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Summary sustainable assesment of animal systems
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Includes all information provided during the lectures and the theory of the practicals. It partially includes the LCA calculations and NBA calculations.
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Sustainable assessment of animal systems• Assess the contribution of innovations to sustainable development of livestock production;
• To quantify impact of an innovation on environment, animal welfare and livelihood;
• To choose between and apply various methods that can be used to evaluate innovations.
Environmental impact
What is the impact of an innovation on the environment, animal welfare or livelihood of the
system?
• Innovation: A small thing (feed change) or something bigger. It is a novel idea practice or product
that brings about a significant improvement in performance etc.
• The animal welfare, livelihood and environment affect each other → what is the impact of a
different animal welfare on the environment or livelihood?
• Innovations can be different things: (slower growing broilers, Kipster concept, use insects and
larvae, use of waste products).
Why are we working on the innovations?
There is only one planet and growing world population, lack of resources, climate change, politic
aspects, stop of using animal sourced food (ASF) products. How to keep the animals? → political and
societal debates.
Application of manure
In the past, above-ground application was used for manure application. Nowadays the manure is
released into the soil. Tradeoffs (disadvantages) of this practice are:
• Cutting the swat → less biodiversity.
• The N is not released into the air but might be leaking into the soil → N leakage.
• The machinery is more expensive
• The machinery have a higher weight → clumped soil and effect on the soil.
AF = artificial fertilizer
→ There can always be negative effects on differences in the system. ,
Sustainable development: Development that meets the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
• The needs are compromised by limitations → needs can go beyond the limitations → development
of the 3 P’s: planet, people and profit which are connected to each other.
2 approaches for sustainable development:
1. People, planet and profit
,The 3 P’s were transformed to environmental sustainability, social sustainability and economic
sustainability. The 3 p’s are equal important. This concept say that all three domains are equally
important.
1. Social sustainable: Focuses on the need to put people first in development processes. Food
security, food safety, human health risks, labor circumstances, animal welfare and equity.
There are two types of social sustainability:
a. Internal social sustainability: Issues related to working conditions for the farmer and
employees;
b. External social sustainability: Issues related to the societal impact of agriculture on
the wellbeing of people and animals.
2. Economic sustainability: Implies balance expenditures and revenues so that a system
can sustain and includes issues of profitability, volatility and employability.
3. Environmental sustainability: Implies living within the carrying capacity of the earth or using
natural resources in economies or societies at a rate not exceeding their regenerative and
absorptive capacity (including climate change, acidification, depletion of fossil fuels or
biodiversity loss).
2. Planet’s perspective
We need to keep the planet healthy and use it proper → foraging economies and society. The
planet is most important, then the society and when the society is healthy, there can be worked on a
proper economy → unequal domains.
Impact of food systems
• The green part is food production → major impact on the environment. Agriculture is almost for
80% contributing to eutrophication.
• Dark green is the environmental impact related to animal sourced food production, which has
overall more impact than other foods (crop production, light green).
Food production: Huge environmental impact via emission to air, water and soil. ASF has the
larges impact, contributing to climate change, acidification, water pollution and biodiversity.
• Livestock competes for scarce resources (land, water, fossil energy, fossil phosphorus).
• Crop production uses more water compared to livestock.
Feed production: Related to environmental issues (CO2 and CH4 emission) → climate change,
eutrophication by leaching of manure and other fertilizers through the soil, phosphate rock use.
Concerns about animal production systems include zoonoses, Q-fever, better animal welfare (is it ok
to remove calves from dairy cattle directly after birth?), landscape → bio industry (mega stall). Food
systems – in their dynamic complexity and via their links to every aspect of our physical, political
cultural and moral lives – connect some of the most pressing and existential challenges of our time.
• Increased demand of ASF expected due to growth of human population → more environmental
and societal concerns.
, → Change is needed → innovations for all problems which are caused is needed (lack of
resources, climate change, social pressure, pressure on animal welfare).
Impact of innovation on the environment
• Change something to benefit the system, understanding the impact of innovations on diverse issues
of sustainability is important for transparent societal and political debate about future options and
limitations of sustainable animal production systems.
