Aquaculture has been the subject of two recent high profile reports. The first, entitled Blue Frontiers, begins by asserting ‘There is a pressing need to elevate the debate on the future of aquaculture and to place this in the context of other animal food production systems, including wild capture fisheries’. The second report made the front cover of Time Magazine and poses the question ‘Can farming save the last wild food?’

Both reports make important points. Between 1970 and 2008, global aquaculture production grew (PDF) at an average rate of 8.4% per year, and aquaculture remains one of the fastest growing food producing sectors measured in terms of year-on-year percentage gain. Furthermore, because the world’s fisheries are yielding all they can, there is simply no option but to farm seafood if growing human demand for animal protein is to be met.

Both reports also emphasize that fish and shellfish are intrinsically more efficient converters of food than terrestrial animals, because they do not maintain high body temperature or grow heavy skeletons to support themselves against gravity, prompting the comment in the Blue Frontiers report that ‘because vegetarianism is unlikely to ever be a voluntary choice for the overwhelming majority of people, as global demand for food rises, finding ways to be more ecologically efficient consumers of animal food will become increasingly important’.

Limited horizons

However, animals have to eat and when they are farmed intensively this usually means feeding them ingredients that might otherwise serve as food for people. Such inputs are not necessary for less intensive farming methods, where livestock graze on natural pasture or are fed on agricultural wastes but, as Simon Fairley points out on this blog, there are natural limits to how much can be produced in this way. He describes this as ‘default livestock production’, beyond which, he argues, that feeding ‘grain to livestock to provide luxury goods for consumers in industrialized countries is manifestly unjust when a billion people in the world are undernourished.’

When it comes to seafood, I think harvesting fish from the world’s wild fish stocks might be thought of as the aquatic equivalent of default livestock production and this has already reached its natural limit. Aquaculture can supplement it by farming its own grazers, like the filter feeding mussels and scallops and by growing certain fish (mostly species of carp) in freshwater ponds fertilized with agricultural wastes to stimulate production of natural feed. Such methods contributed well over half the 52 million tonnes of fish and shellfish produced by aquaculture in 2008, with further growth possible in many undeveloped and developing countries.

However, rightly or wrongly, most recent developments in aquaculture have been driven by consumer demand in industrialised countries for seafood that supplements or substitutes for products from natural fisheries. Carp do not meet this standard, while fish like salmon, sea bass, tilapia and Pangasius (‘tra’ and ‘basa’) do, as do shellfish like shrimp, and the intensive methods used to farm them use feeds that, in turn, violate Fairlie’s standard for nutritional justice.

From which the question follows: given the intrinsic metabolic efficiency of aquatic animals, could their intensive farming ever be ecologically efficient enough to put such concerns to rest?

Advance, aquaculture

In part, the answer has to do with another point made in the Time article, namely that ‘farmers have had thousands of years to improve agricultural methods and breed domesticated animals like cows and pigs with maximum efficiency. Modern aquaculture is just a few decades old, and as producers have become more experienced, they’ve cut down on pollution and bred more-efficient fish’.

Could future advances in aquaculture breeding, nutrition and husbandry ever lead to intensive animal farming that allays concerns about ecological efficiency? And could the well demonstrated nutritional benefits of seafood help to tip the scales when making this evaluation?

But another part of the answer is something that neither report considers, namely the development of a future marine agronomy, which I detailed in my previous post.

The potential for the large-scale farming of marine plants (macroalgae or seaweeds) is vast. Decades from now, production of marine biomass for processing into food for people, feed for farm animals and biofuel could equal or exceed the biomass produced by terrestrial agriculture today. It could do this without using land or freshwater and, by tapping the vast resources of nutrients in the deep oceans, it might also do it without fossil fuel-based fertilizers. And again, because aquatic animals do not need to burn carbohydrate to keep themselves warm, there is a natural synergy between extracting protein and fat from biomass for aquaculture feeds and carbohydrate for bioenergy.

The concept holds the promise of self-sustaining, ecologically efficient production of aquatic animal and plant food, and offers the prospect of correcting today’s human nutritional injustices. The call in the Blue Frontiers report for an elevated debate on aquaculture’s future is timely and the need for it is urgent.

About John Forster

John Forster has worked as an aquaculture scientist, manager, fish farm owner and consultant since 1965. He moved to Port Angeles, Washington, from the UK in 1984 to start salmon and sturgeon farming operations for Stolt Sea Farm before founding his consulting practice and Columbia River Fish Farms Inc. in 1994.

