, and improve governance.

B.5e Specific section that looks at feeds and feeding practices. Generally the production of feed for livestock production should be addressed in more depth than the current outline may suggest.

B.6 Conclusions and recommendations for policies and actions. This section could make use of the “four action areas” (evidence, dialogue, tools, practice change) developed by SFA

III.             List of Experts

Some possible experts are:  Mario Herero, CSIRO  Thornton, ILRI/CCAFS, Samuel Jutzi, SWI, Brian Perry, Elizabeth Parker, Alberto Valdes, Carlos Pomareda, Carlos Seré, Neil Fraser, Frik Schneider .  

Dear HLPE colleagues,

Please find attached WFP comments on the proposed draft scope of the HLPE Report on “Sustainable agricultural development for food security and nutrition, including the role of livestock”.

In particular, we would like to highlight the following general comments on the document:

• It would be helpful to include an introduction section prior to the context on the scope of the HLPE report, explaining what is within and outside of the scope of the report.
• It would be useful to document and provide an overview of other processes / reports / platforms, and overlap (if any) with the ongoing work of, for example, the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), and explain the value added by this report.
• Access, affordability and needs should be considered for the role of livestock in nutrition, and opportunities for nutrition sensitive agriculture in addition to productivity gains should be explored.

Further comments are found in the attached.   Kindly acknowledge receipt of this email.

Best Regards,

Mihoko Tamamura

Director, Rome-based Agencies Relations & CFS (PGR)

World Food Programme

Dear HLPE,

Thanks for the opportunity to provide inputs on the draft scope of the report. Please find attached the input of Oxfam to the e-consultation.

Best regards,

Luca Chinotti

In Yaounde, Poultry manure is used to fertilize garden crops and thereby increase food security. In this case, one can say that combining livestock and farming plays a great role in sustainable agriculture. For the purpose of this E-consultation, CECOSDA followed the activities of Mariette who combines poultry and farming as a sustainable agricultural technics.

In Damas, a locality of Cameroon’s capital city Yaoundé, Mariette and her family are into a small mix agricultural system where they rear fowls and also grow crops for local consumption and sales in the local markets of Damas and Biyem-Assi. Mariette has 300 chickens and she produces about 10 bags of compost per week. She sells a bag for 500 F CFA, she explains that she can comfortably fertilize about 10m² of her farm land with one bag of the compost. About 50km away is Mr Njoya Jarvis who grows fruits crops like tomatoes, pepper, and vegetables like “Amaranthus” (popularly known in the Yaounde local markets as Follong). Jarvis buys compost from another client who rails chickens like Mariette and he has seen that his productivity has greatly increased from 2012 when he started using the compost from fowl drops. In fact, he is presently trying to set up his own local poultry so that he will not continue to buy compost from another farmer.

The local and individual initiatives like that of Mariette will go a long way to reduce the level of food insecurity in Cameroon. It has been observed that many people would like to get involved in this environmental friendly and sustainable farming method, but they are lacking in information which still remains a very vital aspect of sustainable development in Cameroon. 

Good evening,

Please find attached a document with the recommendation that I prepared for scope of sustainable Agricultural Development for Food Security and Nutrition, Including the Role of Livestock. I’m a student from Mexico who is doing a PhD in Economic Development at New Mexico State University. I’m a research assistant from the Dept. of Ag Econ & Ag Business. New Mexico State University.

Cheers,

Rafael Perez Pena

Biovision Foundation and the Millennium Institute are pleased to bring the following comments to your attention.

We strongly support the overall scope and direction for this HLPE report, particularly the subsequent elements:

The critical assessment of projections of relevance for sustainable agricultural development and livestock production with a view to assess the implications for food security, the realization of the right to food, rural livelihoods, access to natural resources, agricultural productivity, economic development, and the health of ecosystems (1, 2);

The explicit attention given to pastoral systems, as well as animal diseases, with diverse farm-sizes being part of the analysis (3);

The consideration of relevant metrics for sustainability in agriculture and food systems (4)

The explicit mentioning of agro-ecological practices as being part of the report (5b);

The analysis of barriers to change and the necessary enabling environments in realizing the shift to sustainable agricultural systems (5c, 5d).

To further enhance the relevance and improve the scope of the report, we make the following recommendations:

The implications of current projections should be analyzed critically and in an integrated manner to further the understanding of the relationship between the implications mentioned, such as the importance of agricultural biodiversity as the basis for resilient agricultural production in the long-term;

The analysis of agricultural production systems should include integrated crop-livestock farming systems and agro-pastoral systems. This will allow making a link between agricultural production and livestock, as stipulated by the HLPE theme, and provide important insights into sustainable agricultural development;

When looking at animal diseases and sustainable livestock production, the issue of animal welfare would also deserve attention;

The analysis of tools to promote and facilitate the transition to sustainable systems (5d) should specifically include the potential of multi-stakeholder, evidence-based assessment and planning tools and processes as a basis for successful pathways taken at country-level.

The report should draw from the International Assessment on Agricultural Knowledge, Science, and Technology for Development (IAASTD), as well as the results from the International Symposium on Agroecology for Food Security and Nutrition held in September 2014 at FAO.

