Climate Adaptation Solutions to Sustainable Livestock Farming

In the fight against climate change, Western countries have identified meat and dairy farming as a significant contributor to GHG emissions. Climate advocates have pushed for reducing meat consumption or giving it up entirely as solutions for a stable climate. 

A report from PASTRES (Pastoralism, Uncertainty and Resilience: Global Lessons from the Margins) contradicts this blanket message that meat and dairy are the enemies, and livestock farming should be slashed significantly.

The report says this narrative type is highly biased towards Western farming practices. More importantly, such Western-centric advice can damage developing countries that rely on non-intensive and low-impact cattle farming. 

Researchers, policymakers, and the Western media use limited cases in Europe, North America, Australia, China, and Brazil to generalise that dairy and cattle farming is terrible for the climate. The report says that these blanket statements could be detrimental to less industrialised regions like West Africa without considering the differences in farming or animal production processes.

According to the report:

“Urgent climate challenges have triggered calls for radical, widespread changes in what we eat, pushing for the drastic reduction, if not the elimination, of animal-source foods from our diets. But high-profile debates, based on patchy evidence, fail to differentiate between varied landscapes, environments and production methods. Relatively low impact, extensive livestock production, such as pastoralism, is being lumped in with industrial systems in the conversation about the future of food.”

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation data shows that meat production produces 14.5% of human GHG emissions. Based on this calculation, the organisation recommends having less meat in our diets in a 2019 UN Special Report on climate and land. The UK’s National Food Strategy followed the advice and recommended 30% less meat consumption for Britons.

There’s no question that Western countries should reduce their meat intake. Still, Professor Ian Scoones, of the Institute of Development Studies think tank and one of the study authors, believes such recommendations will do more harm than good in developing countries. 

Talking to Forbes, Scoones notes that “Some meat and milk production is of course very damaging to the environment, for example in the Amazon where the forest is being clear-cut for cattle farming,” adding that, “The key is for policies to take account of the differences between beneficial forms of production and those that are harmful” (Vetter, 2021).

“A climate policy that misses its mark and damages livelihoods is inappropriate and unjust,” the report says.

The PASTRES report also crucially adds that a Western recommendation to shift to a plant-based diet will hurt vulnerable populations and those struggling to access critical nutrients like the essential amino acids in meat and dairy. “For vulnerable populations, animal source foods are a requirement for adequate nutrition, reducing stunting and wasting and improving cognitive health, especially in the first months of life” ( Houzer, E. and Scoones, 2021).

For the livestock and dairy industry to meet the climate challenge in the future, the report presents six recommendations:

• First, “focus on the production process (industrial vs. extensive pastoral production) and not the product (meat and dairy) by applying a systems approach incorporating both costs and benefits and realistic baselines. Avoid generalised global assessments that do not differentiate between systems of production.”
• Second, “Avoid basing policy on simplistic, narrowly framed Life cycle assessments.”
• Third, “Support more research on carbon and nitrogen flows, context-specific emissions and carbon sequestration in extensive livestock systems, including pastoral areas worldwide.”
• Fourth, “Develop practical solutions to mitigating GHGs together with livestock keepers, drawing on local knowledge and practices: This can focus both on feeding and manure management systems to reduce methane emissions and mobile grazing to encourage carbon sequestration.”
• Fifth, “avoid generic recommendations on diet shifts to address climate change: Focus instead on the rich, northern ‘consumption elite,’ where the problem lies. Aim to level up access to high-quality nutrition, addressing issues of distribution and equity, including high-density nutrients from meat and milk, especially for young children and undernourished populations”.
• Sixth, “Beware of elusive promises of quick-fix alternatives, whether of industrially produced meat or milk substitutes or alternative land uses that exclude livestock and people..bringing pastoralists and other low-input, extensive livestock producers – and the organisations that represent them – into global debates on climate change and the future of food systems.”

Read the entire report by clicking the link below:

Watch this two-minute report primer video.