I research the health and welfare of chickens reared for meat, but last year I spent six weeks working with BBC Countryfile as part of the British Science Association’s Media Fellowship scheme for research scientists. At the BBC I had the chance to act as researcher and scientific adviser for a feature looking at the rise of huge indoor ‘mega’ dairies and pig farms in the United States.

The mega farm debate is highly polarised. I heard equally passionate arguments that mega farms pollute the environment and destroy rural communities, and from others who believe that they’re the only viable way to keep meat and dairy products affordable back here in Britain.

Estimates vary, but population growth predicts that we will need around a 40% increase in global food production by 2030. UK Government food policy supports ‘sustainable intensification’, which means increasing farm production per hectare without compromising the environment or the wellbeing of farmed animals.

Intensifying livestock farming has already shown a phenomenal capacity to raise yields. In 1990 the average UK dairy cow produced 5151 litres of milk. In 2010-11 it was 7,406 litres – nearly half as much again.

We’re used to the idea of chicken farms housing tens of thousands of birds for eggs or meat, but British people seem less comfortable with large scale dairies and pig farms. Proposals for an 8000 cow dairy at Nocton in Lincolnshire met with considerable opposition before they were (scaled back and finally) withdrawn in February 2011. Midland Pig Producers’ plans for a 2500 sow pig farm in Derbyshire are the target of the Soil Association’s ‘Not in my Banger’ campaign, launched in January  2011.

For and against

Those in favour of scaling up argue that it makes everything cheaper per animal and so more efficient. Moreover, if producers can then afford to invest in the latest technology or equipment, or employ specialist staff, higher standards of animal care and disease prevention should follow. There can be environmental trade-offs too: housing large numbers of pigs or cattle indoors makes it easier to collect slurry for use as fertiliser or to install an anaerobic digester and turn it into energy.

Some opponents worry about a decline in small farms: rising UK milk yields over the past decade were accompanied by expanding herd sizes and a drop in both the total number of dairy farms and of cows. Others fear that housing many animals so densely creates a disease risk or restricts their normal behaviour to an unacceptable degree. Big farms sometimes claim to have a smaller carbon footprint but it’s not clear how such claims factor in things the public pay for. These could include the environmental costs of pollution incidents, or government-funded infrastructure such as programmes in America that supplied arid areas with water and allowed dairy farming to expand into the west coast.

Ultimately, it’s not easy to add up the costs and benefits. Every farm is different and animal welfare, economics and environmental costs and benefits can’t even be measured in the same currency.

Reality check

Recent proposals like Nocton and Foston have attracted attention because of their scale, but many of the considerations are not unique to mega farms. It is true that very high yielding dairy cows have been bred to put so much of their energy into milk production that their health, fertility and even lifespan have been affected. But these specialist breeds are used in many small farms too – intensive farms are not necessarily large, and vice versa.

And are mega farms really so different from what we already have? In 2008, over two-thirds of fattening pigs raised for meat in the UK were produced on units housing 1000 animals or more. When does medium become big? When does big become too big?

People often struggle to define exactly what it is about very large scale farms that makes them uneasy. Many have an instinctive resistance to animals being kept indoors. The majority seem unaware that British weather means that almost all of our dairy cows are housed indoors for around six months of the year anyway.

Perhaps the truth is that people’s fears about the future of farming are really a reflection that their lives are quite distanced from its present. And when we do get closer to reality, the choices get even tougher.

However much we value the idea of cows in wide open fields or pigs rooting around in the mud, beliefs and behaviour at the supermarket don’t always tally. If the price goes too high, most shoppers will go for the cheaper option. That can sometimes mean a backward step to imports from countries with less stringent standards.

 The conversations I had during my research for Countryfile made me realise that there is something all sides agree on: whatever its size or production system, each farm is only as good as its staff. Unless there is a massive change in consumers’ habits, there is an argument that animals, the environment and customers’ wallets might all benefit if we focus less on the type of farm and more on demanding – and supporting – rigorous standards from all UK farmers.

About Becky Hothersall

Dr Becky Hothersall is a post-doctoral researcher in the Animal Welfare and Behaviour Group at the University of Bristol’s School of Veterinary Sciences. Her research uses behavioural and cognitive approaches to try to understand subjective experiences like pain and hunger in other species. Becky is particularly interested in how animal welfare can be integrated into the wider sustainability agenda within farming.

My first 13 years of farming saw endless lorry-loads of fertilisers and chemicals coming on to the farm. The controls on their usage, and the consequential problems, were evidently increasing. I re-examined what I was doing and who the gainers and losers were.

Conclusion: I needed to cut down the inputs, improve sustainability, stay friends with the consumer and re-enliven my soils.

