Review: Associations among goods, impacts and ecosystem services provided by livestock farming

Abstract

Livestock is a major driver in most rural landscapes and economics, but it also polarises debate over its environmental impacts, animal welfare and human health. Conversely, the various services that livestock farming systems provide to society are often overlooked and have rarely been quantified. The aim of analysing bundles of services is to chart the coexistence and interactions between the various services and impacts provided by livestock farming, and to identify sets of ecosystem services (ES) that appear together repeatedly across sites and through time. We review three types of approaches that analyse associations among impacts and services from local to global scales: (i) detecting ES associations at system or landscape scale, (ii) identifying and mapping bundles of ES and impacts and (iii) exploring potential drivers using prospective scenarios. At a local scale, farming practices interact with landscape heterogeneity in a multi-scale process to shape grassland biodiversity and ES. Production and various ES provided by grasslands to farmers, such as soil fertility, biological regulations and erosion control, benefit to some extent from the functional diversity of grassland species, and length of pasture phase in the crop rotation. Mapping ES from the landscape up to the EU-wide scale reveals a frequent trade-off between livestock production on one side and regulating and cultural services on the other. Maps allow the identification of target areas with higher ecological value or greater sensitivity to risks. Using two key factors (livestock density and the proportion of permanent grassland within utilised agricultural area), we identified six types of European livestock production areas characterised by contrasted bundles of services and impacts. Livestock management also appeared to be a key driver of bundles of services in prospective scenarios. These scenarios simulate a breakaway from current production, legislation (e.g. the use of food waste to fatten pigs) and consumption trends (e.g. halving animal protein consumption across Europe). Overall, strategies that combine a reduction of inputs, of the use of crops from arable land to feed livestock, of food waste and of meat consumption deliver a more sustainable food future. Livestock as part of this sustainable future requires further enhancement, quantification and communication of the services provided by livestock farming to society, which calls for the following: (i) a better targeting of public support, (ii) more precise quantification of bundles of services and (iii) better information to consumers and assessment of their willingness to pay for these services.

Drivers of decoupling and recoupling of crop and livestock systems at farm and territorial scales

“…In the EU, the use of food waste as livestock feed is prohibited. This is a legacy of foot-andmouth disease outbreaks, which were thought to be caused by feeding pigs uncooked food waste, even though cooked food waste has been proven to be a safe and efficient source of feed (Gaudré et al 2013, Zu Ermgassen et al 2016, Dumont et al 2019. In the U.S., food safety regulations prohibit the use of raw manure or the presence/grazing of animals in areas used to produce foods that are consumed directly by humans within 90-120 days of the harvest (FDA 2015).…”

Optimising economic and environmental performances of sheep-meat farms does not fully fit with the meat industry demands

“…However, when fed on grasslands and with by-products from human food that are inedible by humans, herbivores have a high efficiency of conversion to human-edible proteins (Ertl et al 2015). Beyond production, herbivore farming systems also provide a wide range of services including regulatory and cultural services, so-called bundles of services vary according to livestock management, with a key effect of stocking density and proportion of forages in the diet (Dumont et al 2019). Ecosystem services are assumed to be both enhanced and valued in agroecological livestock production systems (Dumont et al 2018), in particular those making the best use of local resources.…”

Editorial: multicriteria assessment of livestock systems using a graphical tool

“…The goal is to review scientific knowledge and to contribute to the societal debate on livestock farming. The two review articles presented below (Ryschawy et al, 2019;Dumont et al, 2019), are products of this scientific assessment on the role, impacts and services provided by European livestock production.…”

“…Using two simple criteria, i.e., animal density and the relative abundance of permanent grassland, livestock production areas with contrasted "bundles of services" were mapped at EU scale, and summarized graphically using the "barn" framework to represent their specific associations among goods, impacts and ecosystems services (Dumont et al, 2019). Independent of scale, trade-offs often appear between production, regulation and cultural services.…”