FAO made effort to measure global impact of livestock industry

According to the FAO, millions of people around the world rely on the production of livestock for either their diet or economic reasons. In particular, developing countries are increasingly reliant on animal products to survive financially, as well as physically. However, the global consumption of meat, dairy and eggs is continuing to rise and, as it does, increased attention is given to the impact livestock farming has on water resources and its contribution to climate change, said the FAO.

At present a variety of methods are used to measure and assess how the environment is affected by animal raising, which makes it hard to compare results and work out priorities to improve environmental performance along supply chains.

Senior FAO livestock policy officer Pierre Gerber said: “We must establish a shared understanding of how to assess the environmental performance of the livestock sector. The goal is to improve that performance and create more sustainable forms of production that will continue to provide food and income. To do that, we need reliable quantitative information on key environmental parameters along livestock supply chains, as an evidence base from which to drive improvements.”

The partnership will be working to develop the science and environmental benchmarking of livestock supply chains over a three-year period. To do this, the FAO said, there needs to be established science-based methods and guidelines on quantifying the carbon footprint of livestock throughout their life-span. A need for a database on greenhouse gas emissions caused by the production of animal feeds and use, which could offer opportunities to help reduce livestock emissions, also needs to be established.

According to the FAO, demand for livestock products is expected to grow by nearly 73% by 2050. The FAO’s chief of livestock information sector analysis and policy branch Hennig Steinfeld explained that there was an increase in competition for the “finite and sometimes dwindling natural resources”, as well as “additional challenges posed by climate change, and the imperative of making food production much more sustainable”.