Zero hunger, zero emissions: UN outlines how livestock can lead the way

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation's food roadmap, launched on the sidelines of the big climate conference in Dubai, COP28, looks to set out in detail how the world can both feed a growing population and address climate change.

Specifically, the need is to feed a forecast 10 billion by 2050 where 735 million are undernourished today, without driving the planet past the 1.5 degree limit for global warming set by the Paris Agreement.

The latter will require reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050.

Ten priority areas are identified in the roadmap and livestock is at the top of the list.

The UN points to genetics, more extensive production, improved pastures, feed supplementing and new feeds like seaweed - all with the purpose of both improving productivity and reducing emissions.

It advocates increased soil carbon sequestration, restoring degraded pasture, protecting animal health through improved veterinary services and animal disease surveillance and integrated sylvopastoral systems.

It urges phasing out subsidies encouraging overgrazing, excessive use of antibiotics or production in environmentally inefficient locations.

Australia's beef industry is well down the path on all these measures.

The UN does, however, also advocate shifting from large to small ruminant animals for meat products, and from ruminant to monogastric animals, in particular chicken.

The roadmap's milestones ask that by 2030, methane emissions from the livestock sector are reduced by 25 per cent compared to 2020.

By 2050, it wants total factor productivity for livestock to have grown at 1.7pc per year globally.

It calls for all farmers and ranchers to have access to globally recognised solutions to monitor their GHG emissions by 2030.

While other priority areas in the food roadmap, such as the section on enabling healthy diets for all, talk about reducing red meat consumption in developed countries, the UN clearly identifies that over-consumption is matched by other parts of the world being desperately short of protein.

It identifies in some regions, livestock rearing should be intensified but in others the focus should be on environmental restoration. Some regions could benefit from using less chemical fertiliser, while other areas were not using enough.

Actions targeting the livestock sector should prioritise enhancing the efficiency of production, particularly among low-productivity producers, the UN argues.

The focus should aim at reducing land, water and energy usage per unit of consumable products by implementing an array of improved livestock management practices.

Livestock plays a vital economic role, supporting the livelihoods of around 1.7 billion poor people, the UN points out.

It serves as a crucial source of high-quality protein and essential micronutrients, and is vital for normal development and good health, especially within vulnerable or remote communities.

However, the sector directly contributes to 26pc of agrifood system emissions, which can rise to as much as half when factoring in both upstream (feed requirements) and downstream emissions.

Without interventions and productivity gains, the UN says meeting increased demand is likely to bring global livestock production emissions to nearly 9.1 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2050, an increase of more than 40pc.

The food roadmap says there's a significant disparity in carbon footprint within the sector per unit of production: emissions range from 295kg of CO2 equivalent per kilogram of beef to 31kg per kilogram of chicken eggs.

In the case of milk, emissions per unit of fat and protein corrected milk vary greatly among countries, ranging from below 2kg/CO2e to over 20 in less productive countries.

This offers a lot of opportunity to increase productivity and reduce emissions through technology diffusion, the UN argues.

The UN launched the food roadmap saying there is a critical need to prioritise agrifood systems not only to assure the right to food but also because the agrifood systems are the one that can improve the most in terms of reducing the burden to nature and climate.