Livestock and livelihoods

Feeding the world's projected population of nine billion people in 2050 is not optional – but how to feed this population remains a question. And when the challenge of sustainability is added to this necessity, the predicted outcome is even less clear.

Historically, the global livestock sector has been an important driver of both economic growth and food security. Scientific advances since the 1960s have led to a quadrupling of global livestock production. Commercial production aside, livestock for two-thirds of the 2.1 billion households living on less than $2 dollars a day is critical to livelihoods. Livestock ownership offers households a source of animal protein, improved purchasing power (from sales of milk, meat, eggs, and manure), and a mobile, inflation-resistant store of wealth, draft power, fertiliser, and fuel (from the burning of manure). Because of its many benefits to livelihoods, livestock as a key ‘pathway out of poverty’ has underpinned development praxis since the 1980s. Most national development plans across Africa include the livestock sector as a crucial means of economic growth.

The role livestock play in safeguarding food and livelihood security is particularly important to policymakers in the developing economies. Livestock-keeping creates a more robust livelihood strategy by diversifying income and acting as a source of financial capital that decreases vulnerability to shocks from ill health, crop failures, and other risks. Simply put, livestock-keeping can help households escape poverty and prevent declines into poverty.

Livestock and climate change

Yet the public discourse from the industrially developed economies is clear: livestock in an era of climate change are unsustainable. Commercial livestock production, in particular, has large animal welfare and resource implications.