Section A: Global Increases in Livestock Productivity Have Reduced Pasture Area

After decades or centuries of growth, global pasture area has recently plateaued and even begun decreasing

  • This contraction in pasture is corroborated by multiple models (HYDE Graph in Appendix)
  • While cropland area for feed crops has grown, this growth is small enough that the trend in pasture + feed cropland is similar to the pasture trend (Appendix graph of the number of cattle globally per unit of agricultural land (combining pasture and cropland)

The decline in pasture has not been driven by changes in consumption, but rather by increases in livestock productivity

  • Growth in consumption of ruminant products has slowed, contributing to the decline in pasture area.

  • Global consumption of ruminant meat and milk increased 1.8% and 1.8% annually before 2000, respectively, and 1.1% and 2.2% annually since 2000.

  • However, The decline in area neverthless coincided with dramatic increases in ruminant meat and milk production.

  • As pasture area has declined from 2000 to 2016, production of ruminant meat and milk products has increased 17.5% and 32.4%, respectively.

The livestock revolution - shifting from extensive to intensive production - has led to large productivity gains that enabled this decoupling.

  • Productivity is comprised of slaughter weight, dressing percentage, stocking rate, and the portion of animals raised slaughtered each year (combining turnover with metrics of animal health). Feed use efficiency is another productivity metric
  • Sidebar/box with productivity definitions.

Meat and milk productivity have increased in all major livestock production regions

  • The number of animals per area of pasture has increased as well, reflecting the shift to more intensive grazing, greater animal confinement, and other forms of intensification.

Pasture area shrank most where the rate of productivity growth was high relative to production growth, and expanded in areas where relative productivity growth was low.

  • Since 1961, Pasture area declined most in countries that are high-income today and expanded most in countries that are upper-middle income today

  • Pasture declined most in Australia, Mongolia, U.S., and Argentina, and increased most in China, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, and Niger.

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  • These pasture increases, at the most fundamental level, were driven by a a high rise in production (driven by domestic or global demand) relative to the rise in productivity. Areas where pasture contracted had a lower relative increases in production.

Note: An exception to the pattern is Mongolia where pasture area declined for reasons other than productivity improvements

  • The regions where pasture contracted also had higher levels of other types of productivity than regions where pasture expanded

  • Despite historic growth in production and pasture area in countries like Brazil and China, recent slowdowns in production accompanied by continued productivity growth has enabled a plateauing of pasture area

There has been a peak or plateau in pasture area in almost all regions, despite the earlier increases in pasture area

Without these productivity gains, more pasture land would be needed

  • X% more pasture would be needed to support the same level of production as today without the productivity gains seen since 1961 or 2000. This equates to X billion hectares, an area the size of X.

  • For every 10% increase in beef and dairy yields, pasture area generally declines X-Y% (Appendix of regression analyses).

Section B: Challenges Ahead

If pasture productivity does not keep pace with demand growth, global pasture area could start to expand once again

Forecasts predict that the recent increases in meat and milk demand in lower income countries will continue, as well as the declines in demand in high income countries

With production shifting to lower productivity countries, productivity may not keep pace with demand.

- The above graph plots the portion of global beef production each year that occured in countries with beef yields in different quantiles (low, medium and high) for that year. You can see that there has been a slight shift in production. In 1961, <13% of global production came from coutnries with the lowest yields. In the 2010s, >18% came from these countries. Production shifted primarily away from countries with high yields - the highest yielding countries went from providing >75% of production to supplying about 70%. The portion from countries with yields in the middle hasn’t shifted as substantially.

Most analysts project that with business-as-usual population, demand, and productivity growth, global pasture area pasture will increase.

  • Some forecasts predict pasture will decline, but these assume that livestock productivity will rise more quickly than it has over the past decades, an unlikely prospect without greater support for productivity growth from government, business and civil society.

Pasture growth is particularly likely in tropical and humid regions with high biodiversity and carbon stocks

  • Pasture area has slowly been shifting toward countries that are predominantly humid and tropical
  • Graph of change in pasture area by climate

Most projections estimate that most pasture growth will occur in Sub Saharan Africa.

  • Pasture growth in South America and E. Asia is expected to remain low, and to continue declining in North America as well as Russia & Central Asia (PBL 2017 & 2018).

  • I plan to add a figure of regional pasture projections, perhaps just from the Message-Globiom model which modelers have chosen as the “marker” model for the middle-of-the-road scenario.

Tropical pasture expansion poses a great threat to biodiversity

Land conversion in tropical forests also has a large impact on climate

Accelerated productivity growth, alongside reductions in ruminant meat and milk demand, is a key component to avoiding global pasture area expansion and the biodiversity and climate impacts this would cause.

  • Refernce to above graph of pasture projections that shows high productivity estimates compared to others.

Report Appendices

Exploratory Analysis Appendices