Animals in Agroecosystems - Agroecology: The Ecology of Sustainable Food Systems - page 283

economy, change must occur at the three levels of pro-
duction, distribution, and consumption.

TABLE 19.2
A Comparison of Three Livestock Production
Systems in Ecological and Social terms

Production

Throughout, this chapter has supported the idea that pro-
ducing meat, milk, and eggs in integrated farming systems
is more sustainable than producing the same products in
specialized, single-purpose, industrial systems. But it is unre-
alistic to expect all the animal protein in human diets world-
wide to come from such systems. Therefore, it is important
to mention two universally applicable principles for the
more-sustainable production of animal protein:

Degree of
plant-animal
Integration

Need for
External
Inputs

Potential for
Social Equity

Mixed
crop-livestock
systems

High Low;

system
partially
closed

High potential
for poverty
alleviation,
reduction of
risk, and
gender equality

Extensive
grazing
systems

High Low;

system
partially
closed

Va r i a b l e ,
depending
on scale

• Energetically speaking, animals vary in the effi-

ciency with which they convert plant food into
animal protein. Producing chicken flesh,
chicken eggs, and bovine milk are three of the
most efficient ways to convert plant biomass
into animal protein. Sustainability, therefore,
depends on shifting the focus of animal produc-
tion toward chicken flesh, eggs, and milk and
away from the flesh of cattle.

Industrial
confinement
systems

Low High;

system
open

Low

LIVESTOCK AND FOOD SYSTEM
SUSTAINABILITY

• There is a significant difference between feeding

beef and dairy cattle processed grain and feeding
them plant biomass that humans can't eat. The
former is an extremely inefficient use of arable
land and requires a much larger fossil-fuel sub-
sidy. In a sustainable food system, therefore, all
ruminants used for meat or milk production
would be range-fed. Similarly, all hogs would
be fed mostly on food and crop wastes.

Integrating livestock and crop production carries with it a
wide variety of benefits to farms, farmers, developing
countries, the agricultural landscape, and the environment
in general, as the preceding section clearly demonstrates.
It offers means of reversing many of the trends currently
undermining the ecological and social-system foundations
of agriculture. Increasing crop-livestock integration,
therefore, is a key element of moving toward greater sus-
tainability of the global food system. But in doing so, we
face a huge challenge, because the momentum of change
is in the other direction.
To better understand this challenge, we need to look
at livestock production generally, in the context of the
whole food system. This gets us into issues that go beyond
farm-level integration of livestock and crops. It is not the
intention of this chapter to delve into these issues in any
detail, but noting them briefly here will prepare the ground
for their further discussion in Section IV.

Consumption

The growth of confined animal feeding operations
(CAFOs), and the disintegration of livestock and crop pro-
duction generally, is driven largely by a rapidly increasing
demand for meat and other animal products worldwide.
People in developed countries are already eating more
meat than they have ever eaten before, and every year, they
eat even more. At the same time, people in developing
countries are trying to match the prodigious meat con-
sumption of their developed-country counterparts.
While it is beyond the scope of this chapter to address
this issue, we must be aware that the trend toward more
meat-intensive diets may be the single most serious barrier
to creating a more sustainable food system. There is no
question, therefore, that per capita meat consumption must
be reduced. At the same time, the meat that is eaten must
be produced in a way that minimizes its negative impacts.
This means eating less beef and pork and relying more on
poultry, milk, and eggs. It means preferring meat from
animals fed in integrated and pasture systems over meat
from animals raised in CAFOs (Figure 19.12).

E LEMENTS OF A M ORE S USTAINABLE
A NIMAL P ROTEIN E CONOMY

A thorough examination of the role of animals in the
global food system would find serious problems at every
level, from production to consumption. Livestock are
raised in energetically wasteful and ecologically damaging
ways; the products derived from them reach consumers
only after traveling long distances; and at the consumer
end, high demand for these products drives the whole
system. To move toward a more sustainable animal protein