FAO: more fuel for the food/feed debate
The GLEAM study shows that feed rations are very diverse across production systems and regions, and that 86% of livestock feed is not suitable for human consumption.
In 2050, the world will count 9.6 billion people, 70% living in cities with an average income almost twice as high as today. As a result, global demand for animal products will continue to grow and play a critical role in global food security and nutrition.
But livestock use a large share of agricultural land and are often considered a resource drain. Particularly criticized is the low efficiency of livestock to convert feed into human edible protein and the competition for the use of cereals as livestock feed or for direct human food.
Food from animal sources contributes 18% of global calories consumption and 25% of global protein consumption (FAOSTAT, 2016). But it also makes an important contribution to food security through the provision of high-quality protein and a variety of micronutrients, e.g. vitamin A, vitamin B-12, riboflavin, calcium, iron and zinc that can be locally difficult to obtain in adequate quantities from plant-source foods alone (Randolph et al., 2007; Murphy and Allen, 2003).
Livestock’s contribution goes beyond the production of meat, milk and eggs, and a number of factors determine their overall impact on food security (Gerber et al., 2015). Positive contributions include:
(1) the direct supply of essential macro- and micro-nutrients;
(2) the contribution of domesticated animals to agricultural productivity through manure and draught power; and
(3) the income generated by livestock production at household and national level.
Potentially negative contributions to food security include:
(1) animal feed rations containing resources that can also serve as human food;
(2) the fact that animal feed may be produced on land suitable for human food production; and
(3) the relatively low efficiency of animals in converting feed into human-edible products.
A study led by FAO and published in Global Food Security aims to inform the debate on the contribution of animal production to food security (Mottet et al., 2017). The methodology relies first on a feed classification that considers whether each feed material is edible or produced on a land that could be used to grow human-edible plants.
