Livestock in the Food Debate - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 507

the economic advantages of a growing industry, driven by market forces and consumer
demand. Large numbers of smallholder farmers, both in the developed and developing
world have been left out from the food revolution (Catley 2008). Especially in develop-
ing countries, livestock production remains a small-scale, low input-low output produc-
tion system. The transition from agrarian to industrial society in developing and many
emerging economies has been markedly uneven, with consequences for nutritional
insecurity and health. The gap between rich and poor has assumed a new dimension.
Because of the plenty, the global number of overweight people has surpassed the num-
ber of the undernourished. Global nutritional inequality is rising; the world—including
poor nations—is increasingly faced with a double burden of malnutrition co-existing
with obesity (FAO, 2012a). The industrialization of food production fills granaries and
stomachs of the wealthy but leaves those of the poor empty (Sahn, this volume).
The livestock sector has undergone radical structural changes in the last 30 years,
especially in developed nations. Animal rearing practices have been shaped by consum-
ers` demands not only for quantities but also affordability and quality, such as lean and
safe meat. Intensive animal production has been divorced from its natural environment
and concentrated in industrial animal farms, in order to increase land use efficiency,
and leave space for expanding cities and crop fields. This is the industrialization of the
livestock sector.
Some of the slighting of the sector in developing countries and development planning
result from the inefficiency of the preindustrial ways of managing livestock. Production
of animal products and draft power is a very inefficient process (Trivedi 2008). Given
the attention increasingly being paid to a global food crisis, inefficient use of scarce agri-
cultural lands is harder to defend. Even if the average price at a United States super-
market of 1L of high quality pasteurized whole milk (0.62-0.75/pint) does not differ
from the one of a 1kg of carrots (0.66-0.75/lb.) or yellow onions (0.75/lb.), there is a
basic difference between vegetables and animals. Based on a purely input-output ratio, a
field of cows produces fewer nutrients than a field of vegetables—or, more importantly,
grain, such as that used to feed animals. Animal breeding offers partial answers. Like
car manufacturers, animal breeding keeps making engines more efficient. But certain
engines are more efficient than others. For instance, chickens are more efficient than
pigs and pigs are more efficient than beef and dairy cattle. Animals farmed intensively
are subject to the same efficiency limitations posed by the second law of thermodynam-
ics. Only part of the energy contained in feeds is converted into a useful produce, the
rest is wasted as heat, much like an incandescent light bulb.
Biological inefficiency, market prices, consumers´ demand for lean meat, quality milk
and safe food have forced animal keepers first in the North, and now increasingly in
middle-income economies of countries such as Brazil, Russia, and China to: (1) inten-
sify production to benefit from economies of scale along the value chains, (2) concen-
trate animals in large units, to reduce land costs and space, and energy-using animal
movements, and to improve disease control, (3) move close to urban centers to save on
transport for input supply and marketing of the produce, (4) focus on a few highly effi-
cient breeds of animals to maximize the food conversion into meat, milk, and eggs. This