We all want to produce sufficient food to supply the full nutritional requirements of the human species, whilst attempting to live in harmony with the natural environment and its finite resources. Simple… except it’s not.

Livestock farmers appreciate that every farm has a maximum stocking rate, beyond which animals will be underfed without importing food. We need to reduce the numbers of animals farmed, because the supplies of grain and proteins are going to become pressurised by the reducing quantities of available fertilisers, oil and other inputs.

We need to appreciate the finite nature of natural key resources upon which agriculture depends. Oil, phosphate fertiliser and access to fresh water being the principal inputs. The use of ‘fossil’ water reserves illustrates the problem, and whilst it’s not a problem in the rainy UK, it is in many countries from which we import food, often to feed livestock – as seen in the staggering scale of imported GM soya from Brazil to feed British cows for example.

Farmers are the largest consumers of these resources. With what responsible logic can we justify feeding livestock tonnages of grains and proteins? As Simon Fairlie has described on this blog and in his book Meat: A Benign Extravagance, it’s a horribly inefficient way to produce food. If only we could stand back and assess it logically and not feel threatened by our own, as farmers, vested interest. 

Big problems

Why not embrace the findings of the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development  which concluded that “business as usual” was not an option? 

Reducing feeding grains and proteins to livestock will save natural resources, and indirectly improve people’s health. Furthermore, huge areas of currently crop-producing land would then grow grass, still to support livestock, enabling preservation of fragile and diminishing soils by minimising soil erosion.

Some may think these policy shifts equate to less food for most people. It may for a few, but it won’t necessarily for the majority. And would that be a bad thing? Astonishing food wastage occurs through over consumption – people becoming fat – also known as the obesity epidemic in politically-correct language. We now have more obese people in the world than hungry, and the vast majority of this is avoidable. When did this become acceptable?

Perhaps these policy shifts would make food more expensive. Then we’d all eat different diets, with less meat, and those over-consuming will necessarily reduce intake. This would also lead to less waste minimisation during food processing and domestically: nobody in 2011 should accept the 18 million tonnes of food waste. Whilst some is unavoidable, a huge amount is careless at best.

By using less land to grow feed for animals, substantial areas of current cropland could be afforested, recreating the lungs of the world, and some land can switch to energy production to be used locally.

Furthermore, these significant changes would dispense with the temptation to tinker with nature’s genetics by utilising GM crops. Other nicely developing breeding techniques, such as marker-assisted breeding, will enhance yields and improved resistance to attack, whilst keeping our customers onside.

Hard solutions

Delivering radical change is difficult. Nobody would suggest otherwise. But we don’t have the choice, and the sooner we start the less Draconian the action will need to be.

If we won’t do this for society, and ultimately for our children’s sake, and continue to prefer prevarication then we drive the car towards a cliff edge. Either we make a reasonably gentle turn now, or continue taking risks, hoping for unknown options for our salvation will appear later.

Are farmers big enough to do this? It will obviously have negative implications for the capital values of many of our businesses. But, do we, as part of a bigger society, have any realistic alternative option?

About Oliver Dowding

After leaving agricultural college in 1976, Oliver returned home to the family farm in South East Somerset, a traditional dairy and arable farm, extending to over 900 acres. 

In 1989 the decision was made to convert the entire farm, including 300 dairy cows and 200 youngstock immediately to organic status, which became the subject for a TV programme. The farming area has subsequently shrunk and the dairy disbanded.

Oliver has been involved with a variety of national agri-political posts and interests, including chairing the NFU organic committee, and as vice-chairman of the leading organic dairy co-operative, OMSCO. 

He is an active journalist and campaigner, particularly on health and environmental issues.

The eradication of the long-feared cattle disease rinderpest, announced by OIE and FAO June 2011, is a momentous achievement. John Anderson has already written on this blog about the lessons learned during the rinderpest eradication programme, which I’ve also described on video.

If we can do it once, we can do it again; the only question is: what should be the next target?

For better or worse, many people in developing countries are dependent on livestock (sheep, goats and cattle) for their food, or for trade. Sheep and goats (or ‘shoats’ for short), in particular, form the mainstay of 100s of small-scale livestock keepers in rural communities, both for the milk they give and the meat they provide. Anything that improves the health of shoats reduces poverty and improves local health and welfare, which improves education levels, which again improves general welfare in a virtuous cycle.

