Livestock, Land and Land Grabbing

Meat and Diary production• Uses 30 percent of the

Earth’s land surface• 70 percent of all agricultural

land• 8 percent of all water used by

human society• Is the largest sectoral source

of water pollution• Is the main cause of

deforestation in Latin America, the continent with the highest deforestation rate

Livestock‘s emissions

18 % of total human activity related emissions (transport: 14 %)

• 65 % of nitrous oxide and 64 % of ammonia• 37 % of methane• 9 % of carbon dioxide equivalent

Includes emissions of feed productionExcludes land use / land use change

Amazone basin: 70% of rainforest is lost to pastures

80 % of agricultural emissions IPCC

Intensive livestock farming and monoculture expansion

Industrial agriculture and the cultivation of mono-crops for feed or fuel are eroding ecological processes that allow carbon to be stored in soils and not released into the atmosphere. As a result of the use of chemical fertilizers, intensive agriculture and animal monocultures produce important quantities of nitrous oxide, the third most significant greenhouse gas responsible for global warming

Fase inicialDécada de los `80

Invasión de la sojaen el Paraguay

Segunda faseDécada de los `90

Invasión de la sojaen el Paraguay

Tercera faseDécada del 2000

Invasión de la sojaen el Paraguay

Situación actual y tendenciasDécada del 2000

Invasion of soyin Paraguay

Major factor in land grabbing and rural depopulation: cattle ranching and soy production are labour-extensive

forms of agriculture

Meat consumption grams per head per day

North 224 g South 47 gGlobal 101 g

Recommendation to save the climate:(medical journal The Lancet)

90 g/head/day

China: already reached 90g in the cities; 20% of urban kids are obese

The crisis will only expand if US meat consumption patterns are copied

• Without effective policies to halt it, global meat production will double by 2050

• This means 120 billion animals per year will be slaughtered

• Almost all growth will happen in industrial systems

• Triggering massive land grabbing for fodder production

„Projections“

• 2013: 7 billion• 2050: 9 billion

30% population increase 100% food increase

because of „societal expectations“ to eat more meat

Without industrial livestock: Food for 10.5 billion people already today

Subsidies to animal products in OECD (2009) in billion USD

chicken

pork

beef

Soya

milk

Intensification: More of the same problems

Livestock biotechnologies are likely to lead to• faster increase in genetic uniformity, • more market power and dependency on a few genetics

corporations, • more disease problems, • more demands for subsidies, • more pressure on animal welfare, • more environmental pollution, and• more climate change,

in sum, more of the problems that are already now an implicit part of the production system and not likely to be solved

Impacts of shift to industrial livestock farming

• In Paraguay, Argentina, Brazil: soy monocultures, agrotoxics, deforestation, depopulation of countryside, genocide amongst Indigenous peoples

• Indonesia, India: Farmers become tools for industry, introduction GMOs for feedstock, growth hormones, antibiotics

• Benin, Kenya, Cameroon: Pastoralism replaced by imported industrial livestock products

The main impacts are quantitative so standards and certification do not function

Reducing methane emissions from factory farms with biogas digesters are a major CDM

activity

Smithfield farm in La Granja, Veracruz, Mexico

56% of CDM projects in Mexico are pig farmsThese biodigesters, however, have experienced many technical difficulties that place their future viability and continued development in question.

E. Lokey in: Renewable Energy Volume 34, Issue 3, March 2009, Pages 566-569

Livestock’s “co-benefits”

• 70 % of the world’s poor keep livestock

• livelihoods for one billion of the world’s poor

• 200 million pastoralists• 2/3 of livestock keepers are

femaleFAO

Grasslands: Carbon sink AND food resource

• 70 % of agric. land• Livestock is the only way to turn grassland into

food• Evolution: grasslands & ruminants • Seasonal use by wild and domesticated herds

contributes to grassland conservation as well as to its carbon sink function

Grasslands - a major carbon sink

• Savannas can reproduce 150% of their weight annually – forests 10% Source: Davies J. & Nori M. (2008): Managing and mitigating climate change through

Pastoralism. Policy Matters, October 2008

• Cover 30-45 % of land surface - more than forest • Susceptible to land grabbing, no advocates• Roots are a major carbon store• 34 % of terrestrial carbon stores • Too often, grasslands are classified as ‘marginal’,

‘degraded’ or ‘unused’ lands

Conversion of grasslands into croplands has many negative impacts

The Landscape Approach and the risks of Land Grabbing

• Who decides what activities take place where? Where does the destruction go?

• Rural people, especially Indigenous peoples and forest peoples, and especially women, are almost always politically and economically marginalized – who decides for them?

• “Land degradation neutral” - whose livelihoods are destroyed? Whose lands and livelihoods are used to “compensate” for it?

Biodiversity Offsets: Double Damage

Excluding people from the soy lands, and the offset areas, while failing to address environmental impacts

Inherent Risks of REDD+- Weak land tenure rights and

negotiation power of women, Indigenous peoples, peasants, pastoralists: Elite resource capture and land grabbing are inherent risks

- Counting how much carbon is stored is expensive – most funds will go to (male) consultants

- Focus on carbon promotes monoculture tree plantations and ignores social and cultural values

- Who will Pay for the Results?

Can REDD+ Address the Drivers of Forest Loss?

REDD+ and the Underlying Causes of Deforestation and Forest Degradation

November 2013

Global Forest Coalition

Editing: Ronnie Hall

Further reading

Industrial livestock production and its impact on smallholders

in developing countriesSusanne Gura

May 2008

For more information: Brighter Green: http://www.brightergreen.org/

Global Forest Coalition: http://globalforestcoalition.org/