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Defining a land boundary for sustainable livestock consumption

Van Zanten, Hannah H.E.; Herrero, Mario; Van Hal, Ollie; Röös, Elin; Müller, Adrian; Garnett, Tara; Gerber, Pierre J.; Schader, Christian and de Boer, Imke J.M. (2018) Defining a land boundary for sustainable livestock consumption. Global Change Biology, 24 (9), pp. 4185-4194.

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Document available online at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/gcb.14321


Summary

The need for more sustainable production and consumption of animal source food (ASF) is central to the achievement of the sustainable development goals: within this context, wise use of land is a core challenge and concern. A key question in feeding the future world is: how much ASF should we eat? We demonstrate that livestock raised under the circular economy concept could provide a significant, nonnegligible part (9–23 g/per capita) of our daily protein needs (~50–60 g/per capita). This livestock then would not consume human‐edible biomass, such as grains, but mainly convert leftovers from arable land and grass resources into valuable food, implying that production of livestock feed is largely decoupled from arable land. The availability of these biomass streams for livestock then determines the boundaries for livestock production and consumption. Under this concept, the competition for land for feed or food would be minimized and compared to no ASF, including some ASF in the human diet could free up about one quarter of global arable land. Our results also demonstrate that restricted growth in consumption of ASF in Africa and Asia would be feasible under these boundary conditions, while reductions in the rest of the world would be necessary to meet land use sustainability criteria. Managing this expansion and contraction of future consumption of ASF is essential for achieving sustainable nutrition security.


EPrint Type:Journal paper
Keywords:animal source food, greenhouse gas emission, land boundary, land use, leftovers, livestock, recycling biomass, sustainable consumption, sustainable development goals, Agri-Food Policy, Sustainability
Agrovoc keywords:
Language
Value
URI
English
livestock
http://aims.fao.org/aos/agrovoc/c_4397
Subjects: Animal husbandry
Environmental aspects > Air and water emissions
Research affiliation: Switzerland > FiBL - Research Institute of Organic Agriculture Switzerland > Society > Agri-food policy
Switzerland > FiBL - Research Institute of Organic Agriculture Switzerland > Sustainability
ISSN:1365-2486
DOI:10.1111/gcb.14321
Deposited By: Muller, Adrian
ID Code:34489
Deposited On:13 Feb 2019 11:45
Last Modified:22 May 2023 06:55
Document Language:English
Status:Published
Refereed:Peer-reviewed and accepted

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