The next target

One of the common diseases of shoats in developing countries is peste des petits ruminants (PPR), sometimes known as goat plague or kata. The disease was first described in West Africa, which explains the French name. PPR is now found in almost every country in Africa north of Mozambique, as well as the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent and through into China. It can cause high mortality – up to 90% – and its relentless spread seems unaffected by the current individual national attempts at mass vaccination which are not well integrated.

PPR is caused by a virus of the same group that causes rinderpest, and which shares many of the same characteristics: the virus spreads by close contact between animals (no insect or tick vector), it  has only one serotype (so a single vaccine protects against all known forms of the virus), and an effective vaccine and equally good diagnostic tests exist.

The basic tools that were used in the eradication of rinderpest are therefore in place to do the same job on PPR, and there is growing acceptance in international bodies such as the FAO that PPR eradication is possible and should seriously be considered. I discuss this in this short video too.

Achievable aim

That’s not to say we couldn’t make some improvements. There was never a DIVA vaccine (which allows one to Distinguish Infected from Vaccinated Animals) for rinderpest, and it meant it was never possible to keep scanning for disease while vaccination was going on. Several labs, including my own, are trying to make DIVA vaccines for PPR and I am sure one will soon exist which will help in the overall programme.

The experience of rinderpest eradication was that getting good local involvement in tracing disease was critically important, and kits are being developed that will allow sick animals to be tested for PPR in the field, allowing much more rapid disease identification and therefore more rapid responses. We also need to fill in the gaps in our knowledge of the distribution of PPR in both domestic livestock and wildlife because various species of wild goats and gazelles are susceptible.

None of these are insurmountable problems. There are a large number of livestock diseases for which we have no vaccine, like African swine fever, or which are too varied to be tackled with a single vaccine, such as Bluetongue, for which you need 25 different vaccines.

In contrast, ridding the world of PPR lacks only the willingness of the richer countries to fund the work and of the countries where it exists to work together to get the job done.

Perhaps the most important lesson that we learned in getting rid of rinderpest is that we can aspire to not just control and continuously try to manage a veterinary disease, but to remove it permanently on a global scale, thereby eliminating the threat as well as the cost of control from all future generations.

About Michael Baron

Michael Baron has worked on the basic biology of rinderpest and PPR at the Institute for Animal Health for the last 20 years. He is a self-confessed lab rat who would like to think that he can help the people who do the real work on controlling these diseases, out in the field, by providing some of the tools they need.

I recently spent several years investigating the environmental impact of livestock production for a book called Meat: A Benign Extravagance, which stimulated the debate on the real carbon foot print of rearing animals for food, particularly when the Guardian’s George Monbiot wrote his ‘Let them eat meat – but farm it properly’ critique.

The first lesson I learnt was not to trust any of the statistical clichés that are passed around like a relay baton. For example, the commonly cited figure of 100,000 litres of water required to produce a kilo of beef is nonsense: it refers to the total amount of rain falling upon the land grazed by the cow, rain which would fall – and drain away or be transpired or excreted by living creatures – whether or not the cow was on the field.

Similarly, the inefficiency of livestock at converting vegetable food into animal protein is habitually exaggerated by opponents of meat eating. Globally, for every kilo of meat or dairy protein produced, approximately 1.4 kilos of vegetable protein are ingested by livestock. Since meat protein is viewed by many consumers and food analysts to be superior, and since meat provides variety in a diet, this level of inefficiency is arguably acceptable.

The FAO’s calculation that livestock are responsible for 18 per cent of anthropogenic carbon emissions is, at the very least, a heavily massaged statistic. Most of the CO2 emissions they attribute to all livestock are derived by applying out of date emissions for Amazon deforestation caused by beef cattle which comprise barely one per cent if the world’s livestock. Their figures for methane and nitrous oxide take account of the emissions caused by livestock, but do not factor in the replacement nitrous oxide and methane emissions that would occur if we did not farm livestock, such as nitrous oxide from the fertilizer needed to replace manure to produce crops, or the methane emitted by wild animals or forest fires resulting from undergrazing.

The correct figure is more likely to be 10 per cent or even less. So why do the FAO economists plug the inflated figure of 18 per cent? It appears to be because they want to depict extensive livestock, especially cattle, as the villain of the piece and so argue that intensive farming of pigs and poultry in factory farms is a more viable alternative.

Less is more

Once one has winnowed out all this anti-livestock and anti-ruminant bias, the fact remains that the model of livestock farming currently pursued in the industrialized countries is flagrantly unjust and unsustainable.

To feed the entire world the levels of meat currently enjoyed in the USA, Europe and the OECD countries would require massive quantities of grain to be fed to livestock wastefully at a conversion efficiency of about four to one.

