Europe’s farming landscape is rich and diverse. This diversity should be explored and leveraged to create more opportunities for sustainability in the sector. Different farming systems across the continent offer unique advantages, and recognising their potential is key to future agricultural development.
Over the past years, animal farming has been increasingly criticised for contributing to environmental pollution, climate change, biodiversity losses or animal suffering. This narrow view overlooks the complexity of the sector and the potential for improvement within existing systems.
While such criticism raises valid points, this narrative often disregards the positive contributions of the sector. The discussion has become increasingly polarised, and a select few farming practices and systems are idealised as the only sustainable way forward.
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The upcoming EU Livestock Strategy highlights the need for livestock farming to contribute its fair share to the decarbonisation of the EU economy. Previously, the Sustainable Livestock Intergroup addressed the ambitions of reducing direct on-farm emissions, such as methane from enteric fermentation in cattle. For monogastrics like pigs and poultry, the production and sourcing of animal feed are the key determinants of the overall carbon footprint of livestock systems, and therefore the key focus to drive decarbonisation.
Improvements in data development on feed ingredients is a key essential first step to reliably assess where the pressure points lie, to subsequently enable innovation in animal feed formulation for carbon footprint reduction purposes. An increased use of circular feed ingredients is a key strategy in this regard, as it makes use of resources which are not cultivated with a dedicated purpose of being used as animal feed.
This Intergroup session will provide insights into these issues and showcase the main drivers and practical examples for reducing carbon emissions in livestock farming through more sustainable animal feed formulation.
This guide was written to offer something better. It is built on three pillars of scientific evidence: the nutrient density
The upcoming EU Livestock Strategy highlights the need for livestock farming to contribute its fair share to the decarbonisation of
Our Chair MEP Benoit Cassart opened the February meeting of the Sustainable Livestock Intergroup saying that we can’t talk about
