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Defining a land boundary for sustainable livestock consumption
Open accessAbstract
The need for more sustainable production and consumption of animal source food (ASF) is central to the achievement of the sustainable development goals: within this context, wise use of land is a core challenge and concern. A key question in feeding the future world is: how much ASF should we eat? We demonstrate that livestock raised under the circular economy concept could provide a significant, nonnegligible part (9–23 g/per capita) of our daily protein needs (~50–60 g/per capita). This livestock then would not consume human‐edible biomass, such as grains, but mainly convert leftovers from arable land and grass resources into valuable food, implying that production of livestock feed is largely decoupled from arable land. The availability of these biomass streams for livestock then determines the boundaries for livestock production and consumption. Under this concept, the competition for land for feed or food would be minimized and compared to no ASF, including some ASF in the human diet could free up about one quarter of global arable land. Our results also demonstrate that restricted growth in consumption of ASF in Africa and Asia would be feasible under these boundary conditions, while reductions in the rest of the world would be necessary to meet land use sustainability criteria. Managing this expansion and contraction of future consumption of ASF is essential for achieving sustainable nutrition security.
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“in order for organic production to be a viable option for feeding the world, production and consumption of animalsource foods must be both significantly reduced and transformed to reduce the use of feeds which compete with food (Muller et al. 2018; van Zanten et al. 2018; Willett et al. 2019).”
From Delivering “less but better” meat in practice—a case study of a farm in agroecological transition (2022) · cites this paper as van Zanten et al. 2018
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“As it is undesirable to increase meat production from a sustainability perspective (Röös et al. 2017; van Zanten et al. 2018; Willett et al. 2019)”
From Delivering “less but better” meat in practice—a case study of a farm in agroecological transition (2022) · cites this paper as van Zanten et al. 2018
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“Ruminant livestock can play a positive role in this regard by transforming inedible biomass into highly nutritious food, but only when limited to land that is unsuitable for cropping (so that arable land can be used for direct food production) or fed waste streams from food production (Mottet et al. 2017; van Zanten et al. 2018).”
From Delivering “less but better” meat in practice—a case study of a farm in agroecological transition (2022) · cites this paper as van Zanten et al. 2018
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“Hence, ruminants can graze pastureland that is unsuitable for growing crops for human consumption, thus contributing to food security without competing for cropland (Van Zanten et al., 2018).”
From Time-dependent climate impact of beef production – can carbon sequestration in soil offset enteric methane emissions? (2022) · cites this paper as Van Zanten et al., 2018
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Self-citation
Metadata
- Authors
- Van Zanten, H. H. E., Herrero, M., Van Hal, O., Röös, E., Muller, A., Garnett, T., Gerber, P. J., Schader, C., & De Boer, I. J. M.
- Affiliations
- Animal Production Systems Group Wageningen University & Research Wageningen the Netherlands
- Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (AU)
- Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SE)
- Research Institute of Organic Agriculture Frick Switzerland
- University of Oxford (GB)
- Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (IT)
- Forschungsinstitut für Biologischen Landbau (CH)
- ORCID
- Venue
- Global Change Biology
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2018-06-11
- Volume
- 24
- Issue
- 9
- Pages
- 4185-4194
- ISSN
- 1354-1013 (ISSN-L)
- 1365-2486
- OpenAlex
- W2804166887
- Cited by
- 406
- References
- 44
- Citations by year
- 2026: 51 · 2025: 57 · 2024: 51 · 2023: 54 · 2022: 65 · 2021: 63 · 2020: 30 · 2019: 28 · 2018: 7
- FWCI
- 3.38
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Global Change Biology (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Epsilon Open Archive (Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet biblioteket (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences)) (acceptedVersion)
- Socio-Environmental Systems Modeling (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Repository for Publications and Research Data (ETH Zurich) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- ETH Zürich Research Collection (cc-by)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Ecology › Agriculture Sustainability and Environmental Impact
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics › Agriculture and Rural Development Research
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Food Science › Agricultural and Food Production Studies
- Keywords
- animal source foods, livestock consumption, sustainable land use, circular economy, arable land, protein requirements, Sustainable Development Goals
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Animal Feed, Animal Husbandry, Cattle, Diet, Food Supply, Livestock
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