My key conclusion is that within every agro-economy there is a certain amount of meat – what I call default livestock production – that has very little environmental impact because it is basically a byproduct of an agricultural system designed to produce grains and other vegetable products. This includes meat from livestock such as pigs and poultry fed on crop residues and food waste, cattle, sheep or goats fed on grass or legumes that are an integral part of the arable rotation, and animals fed on surplus grain necessary to provide a buffer in the event of a poor harvest.

Any meat consumption above the default level requires dedicated feed crops to be fed to livestock at an inefficient rate, involving extravagant use of land, fertilizer and water. To provide this diet for all of the world’s nearly seven billion people is not sustainable; and to feed, as we do, vast quantities of grain to livestock to provide luxury goods for consumers in industrialized countries is manifestly unjust when a billion people in the world are undernourished.

About Simon Fairlie

Simon Fairlie worked for 20 years as (among others) an agricultural labourer, vine-worker, shepherd and fisherman. He was co-editor of The Ecologist magazine for four years before joining a community farm in 1994 for 10 years. He now runs Chapter 7, an organization that provides planning advice to smallholders and low income people in the countryside and is the editor of The Land, an occasional magazine about land rights.

It’s time to engage the public with the difficult choices that lie ahead, says Les Firbank.

Food and farming have rarely been away from the headlines in recent years. One of the ongoing themes has been the alleged departure of modern food production and distribution from so-called ‘natural’ practices. We have seen it in the controversies over genetically modified (GM) crops, the rapid spread of foot-and-mouth disease in 2001, and the risks to human health from BSE in cows and salmonella in chicken eggs.

But as concerns rise about food security and prices, it’s becoming clear that agriculture must try to square the circle between increased production of abundant, nutritious, safe food and maintaining the environment in a more crowded world. Unfortunately, this is far from easy and may require a rethink of public attitudes to food and farming.

For example, everyone agrees that we shouldn’t waste food by giving it to crop pests. So what’s so wrong with insecticides? The days of Rachel Carson’s ‘Silent Spring’ are long behind us; current pesticides, when applied correctly, are much more environmentally benign, are applied in lower doses, are well regulated and levels of residues on food are well below safety levels.

Alternatively, many crops worldwide have a gene that kills those beetle larvae foolish enough to eat them, reducing pesticide use. This gene comes from soil bacteria, Bacillus thuringiensis, and has been introduced into the crops using genetic modification.

Genetic modification is hardly natural; the present generation of GM crops were developed by moving genes from one species to another, and it is possible to create ‘designer’ genes from scratch. But nor is current conventional plant breeding; this often involves using radiation or chemicals in a scattergun approach to generate lots of random mutations. Why should some methods be more acceptable than others?

Difficult decisions

We want to be environmentally friendly. During the 1990s, this seemed to be a simple matter; organic farms were good because, typically, they are home to more wild plants and animals.

Now the choices are becoming more complex: the higher levels of biodiversity can come at the price of lower productivity, and slow-growing livestock release more greenhouse gases (PDF) (GHG) in their lifetime than do those in more intensive systems.

More environmentally-friendly livestock systems of the future may involve keeping the animals indoors: productive, good for GHG emissions and control of pollution into watercourses, but hardly consistent with current ideas of more ‘natural’, free-range farming.

Furthermore, the increasing global demand for meat and dairy products is being met largely by feeding livestock with crops grown on land that could be used to grow crops for people, using fossil-fuel based fertilisers that take a lot of energy to produce. Should we try to use more food wastes in livestock feed, even though such practices led to the outbreak of the cattle disease BSE?  Or is it simply too much to expect that we can meet the rising demand for affordable meat sustainably?

Looking at food labels and marketing material from the food industry, it would be easy to assume that much of our food comes from small, family farms raising a few crops and a few happy, smiling animals. This is a very nostalgic view of productive, environmentally-friendly agriculture that, for the most part, is decades behind us.

We may well need radical changes in the way food is produced if we are to produce abundant nutritious food in an environmentally sustainable way; radical changes that are likely to appear even less natural, even further removed from farming stereotypes. A new generation of food controversies is bound to emerge.  

The food debate is already high on the agenda. Now we need to move on from discussing the issues one at a time and engage the public in the difficult choices ahead.

About Les Firbank

Les Firbank has worked for many years on the relationships between agriculture and the environment. He led the UK Farm Scale Evaluations of GM Crops and has researched the impacts of organic farming on wildlife. He is one of the team undertaking the forthcoming UK National Ecosystem Assessment and is currently based at the University of Leeds.

