Climate-Smart Livestock Production (The Challenges)

Due to the explosion in population growth, the burden on livestock rearing has increased to feed more people than ever before in all of history. This has led to intensification in livestock production to meet the demands of the meat needs for the population.?

With this comes new challenges. Because of the increase in production, large number of resources are required to for adequate livestock production. Currently livestock production accounts for:

?? If we combine pastures used for grazing with land used to grow crops for animal feed, livestock accounts for 77% of global farming land (1).

?? It is estimated that livestock industries consume 8% of the global water supply, with most of that water being used for intensive, feed-based production (2).

?? Currently, roughly a third of cereal crop production is used as animal feed (3), with #cattle ingesting more than 1 billion tonnes of grain each year.

It also greatly contributes to the gases that cause #climatechange.?

??Total emissions from global livestock: 7.1 Gigatonnes of Co2-equiv per year, representing 14.5 percent of all anthropogenic GHG emissions (4).

??Cattle (raised for both beef and milk, as well as for inedible outputs like manure and draft power) are the animal species responsible for the most emissions, representing about 65% of the livestock sector’s emissions (1).

Wider #environmental issues include the degradation of grazing land due to problems such as overgrazing (in the US, livestock is responsible for over 50% of erosion), as well as pollution from animal wastes, #veterinary residues, and runoff from pesticides/fertilisers used to grow feed crops (in the US, livestock production is responsible for 37% of pesticide and 50% of antibiotic use).

These are some of the challenges with livestock production.?

www.livestock247.com?

#livestock247 #livestockfarming #livestockchallenges #smartagriculture #climatesmartlivestockproduction #livestockproduction

References:?

1) https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture#:~:text=If%20we%20combine%20pastures%20used,77%25%20of%20global%20farming%20land.?

2) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21309458/?

3) https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-11219903/Cereal-crops-fish-used-animal-feed-provide-food-BILLION-people-study-suggests.html?

4) https://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/197623/icode/