Biovision Foundation supports sustainable agricultural development projects mainly in East Africa with an emphasis on empowering smallholder farmers. Biovision is a global advocate for sustainability, and was awarded, together with its President, the Right Livelihood Award - also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize, in 2013.

The Millennium Institute is a not-for-profit Organization committed to enhancing insights and decision-making that promotes sustainable development.

Please find attached Send a Cow's contribution to the consultation on the draft scope of the HLPE report on sustainable agricultural development for food security and nutrition, including the role of livestock.

Greenpeace’s contribution to consultation on the draft scope of the HLPE report on Sustainable agricultural development for food security and nutrition, including the role of livestock.

We welcome the focus of the proposed report on sustainable agricultural development for food security and nutrition, including the role of livestock. In particular the critical review of the projections made by FAO and other foresight reports, including assumptions regarding trends in increasing consumption of animal products and the feasibility of efficiency gains in livestock raising.

In line with our ecological farming definition the objectives of any sustainable agricultural development approach for food security and nutrition, including the role of livestock should also include food sovereignty (farmers and communities maintaining control of the food system), rewarding rural livelihoods and resilient food and agricultural systems.  

Ecological livestock, and more widely ecological farming, relies on the principle of ecological optimization, in other words it works with potentials and constraints of the system in terms of what effects it has on resources and its waste assimilation capacity.

Some of the main elements of such an ecologically optimized livestock system are outlined in our paper Ecological Livestock : Options for reducing livestock production and consumption to fit within ecological limits, with a focus on Europe (2013). We would urge that the proposed report include in its assessment of sustainable approaches ecologically optimized systems such as the ‘leftover’ / ‘default’ land user and diet approach. The ‘default land user’ approach is one where the role of livestock is to exploit the use of biomass not accessible to humans and to make efficient use of agriculture waste, surplus and marginal biomass.

In line with above, the “default livestock’ diet is one “that provides meat, dairy and other animal products which arise as the integral co-product of an agricultural system dedicated to the provision of sustainable vegetable nourishment” (Fairlie 2010). Informing this approach would require assessment of scenarios including drastic cuts in the consumption of animal protein in high income countries and a moderate increase of consumption in low and middle income countries, following the shrink-and-share principle (adjusted to the realities of rapidly changing consumption patterns in eg BRIC countries). To make such scenarios useful we understand that regional and even country level scenarios for demand side measures should be made developed, building on existing global assessments and studies.  

See below for Greenpeace’s suggestions on Proposed draft Scope of the HLPE Report by the HLPE Steering Committee.

A) Context: drivers and challenges

1. The HLPE report will begin with a critical assessment of existing projections of future food demand, including animal-sourced food. It will review projections by FAO and other foresight reports with particular reference to the rapid escalation of the demand for animal-source foods and feed, edible oils and non-food products, including the assumptions which are grounding these projections, on evolution of diets as well as on food losses and waste, and trade.

2. The report will then assess implications (challenges and opportunities) of these trends for:

1. food security and nutrition (in particular nutrient deficiencies, obesity and chronic diseases), the realization of the right to food, highlighting gender considerations, as well as inequalities;
2. access to land and natural resources and breaching of planetary boundaries;
3. agricultural production and productivity increases;
4. social and economic development,  including the objectives of food sovereignty and rewarding farmer livelihoods;
5. the health of the environment and ecosystems, including climate change, water and nutrient cycling systems, biodiversity and soil health;
6. human and animal diseases;
7. appropriate knowledge generation and dissemination;
8. control of the food system (farmers and communities versus markets and corporations).

B) Achieving sustainable agricultural development for food security and nutrition

3. In the light of these projections, the report will review the sustainability challenges for crop and livestock-based agricultural and food systems, including pastoral systems, in diverse agro-ecosystems and for various farm sizes, taking account of threats to the sustainability of these systems, including animal diseases, pest and diseases, pollution and energy, land, water and scarce resource needs.

4. The report will identify objectives and elements of sustainable approaches to agriculture, including livestock, ensuring food security and nutrition for all without compromising the economic, environmental and social bases for the food security and nutrition of future generations. It will identify critical priorities (“tipping points” that need absolutely to be addressed) and objectives. All three dimensions of sustainability will be included and the report will consider relevant metrics that capture the multiple roles of systems integrating livestock.

5. The report will explore pathways towards sustainable crop and livestock-based systems, and options for managing the transition to sustainable systems:

1. Given the role of livestock as an engine for the development of the agriculture and food sector, as a driver of major economic, social and environmental changes in food systems worldwide, particular attention will be paid to the role of livestock (and livestock feed production) in these pathways.
2. The investigation will encompass practices, including agro-ecological practices, default land use approaches, diversification at all scales, as well as broader perspectives from food chains to food systems (including consumption patterns and diets, the extent of farmer and community control), local versus global approaches, trade and investment.
3. The report will identify barriers to change, including in institutions, organizations, policies, market structures, subsidies, investment (by farmers, governments or philanthropic agents) and governance, and potential options to overcome them.
4. It will cover the enabling environment necessary to trigger or accompany transition: the role of public policies and tools to promote and facilitate transition to sustainable systems.

6. Conclusions and recommendations for policies and actions.

22 January 2015