Livestock enterprises contribute substantially to the world’s greenhouse gases, largely through deforestation to make room for livestock grazing and feed crops, the methane ruminant animals give off, and the nitrous oxide emitted by manure.  Estimates of this contribution vary widely (10-18% (PDF), or more, of global greenhouse-gas emissions) and are still being researched – it’s a complex question and hotly debated.  

Whatever the exact figure, many worry these greenhouse-gas emissions will only grow due to increasing livestock production to meet the surging demand for meat and milk in developing countries.

But significant livestock-related greenhouse gas reductions could be quickly achieved in tropical countries by modifying production practices, which were recently detailed in a paper by myself and a colleague published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. For example, switching to more nutritious pasture grasses, supplementing diets with even small amounts of crop residues or grains, restoring degraded grazing lands, planting trees that both trap carbon and produce leaves that cows can eat, and adopting more productive breeds can all be employed relatively quickly to reduce emissions.

Such changes could increase the amount of milk and meat produced by individual animals, thus reducing emissions because farmers would require fewer animals.

For example, in Latin America switching cows from natural grasslands to more nutritious sown pastures can increase daily milk production and weight gain by a factor of three. Fewer animals would then be needed to satisfy demand, while farmers’ incomes could be raised substantially.

There are several other well-documented options that could increase incomes for smallholders while at the same time reducing overall emissions.

Supplementing grazing with feed consisting of crop residues, such as the leaves and stalks of sorghum or maize plants, is one example. There is also potential to boost production per animal by crossbreeding local with genetically improved breeds, so providing more milk and meat than traditional breeds while emitting less methane per kilo of meat or milk produced. Supplementing cattle diets with the leaves of certain trees, such as Leucaena leucocephala, has similar effects on meat and milk production and incomes.

These options could not only reduce methane emissions, but some of them, such as planting improved pastures and agroforestry tree species, can also sequester carbon directly.  For example, if about 30 percent of livestock owners in the tropical regions of Latin America switch from natural grass to improved grasses such as some of the Brachiaria species, this alone could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 30 million tons per year.

Payback time

It would be a useful incentive if these farmers were allowed to sell the reductions they achieve as credits on global carbon markets. Overall, at US$20 per ton, which is roughly what carbon is currently trading for on the European Climate Exchange, we calculate that poor livestock keepers in tropical countries could generate about US$1.3 billion each year in carbon revenues.  Such carbon payments could make a meaningful contribution to many livestock-keeping households.

My colleague and I have calculated that, for a range of readily-available options for poor livestock keepers to increase production in the tropics, these could save about 7 percent of all livestock-related global greenhouse-gas emissions (a conservative estimate, as we did not consider the full range of options available to livestock keepers, nor did we consider nitrous oxide emissions). Consumption of milk and meat may double in the developing world by 2050, so it’s critical to adopt sustainable approaches now that reduce the negative effects of increasing livestock production while allowing countries to realize the benefits, such as better nutrition and higher incomes for livestock-producing households.

At the same time, reductions in the consumption of livestock products in developed countries could result in additional and substantial reductions in emissions. 

But back in the tropics, many livestock keepers are highly dependent on their animals for food, for income, as ‘engines’ to prepare their land, and as tradable assets. They need technological options and economic incentives that help them intensify their production in sustainable ways. Hence, carbon payments would be a welcome additional incentive that could help to bring about useful and much-needed changes in smallholder livestock production as well as bringing about a more conducive enabling environment.

About Philip Thornton

Philip Thornton is a Theme Leader and Senior Scientist with the Challenge Programme on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Nairobi, Kenya, and an Honorary Research Fellow in the Institute of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences at the University of Edinburgh.  He has worked mostly in Latin America, Europe, North America and Africa, on systems modelling and impact assessment. His current research interests revolve around integrated assessment at different scales and evaluating the possible impacts of global change on agricultural systems in developing countries.

I have just visited the semi-arid Sahel region of West Africa where over ten million people are facing hunger with many, including hundreds of thousands of young children, badly malnourished.

This food crisis is not a new story.

Drought in October 2009 contributed to poor and failed harvests. Early warning indicators were flashing amber and red back then. Unicef warned last autumn that hundreds of thousands of small children could face acute malnutrition in Niger, Chad, Mali and other countries of the Sahel.

Some small scale non-governmental organisation (NGO) aid work started in January, but the overall international response has been too little, too late.

Women collect water and firewood in the Sahel, Niger. Image: Oxfam GB

Now it is early August 2010 and all the worst scenarios are unfolding in countless villages across the region. The Sahel is a region of chronic food insecurity. It’s a region where these chronic indicators of hunger and malnutrition would trigger an emergency reaction in many other countries around the world.

