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Towards resilient, inclusive, sustainable livestock farming systems

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journal contribution
posted on 2025-03-18, 01:52 authored by Franco Bilotto, Matthew HarrisonMatthew Harrison, Ronaldo Vibart, Alec Mackay, Karen Christie-WhiteheadKaren Christie-Whitehead, Carla Ferreira, Daniel Forster, Jinfeng Chang

Background: While livestock products comprise the cornerstone of food security, livestock managers face the dual challenge of adapting to a climate crisis and sustainably reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Climatic variability and extreme weather events impact the agri-food chain, hindering global agricultural productivity and threatening safe, nutritious, and affordable livestock products.

Scope and Approach: This review delves into five key aspects: (1) the cultural, socio-economic, and food security importance of livestock, (2) the impact of climatic, economic, and geopolitical shocks on the global livestock sector, (3) the livestock sector's role in climate change, (4) opportunities for transitioning to inclusive, sustainable livestock farming systems, and (5) prerequisites and transformative initiatives for the livestock sector.

Key Findings and Conclusions: Climatic, economic, and geopolitical shocks have increased, particularly affecting the poultry, dairy, and small ruminant sectors in the last three decades. These shocks have amplified risks of contravening tipping points. Low adaptive capacity and high vulnerability to the climate emergency demand place-based adaptation. Interventions reducing food waste and restoring tropical forests offer the greatest mitigation potential, while agrivoltaics and on-shore wind production appear most promising economically. Trade-offs between production, conservation, prosperity, and mitigation demand contextualization and co-design of innovations for credibility, legitimacy, and adoptability.

Funding

Sustainable pathways to CN30 : Meat and Livestock Australia | B.CCH.2121

History

Publication title

Trends in Food Science & Technology

Volume

152

Article number

104668

Pagination

1-16

eISSN

1879-3053

ISSN

0924-2244

Department/School

TIA - Research Institute, Ecology and Biodiversity

Publisher

Elsevier

Publication status

  • Published

Rights statement

© 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Socio-economic Objectives

190101 Climate change adaptation measures (excl. ecosystem), 190103 Social impacts of climate change and variability, 190102 Ecosystem adaptation to climate change, 190301 Climate change mitigation strategies, 159901 Carbon and emissions trading, 190502 Climate variability (excl. social impacts), 190501 Climate change models, 190302 Management of greenhouse gas emissions from animal production

UN Sustainable Development Goals

13 Climate Action, 2 Zero Hunger, 1 No Poverty, 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities, 10 Reduced Inequalities, 13 Climate Action, 15 Life on Land, 2 Zero Hunger, 3 Good Health and Well Being, 9 Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, 7 Affordable and Clean Energy