Emerging livestock science and technologies can drastically alter the projections of global food security models.

Abstract

With the projected increase in the global population and food demand on a planet in climate crisis, the debate about the role of livestock continues to intensify. Animals farmed for food are both victims and contributors of climate change (CC), with animals suffering from heat stress due to CC but also being major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). Livestock studies have demonstrated that novel breeding technologies could partly mitigate these negative effects, yet their wider implications for food security and the socio-economy are not well investigated yet. In this proof-of-concept study, we incorporate (1) the effects of heat stress on livestock's productivity and feed efficiency and (2) the use of genomic selection as a recently established novel breeding technology, into a global macroeconomic projection model (GMPM) to evaluate their broader impacts on food security. We find that both effects can drastically alter the model projections. In particular, the results suggest that novel breeding technologies can substantially mitigate the adverse effects of CC on production, food availability, land use, and GHG emissions, whilst also causing implications for the labour market. The study demonstrates the importance of integrating advances in livestock science and technology into GMPMs for better projections that inform livestock management, policy and consumer decision-making, requiring closer collaboration between livestock scientists and systems modellers.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s43621-026-04101-z.