And as chronic tipped so predictably into acute by March and April this year, why were aid plans mostly so timid and underfunded? Why has media attention been so sporadic and occasional?

The UN’s top emergency coordinator, John Holmes, visited the region in April. At a UN event on the Sahel on 20 July he underlined the desperate urgency of a food crisis that is now being labelled worse than the region’s last acute crisis in 2005.

A Unicef survey of nutrition in Niger published at the end of June that showed 16.7% of under-fives faced global acute malnutrition has pushed the World Food Programme into an urgent last minute effort to reach almost eight million people in Niger by August – many more than the 2.3 million it had planned for.

NGOs such as Oxfam have been saying over seven million people are at risk for many months.

At the end of June, I witnessed the desperation of ordinary families in Niger firsthand. Travelling through the semi-arid desert from the capital Niamey, we came to a small dusty village and sat down with a group of village women. They showed us the leaves they pulled from bushes to cook to eat; the sour, acrid-tasting berries they walked miles in the desert to find as a last resort to stave off total starvation. They said this was not the normal lean season, but a desperate time.

Kirsty Hughes with villagers near Ouallam, Niger. Image: Oxfam GB

We were watched by their weak, famished-looking children. They told us their animals had all died and they feared they would too. “We are weak and dying like our cattle,” they told us. “God will decide who lives and who dies.”

Yet back in Niamey, just over two hours drive on a rough road from where people are starving, there is food in the market but people cannot afford it. With no funds left after a failed harvest last year, and their animals dying or too thin to get a decent price in the market this year, this is a crisis of poverty not of food availability.

How and why are we here again in such a food crisis? A multitude of reasons for sure, but some are obvious.

Donors have to ask themselves if they gave too little and/or too late. Any why? Most did one or both.

Donors and international agencies have to ask themselves why did they set up early warning systems only to ignore them?

Governments in the region have to face up to their failures to admit to crisis at all. In Niger, it was only after the coup in March this year that there was full recognition of the scale of the challenge the country faced.

The media are also culpable. Surely must ask themselves why they can’t make a story out of a looming crisis and feel they have to wait until the most pitiful pictures are to be had.

And lying behind all of these factors, we all have to ask why in some of the poorest countries in the world there is not more aid, and more effective aid, tackling the long-term chronic food insecurity that undermines these countries’ development.

With serious investment in agriculture and livestock, in social protection, in alternative livelihoods, in the host of things we know can make a difference and reduce chronic food insecurity.

If we tackle this long-term poverty, we create the resilience that means a drought does not mean disaster; a problem does not become a crisis.

Like 2005, 2010 is a year of crisis or Niger – donors, international agencies, international and national NGOs, and national governments all have it in their power to make sure this is the last such crisis in the Sahel.

But will they?

About Kirsty Hughes

Dr Kirsty Hughes is Head of the Public Policy and Advocacy team at Oxfam GB, which is comprised of four main groups focusing on humanitarian and conflict issues, financing for development, climate change, and private sector and development. She has worked in a number of European thinktanks (including as head of the European Programme at Chatham House, and Friends of Europe, Brussels) and as a journalist writing on European and international politics since the early 1990s. She has also worked at senior level in the European Commission.

Livestock is and has been intertwined with African societies for centuries. They provide nutrition, labour, transport and fulfil major socio-cultural roles. It is estimated that 70% of Africa’s rural poor keep livestock and some 200M people rely on these animals for their livelihoods. Indigenous livestock are not only adapted to diverse African agro-ecological production systems – they are also unique and responsive genotypes shaped by the needs of African farmers.

The demand for livestock products is expected to increase with population growth, urbanisation and changing consumer demands. This presents a unique opportunity, but also an increasing threat for indigenous breeds.

Indeed, African cattle represent the logical starting point for improving of the productivity of the livestock sector on the continent. In the same way that the diversity of locally adapted European breeds was the source of highly productive milk and beef breeds of the northern hemisphere, African livestock diversity represents a valuable genetic resources waiting to be tapped.

There is, however, an increasing perception that the solution behind productivity improvement of the livestock sector in sub-Saharan Africa is through crossbreeding of local breeds with exotic ones; for example through the importation of semen and production of crossbreeds. The solution is attractive as it may combine the advantages of both worlds, local adaptation with high productivity.

But the solution is also a short sighted one that relies on the availability of the pure, locally adapted genotypes, which may rapidly disappear if they are not conserved, or we may see their genetic make-up increasingly diluted.