Innovations make a positive change (new housing system, different breeds, use of insects or larvae,
waste products as feed for animals).
Use of resources and emission of pollutants
Production and consumption of food → use of natural resources and emission to air, water and soil.
The environmental problems can be local, regional or global.
1. Use of natural resources
• Non-renewable natural resources (e.g., fossil fuels, phosphate, zinc): Finite sources, they
cannot be readily replaced by natural means at a quick enough pace to keep up with consumption.
→ depletion and environmental damage → important to use resources efficient.
o Combustion of fossil energy → CO2 emission.
o Hard to find renewable alternatives for phosphate and zinc → efficient use of resources is
essential.
• Renewable natural resources (e.g., water, fish stocks, soils) are used. in sustainable world, you
don’t take more than that the renewable stock can regenerate.
o Current risk: Overexploitation of renewable sources (Fish stock depletion, soil erosion) → use
soil in regenerative way + limit land-use change
▪ Land use change → deforestation → biodiversity loss.
▪ Livestock contributes to biodiversity loss due to emission to air, water and soil.
2. Emission to the air, water and soil
Land use change
Increasing pressure on land → agriculture is expanding on natural vegetation (forest) → large CO2 and
N2O emission as forests and grounds contain large amounts of C. These type of emission are one-
time-or-none emissions.
There are 2 methods to assign one-time-or-none emissions to different agricultural sectors:
1. All land use for agricultural production has a share in deforestation and their emissions.
Each ha land gets equal share in emission of worldwide deforestation → impact of land-use is
telling how much emissions are allocated to production system.
▪ Organic farmer had higher land-use and would get a higher share of emissions related to
deforestation.
2. Products that are cultivated that used to be forest get allocated all the emissions.
▪ Soy fields: production system with a lot of soy in the diet would get more emissions
compared to the organic system mainly using on-farm land to produce feed.
, Renewable and absorptive capacity
Renewable capacity: Capacity to recycle a resource (wood, nutrients, fossil fuels). If we exceed the
regenerative capacity → resource becomes depleted.
Regenerative capacity: Capacity of a resource to regenerate itself.
• Resources which should be sustained: phosphate rock, fossil fuels, zinc.
Absorptive capacity: The maximum amount of (waste) material that can be naturally absorbed by
the environment without causing environmental damage. Exceeding absorptive capacity → natural
imbalance → climate change (CO2, CH4, N2O), acidification and eutrophication.
Environmental problems caused by food production are:
1. Climate change/global warming;
2. Eutrophication;
3. Acidification;
4. Human and ecotoxicity
Climate change/global warming
The main greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) are:
1. CO2 (carbon dioxide): Results from the production and combustion of fossil fuels, and land
use change (deforestation) → CO2 is stored in the forests and plants → after logging the CO2 is
released into the air.
2. CH4 (methane): Results from enteric fermentation of ruminants, manure management →
anaerobic fermentation of carbohydrates.
3. N2O (nitrous oxide): Potent (strong) GHG → contributes way more than CO2 in the same
amount to climate change and GHG emission.
o Emission of N2O (denitrification).
• Climate change: Methane emission by cows, food production, eutrophication → nutrient
leakage, phosphate rock.
o Climate change is important because it causes extreme weather conditions (rain), rising sea
water, air pollution.
o CO2, CH4, N2O
• Global warming: Energy is reflected back into the atmosphere but GHG absorbs that energy and
re-emits it in all directions which warms the earth’s surface. This leads to extreme weather, air
pollution, biodiversity loss, rising sea levels.
o Global warming is increased by fossil fuel burning and deforestation by increasing GHG
emission.
• Global warming potential (GWP): The ratio between the increased infrared absorption it
causes and the increased infrared absorption caused by 1 kg of CO2.
o Methane has shorter lifetime, is broken down into CO2 in a few decades. Radiating force is
much higher in comparison with CO2. The GWP of methane over 100 year is 28.
o CO2 builds up in the atmosphere;
o Methane leads to very high global warming potential and balances after some decades.
CO2-e = 1 * CO2 + 28 * CH4 + 265 * N2O
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