Nutritional opportunities to elevate the socioeconomic values of livestock through decoupling greenhouse gas emissions

10 years of data from 168 primary crop products and 44 primary animal products from 240 countries summarized in a Bayesian learning network highlights that ruminant meat and milk are primary drivers of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions in food production systems globally. However, these same products, along with eggs and non-ruminant meat, are also linked positively to nearly every nutrient essential for human life, such that, irrespective of agricultural system studied, targeting emissions reduction through decreasing livestock production will have negative consequences on availability of many nutrients for human diets. Animal products provide great socioeconomic value globally as dense nutrient sources, and in many cases generate net-positive effects on nutrient availabilities through producing more human-edible product than they consume. To maintain these socioeconomic benefits, the animal agriculture industries should focus on decoupling the tight associations between animal agriculture and greenhouse gas emissions. Nutritional strategies to facilitate this decoupling, including enhanced consumption of by-product feeds, use of feed additives, and supplementation approaches, each have strengths and weaknesses but collectively provide a flexible suite of technologies for use toward making progress on industry-driven neutrality pledges and amending system architecture to soften the linkages between greenhouse gas emissions and animal agriculture.

Keywords: food systems, greenhouse gas emissions, nutritional mitigation.