What is the alternative solution? First, we need a paradigm shift in our perspective and accept that contrary to the traditional thinking, African chicken, cattle, goat and sheep represent an unique genetic resource for improvement of productivity; after all they have produced, survived and fed millions of people across history.

Second, we need to invest much more on the understanding of the genetic adaptive attributes of African livestock. In other words, we need to apply genomics revolution technologies to the indigenous breeds and in parallel embark on large scale phenotype recording programs. African livestock need and deserve much more in the way of long term research investments.

Third, we need to respond to immediate demands and recognise that there is no ‘quick fix’ solution. Yes, European-African crossbreeding can be utilised for short-term delivery but only if this is undertaken in parallel with well thought out breeding improvement programmes.

Finally, we need to realise that we are racing against time. African livestock diversity is shrinking. The world needs to wake up now and support the development of in vitro African livestock biobanks before it is too late for conservation, further utilisation and characterisation activities that will help Africa and the world for centuries to come.

About Olivier Hanotte

Olivier Hanotte, a molecular geneticist from Belgium, joined the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in 1995 after a post-doc at the University of Leicester, UK, in the field of livestock and wildlife genetic diversity, and led the Improving Animal Genetics Resource Characterization project. In January 2009 he joined the University of Nottingham as Professor of Population and Conservations Genetics. He is member of the editorial board of Animal Genetics and The Journal of Animal Breeding and Genetics.

Why is such a policy important?

Because for developing countries, the consequences of insecure food supplies are severe and undermine development and progress. 3 out of 4 people in developing countries live in rural areas, and most depend on agriculture for their livelihoods.

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation says developing countries may experience a decline of between 9-21% in overall potential agricultural productivity as a result of global warming.

When crops or livestock are affected by climate change impacts or other factors, such as disease, the effect on local families, communities and the wider country is devastating.

Lack of available produce means less food and less income for small-holder farmers and their families. Consequently, cases of malnutrition rise – particularly in children – resulting in potentially long-term health problems which inhibit people’s capacity to attend school or earn a living.

The food crisis of 2008 caused an additional 110M people to suffer from hunger and permanent damage to 40M malnourished children.

We have only 5 years left until the 2015 deadline to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and the first of these, to reduce the proportion people who suffer from hunger, is veering further off target thanks to the food crisis, global economic crisis and climate change impacts. 

But UK science can help.

The UK has historically been seen as a world leader in both research and knowledge exchange in development agriculture. As detailed in the UK Agri-Food Science Directory, we have at least 280 agricultural and food-related research organisations and 5 research councils committed to research that is either directly relevant or applicable to developing countries.

Take the near elimination of rinderpest as an example. A major outbreak of this infectious viral disease in 1982-1984 had a devastating impact on Africa’s livestock, causing losses valued at over £300M. UK scientists have been behind the development of a vaccine that will soon result in an announcement of the eradication of the disease.

Links between development funders and UK researchers are strengthening. The Department for International Development (DFID) has made agricultural research a priority and will now double its support over the next 5 years from £40M in 2009 to £80M per year by 2014.

New research programmes between DFID and BBSRC like Sustainable Agriculture Research for International Development (SARID) and its follower CIDLID (Combating Infectious Diseases in Livestock for International Development), supported by the Scottish Government, are opening the door for more development-focused agricultural science.

And international funders like the Gates Foundation are backing more UK research projects on development agriculture, such as the Africa and Europe: Partnerships in Food and Farming project at Imperial College, London. 

The launch of the UK Cross-Government Food Research and Innovation Strategy this month is another demonstration of the UK’s commitment to food-related research.

It’s through this type of coordinated, collaborative approach to food and agricultural research, combined with the proposed new plans for an EU policy on food security and developing countries, which can help steer the Millennium Development Goals back on track.

About Dr Andrée Carter, Director of the UK Collaborative on Development Sciences (UKCDS)

Dr Andrée Carter is the Director of the UK Collaborative on Development Sciences (UKCDS), a collaboration of research councils, government departments and charitable foundations working to maximise the impact of UK research on international development.

Originally trained as a soil scientist, Dr Carter has worked closely with UK and EU governments, research and corporate organisations to protect and improve the quality of the environment and those dependent on it for their livelihoods.  

She was previously the Director of Science and Environment in ADAS UK Ltd., an agricultural and environmental research consultancy and prior to that worked at Cranfield University.

Contact details

Dr Andrée Carter, Director
UK Collaborative on Development Sciences
Gibbs Building
215 Euston Road
London
NW1 2BE

Tel: 0207 611 7330
Email: a.carter@ukcds.org.uk