What management options to increase animal nutrition and ecosystemic services? | Quelles stratégies de gestion pour accroître la nutrition animale et les services écosystémiques ?

International audience

Inglés. The global livestock industry is faced with myriad sustainability challenges relating to the animal-sourced food (ASF) production. In a contemporary utopia, every system would produce ASF with low GHG emissions; high animal welfare, soil health and biodiversity; in a culturally acceptable manner and at an affordable economic cost to the consumer. However, few systems are close to achieving this balance. One of the greatest benefits of grazing livestock systems is the ability to convert human-inedible forages into milk or meat, producing food from land that is unsuitable for cultivation. Well-managed grazing also sequesters carbon into soil, maintains traditional landscapes and improves soil quality and health. However, extensive grazing systems often have higher greenhouse gas emissions. Given the international focus on climate change, these systems may therefore be disadvantaged. Herbivores evolved over thousands of years to live in tandem with billions of vertebrate and invertebrate species. Although modern farming practices have disrupted this link to some degree, many species still rely on grazing livestock to provide suitable habitats and food sources. These vary from wading birds that depend on cattle to keep the grass short enough for ground-nesting in Scotland; to the 500 species of dung beetles in Australia. Livestock production should therefore follow the three pillars of the OneHealth concept-healthy livestock, producing food to nourish healthy people, within a healthy ecosystem health. A clear imperative exists to measure impacts on ecosystem health and to develop nature-based solutions. However, this is not an easy task-there are billions of different herbivorous systems worldwide, all with different climates, breeds, terrains, cultures and communities. Where biodiversity schemes and metrics exist, they are often in their infancy or region/system-specific, yet the need exists to, for example, compare the ecosystem services and opportunities of a smallholder farm in Kenya to a large-scale dairy in the USA. This is further compounded by the complexities of changing human behaviour, both by producers changing their focus from livestock yields to a dual-focus on livestock and ecosystem yields; and consumers in placing greater economic value on products with high ecosystem characteristics. It is therefore necessary to: (1) Recognise sustainability trade-offs and priorities-improving biodiversity may be seen as less important if animal health is poor or food security impaired, yet incremental win-wins may produce exponential improvements. (2) Identify mechanisms and management practices to rebuild and improve ecosystem health, accounting for consumption and climate trends. These should provide multifactorial benefits, and be both applicable and adoptable. (3) Develop metrics, standards and key performance indicators (KPI) that allow quantification of the current status and future gains. (4) Incentivise farmers to change practices and improve ecosystem KPI. (5) Effectively communicate producers' dedication to ecosystem health to consumers, government and stakeholders.