From the editorThe contribution of

animal production to global food

security: Part 1
Livelihoods for poor owners and food for rich consumers
Maggie Gill
UK Department for International Development, 1 Palace Street, London SW1E 5HE
University of Aberdeen, ACES, 23 St Machar Drive, Aberdeen AB24 3UU.

The relationship between livestock and food security is often portrayed

by the media in emotional terms such as Go vegetarian to save the planet".
Yet the relationship is not so simple. There are positive impacts of livestock
on the planet, not the least in terms of the economy, with trade in live animals and animal products contributing 40% of the global value of agricultural
output (FAO, 2009), but also in terms of the 1 billion poor people in Africa
and Asia who depend on livestock for their livelihoods. The challenge is that
there are also negative impacts of livestock, and they tend to be good headline
grabbers!
I was pleased, therefore, to be invited to serve as guest editor of this issue
of Animal Frontiers, which focuses on the topic of food security, and thus to
have the opportunity to include papers about some of the lesser publicized
facts about livestock and food security. Not even a whole issue could cover
all aspects of that relationship, of course, and so I have been subjectively selective in the topics chosen. This is the first installment on food security; the
second installment will be published next July. This issue takes a high-level
perspective, exploring the relationship between people and animals (including fish) in developing countries, through trade and particularly in terms of
nutrition. It then looks ahead to the challenge of climate change and considers
how one traditional system (pastoralism) has evolved to cope with environmental instability. It ends with a paper on breeding strategies as an illustration
of how scientific advances can help the livestock sector to make the best use
of resources in a dynamic world. Part 2 will look in more detail at the contribution of other technological advances.
The paper by Smith et al. (2013) highlights, for example, the indirect
benefits of livestock to the food security of poor livestock owners through
income from the sale of their livestock products, enabling the purchase of
(cheaper) staple foods and thus improving the nutritional status of members
of the household, albeit not in the way many researchers expect! This contrast
of poor livestock owners providing the preferred food for richer consumers
is given a higher profile by the description of the food transition process by
Guyomard et al. (2013), who illustrate how the transition process (between
diets) in developing countries today is happening much faster than the earlier
but similar transition that took place in developed countries as those who
could afford to buy enough calories switched their dietary preferences from
cereals and vegetables to sugars, fats, and animal products. Salter (2013) then
Gill
doi:10.2527/af.2013-0001

discusses the evidence behind the common perception that high consumption
of animal products is invariably linked to increased risk of cardiovascular
disease, diabetes, and cancer. The evidence supports the perceptions for high
intakes of red and processed meat increasing health risks, but Salter points
out the more recent shifts to poultry and fat-reduced dairy products in many
developed countries, which have helped to mitigate some of that risk.
Fish, on the other hand, is generally seen as a healthy food source, which
like livestock products, can provide high quality protein and important micronutrients to those consuming low calorie diets, but without the same disadvantages at greater intakes. As noted by Muir (2013), some species are consumed by poor households, but there are also opportunities (as for livestock),
for poor households to trade fish for other commodities to improve the nutritional balance of both buyers and sellers. As for livestock, the demand for
fish products is increasing, with aquaculture meeting much of that response.
Farming of some fish species puts increased pressure on feed supplies, which
has resulted in an increase in the requirement for formulated feeds. This
growth is small, however, compared with the growth in requirement for feed
for livestock with slightly less than 50% of the extra billion tonnes of grain estimated to be required by 2050 (IAASTD, 2009) expected to be used to feed
livestock. The paper by Wheeler and Reynolds (2013) considers the potential
impact of climate change on the supply of forage and cereals for animal feeds,
highlighting risks to the quantity, quality, and volatility of feed supply chains.
These authors highlight the high dependence on soybean as a protein source:
soybeans provide 56% of global oilseed production and are a major export
product of, for example, Brazil. They highlight the future volatility of yields
of all crops including those used for feed and the uncertainty associated with
modelling climate change.
Livestock, however, do not just compete with humans for grain, but can
also produce food from land that could not sustain crop production. The
impact of uncertain weather on feed supplies is nothing new to pastoralists.
Krtli et al. (2013) highlight how pastoralism takes advantage of the inherent
instability of rangelands through strategic mobility to turn the instability
into an asset for food security. These authors reference the quantitative contribution of pastoralism to food security in a number of countries. They argue
for a policy shift away from replacing pastoralism towards further development of a system that is well adapted to climatic uncertainty.
The final paper addresses the issue of breeding strategies from the perspective of the private sector and focusing on pigs and poultry, which supply
approximately 38% of animal protein on a global basis. Neetson et al. (2013)

Animal Frontiers

provide an illustration of how the annual commercial improvement in the feed conversion ration of poultry saves a cumulative 1.85 million tonnes of feed per year. The
authors also point out how future breeding strategies will need to account for environmental as well as production goals, which is an important point on which to conclude.
There was not enough space in this issue to give serious attention to environmental
issues, but many other papers have addressed this issue in depth, and it is widely accepted that increased production of food from livestock and fish (as for all agricultural
products) must not be at the expense of the environment (e.g., FAO, 2009).

Literature Cited
FAO. 2009. The state of food and agriculture: Livestock in the balance. FAO, Rome.
Guyomard, H., S. Manceron, and J.-L. Peyraud. 2013. Trade in feed grains, animals, and animal products: current trends, future prospects, and main issues. Anim. Front. 3(1):1418.
IAASTD. 2009. Agriculture at a crossroads global report. Island Press, Washington, DC.
Krtli, S., C. Huelsebusch, S. Brooks, and B. Kaufmann. 2013. Pastoralism: a critical asset for
food security under global climate change. Anim. Front. 3(1):4250.
Muir, J. F. 2013. Fish, feeds, and food security. 2013. Anim. Front. 3(1):2834.
Neeteson-van Nieuwenhoven, A.-M., P. Knap, and S. Avendao. 2013. The role of sustainable
commercial pig and poultry breeding for food security. Anim. Front. 3(1):5257.
Salter, A. M. 2013. Impact of consumption of animal products on cardiovascular disease,
diabetes and cancer in developed countries. Anim. Front. 3(1):2027.
Smith, J., K. Sones, D. Grace, S. MacMillan, S. Tarawali, and M. Herrero. 2013. Beyond meat,
milk, and eggs: Livestocks role in food and nutrition security. Anim. Front. 3(1):613.
Wheeler, T. R., and C. K. Reynolds. 2013. Predicting the risks from climate change to forage and
crop production for animal feed. Anim. Front. 3(1):3641.

About the Author

Maggie Gill started her career as
a livestock nutritionist researching how to maximize meat and
milk production from forages.
Realizing that was contributing
to milk lakes and butter mountains in the 1980s, she switched
from temperate to tropical agriculture and also developed a
strong interest in how to reduce
the negative impact of livestock
on the environment, while making effective use of natural resources, including land. She worked for the Natural Resources
Institute from 1989 to 1996 and was the first Chief Executive of
Natural Resources International Ltd. from 1996 to 2000. From
2000 to 2006, Gill was Director of the Macaulay Land Use Research Institute, and from 2006 to 2011, Chief Scientific Adviser
for Rural Affairs and Environment in the Scottish Government.
She now works 30% for the UK Governments Department for International Development and 20% for the University of Aberdeen
and is a member of the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Researchs Independent Science and Partnership Council.
Correspondence: m.gill@abdn.ac.uk

January 2013, Vol. 3, No. 1