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Preserving global land and water resources through the replacement of livestock feed crops with agricultural by-products

Nature Food volume 4, pages 1047–1057 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

While animal-source foods contribute to 16% of the global food supply and are an important protein source in human diets, their production uses a disproportionately large fraction of agricultural land and water resources. Therefore, a global comprehensive understanding of the extent to which livestock production competes directly or indirectly with food crops is needed. Here we use an agro-hydrological model combined with crop-specific yield data to investigate to what extent the replacement of some substitutable feed crops with available agricultural by-products would spare agricultural land and water resources that could be reallocated to other uses, including food crop production. We show that replacing 11–16% of energy-rich feed crops (that is, cereals and cassava) with agricultural by-products would allow for the saving of approximately 15.4–27.8 Mha of land, and 3–19.6 km3 and 74.2–137.8 km3 of blue and green water, respectively, for the growth of other food crops, thus providing a suitable strategy to reduce unsustainable use of natural resources both locally or through virtual land and water trade.

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Fig. 1: Global map of livestock production and energy-rich feed crop replacement, including their origin.
Fig. 2: Net trade of energy-rich crops for feed purposes and the associated virtual land and water trade.
Fig. 3: Global use of natural resources to produce energy-rich feed crops and the associated potential savings achievable with their replacement.
Fig. 4: Geographic distribution of natural resource savings and their interplay with the drivers.

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Data availability

All data inputs to the analysis in this study were retrieved from publicly available sources that are cited in the paper (for example, FAOSTAT, Sandström et al.21 and Chiarelli et al.39) and that are described in the main text and/or Methods. Results that are additional to those provided in the text and in the supplementary materials are available from the authors upon reasonable request.

Code availability

The algorithm used for this study is available in the Methods and Supplementary Information. The ArcGIS Pro and Matlab codes, as well as Excel files, however, are available from the authors upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

M.C.R. and L.P. are funded by Cariplo Foundation (SUSFEED project 0737 CUP D49H170000300007) and by Regione Lombardia (RUD0CONV01/ASSO project D44I20002000002). We thank I. Epifani (Department of Mathematics, Politecnico di Milano, Italy) for her valuable comments on the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, DICA, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy

    Camilla Govoni & Maria Cristina Rulli

  2. Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Paolo D’Odorico

  3. Department of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Sciences, DIVAS, University of Milan, Lodi, Italy

    Luciano Pinotti

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  1. Camilla Govoni
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  4. Maria Cristina Rulli
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Contributions

C.G., M.C.R. and L.P. designed the research; C.G. performed the analysis; C.G. and P.D. drafted the article; M.C.R., P.D. and L.P. conducted review and editing.

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Correspondence to Camilla Govoni.

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Govoni, C., D’Odorico, P., Pinotti, L. et al. Preserving global land and water resources through the replacement of livestock feed crops with agricultural by-products. Nat Food 4, 1047–1057 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-023-00884-w

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