The value of livestock production systems and ecosystem services

Abstract

As humans, we are obligated to ensure that our methods to achieve and maintain a food-security infrastructure are compatible with the landscapes that we use. We are aware and reminded daily that carelessly implemented agricultural practices can permanently harm landscapes and the inherent ecosystem services (benefits). Therefore, we must always strive to create those agricultural systems that balance the need to ensure adequate food production to meet the nutrition demands of a growing population with the duty to value and maintain the land’s ecological attributes. But, herein we find the dilemma. To what extent do we utilize a landscape for food production at the expense of other ecosystem services? Furthermore, should humans abandon long-proven sustainable agricultural systems to return popularized ecosystem services to the landscape? These are but a few of the many related questions that challenge the world’s political systems and leaders in determining how to feed a growing world population in years to come. I invite you to reflect on these questions as you read this issue of Animal Frontiers, which focuses on “Land-Use Challenges for Animal Agriculture.” What we know to be constant across the world is the need for nutritious foods and the importance of ecological benefits inherent to the grazing lands we use. However, the political views within and across the world’s nations of how these questions should be answered are controversial and diverse, which posed some challenge in addressing land use and animal agriculture on a worldwide basis in this issue of Animal Frontiers. Therefore, in our approach, we begin with a broad introductory view of land-use solutions and challenges of animal agriculture worldwide and then focus in on regional and national issues. We start with Duru and colleagues (2015), where the authors present an analytical framework that considers livestock system complexity and facilitates identification of critical relationships between social dynamics, land use, environmental impacts, and ecosystem services. In the framework, livestock systems are conceptualized as social-ecological systems to account for how the social system determines land use and ecosystem services. Furthermore, the framework emphasizes two main pathways of ecological modernization of livestock systems: managing input efficiency to decrease negative environmental impacts or managing biodiversity to increase ecosystem services. The authors summarize the framework as “…an intermediary object to support stakeholders in structured design and assessment processes to identify main issues of current livestock systems and the characteristics of possible sustainable pathways” (Duru et al., 2015). As you read the subsequent articles, I encourage you to reflect on this paper and the emphasis that Duru et al. (2015) place on cooperative-stakeholder input, biodiversity, and ecosystem services as components of sustainable livestock systems. Tolleson and Meiman (2015) provide a global overview of various situations where land use by livestock agriculturalists is in conflict or competition with other land-use needs (agricultural and nonagricultural), ideologies, and governmental actions. The authors demonstrate that some land-use challenges are the direct result of livestock producers’ choices and production practices while other issues are due to the views of the populace and consumers about the role and place of grazing livestock production in today’s world. The authors also present areas where grazing livestock production could expand by integrating or establishing partnerships with nonagricultural groups or agencies to use livestock as tool for land management. Complementary to the article of Duru et al. (2015), Tolleson and Meiman (2015) further highlight the necessity for livestock producers to engage, consider, and/or interact with society by concluding that “The need to mitigate negative impacts, enhance positive impacts,