The contribution of animal production to agricultural sustainability

Abstract

International audienceDue to the increasing demand for animal products for a growing world population, use of a large amount of feed ingredients in competition with human food coup led with the urgent need for mitigating environmental effects, livestock farming has to transform. New mo dels of sustainability, that are acceptable to all stakeholders, must be explored. Reducing negative environmental impacts of various agricultural practices is a major global challenge. However, to avoid making inappropriate decisions, sustainability should be understood and addressed by combining indicators that are relevant at farm, country and world levels and not solely based on the emission of greenhouse gases. Sustainability has to go beyond productive efficiency, embracing eco-efficiency concepts and including social equity, and ethical dimensions of development. There is a large diversity of systems, from law-productive or extensive to high-productive or intensive, and countries are at different stages of development, from developing, fast developing to developed. Hence solutions are likely to be very different. Co-existence of different livestock production systems and addressing their sustainability using multiple indicators is a key to success