Livestock's Long Shadow

Livestock's Long Shadow

Livestock's Long Shadow - Environmental Issues and Options is a United Nations report, released by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) on 29 November 2006, that "aims to assess the full impact of the livestock sector on environmental problems, along with potential technical and policy approaches to mitigation".

The assessment was based on the most recent and complete data available, taking into account direct impacts, along with the impacts of feed crop agriculture required for livestock production. The report states that the livestock sector is one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global. The findings of this report suggest that it should be a major policy focus when dealing with problems of land degradation, climate change and air pollution, water shortage and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity.

Based on this report, senior U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization official Dr. Henning Steinfeld stated that the meat industry is “one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems" and that "urgent action is required to remedy the situation."

Following a Life Cycle Analysis approach, the report evaluates "that livestock are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, a bigger share than that of transport.". GHG emissions arise from feed production (e.g. chemical fertilizer production, deforestation for pasture and feed crops, cultivation of feed crops, feed transport and soil organic matter losses in pastures and feed crops), animal production (e.g. enteric fermentation and methane and nitrous oxide emissions from manure) and as a result of the transportation of animal products. Following this approach the report estimates that livestock contributes to about 9% of total anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions, but 37% of methane and 65% of nitrous oxide emissions. Along the animal food chain, main sources of emissions are:

• Land use and land use change: 2.5 Giga tonnes CO₂ equivalent; including forest and other natural vegetation replaced by pasture and feed crop in the Neotropics (CO₂) and carbon release from soils such as pasture and arable land dedicated to feed production (CO₂)
• Feed Production (except carbon released from soil): 0.4 Giga tonnes CO₂ equivalent, including fossil fuel used in manufacturing chemical fertilizer for feed crops (CO₂) and chemical fertilizer application on feedcrops and leguminous feed crop (N₂O, NH₃)
• Animal production: 1.9 Giga tonnes CO₂ equivalent, including enteric fermentation from ruminants (CH₄) and on-farm fossil fuel use (CO₂)
• Manure Management: 2.2 Giga tonnes CO₂ equivalent, mainly through manure storage, application and deposition (CH₄, N₂O, NH₃)
• Processing and international transport: 0.03 Giga tonnes CO₂ equivalent