Examining the role of ruminants in sustainable food systems

Abstract

Sustainable food systems provide food security while stewarding economic, social, and environmental bases in ways to meet future generations' needs. Sustainable food systems encompass the health of animals, people, and ecosystems. Healthy and productive ruminants can produce meat and milk products with fewer resources, and consequently, often fewer greenhouse gas emissions are produced. Ruminant livestock faces the dual challenge of being impacted by and contributing to climate change, while also experiencing increased demand for ruminant meat and milk products due to growing global population and increased incomes. This challenge presents different ways forward depending upon solutions and how one values certain aspects of sustainability, ranging from simply building upon past improvements in ruminant agriculture to dramatic reductions in ruminant livestock populations. Better understanding the concerns with ruminant's role in sustainable food systems is important, as is understanding the different viewpoints and interpretation of evidence both for and against ruminant agriculture. This review provides a brief overview of some of the key issues related to the role ruminant animals play in sustainable food systems, including greenhouse gas emissions, feed-food competition and land use, and human nutrition. The review also highlights how improved animal health outcomes can enhance ruminants' role in sustainable food systems. Ultimately, ruminants make unique contributions to human flourishing via providing nutrition, livelihoods, and ecosystem services from forage resources and grassland landscapes. However, the status quo is unlikely to meet the challenges of the coming decades, thus investing in research and development into sustainable ruminant systems is required.