Note: This is a first attempt to create a wiki page on livestock and climate change from the food sovereignty perspective.
Livestock and Climate Change
Intensive livestock production is responsible for the majority of agriculture's contribution to climate change. While deforestation/land use change, enteric fermentation, and manure have all been identified as causes, land use change is by far the biggest contributor: land use change for animal feed production alone contributes 7% of total global greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). There are important regional differences: in Brazil, for instance, the contribution of livestock to greenhouse gases is estimated at 60% of the national total, if land use change related emissions are factored in. Ruminant livestock (cattle, goats, sheep, camelids, yaks etc) produce methane that makes proportionally a much higher contribution to GHGs than CO2. There are trade-offs between ruminant methane production and livestock keepers’ contribution to climate change mitigation through the sustainable management of their animals in rangelands and through retention and nutrient recycling of nitrogen compounds (another contributor to GHGs) in well-composted manure for crop production.
Livestock production is especially crucial to the billion rural poor who are supported by livestock, a significant number of whom depend on common property resources to sustain their animals. Livestock are the world’s largest user of land (30 percent of the world’s land surface area). Commercial livestock production contributes 40% of the world’s gross value of agricultural production.
Industrial livestock production, which threatens the livelihoods of small-scale producers, is responsible for more and more of the livestock products that people consume – driven by a spiral of increased levels of demand. These are the result of a combination of lower prices through the externalisation of environmental, welfare and social costs and oversupply – a system favoured by international financing institutions and aid agencies in their mission of implementing a development paradigm based on economic growth. Since these increases in demand are an effect of unsustainable, increased supply, they should not be used to justify the intensification of animal husbandry and aquaculture.
As intensive supply-driven livestock production is aggressively promoted – increasingly in developing countries – there is increasing consumption that may cause health, environmental and social problems This model of production is rapidly spreading to all countries with a shift away from grazing and higher demand for feed and fodder crops. Cultivation of feed crops, e.g. soya, is a driver of deforestation of tropical rainforest. According to one estimate about one third of the world's arable land is used for growing crops to feed livestock, and this proportion could increase.
The industrial production of livestock is not only a major contributor to climate change; it also destroys livelihoods, abuses rights and destroys diversity, thereby accelerating the food crisis.
Source: [Terra Preta background document on production models]http://www.foodsovereignty.org/public/terrapreta/Terra_Preta-models-EN.doc