Evaluation of the contribution of 16 European beef production systems to food security

Abstract

CONTEXTLivestock production, and more particularly ruminants, is criticized for its low conversion efficiency of natural resources into edible food. OBJECTIVEThe objectives of this paper are to propose an evaluation of the contribution to food security of different European cattle farms through three criteria: 1) food production assessed by the amount of human-edible protein (HEP) and energy (HEE) produced at farm level, 2) feed-food competition at the beef production scale estimated in terms of net human-edible protein and energy and in terms of land used, and 3) food affordability assessed by the production cost of meat, protein and energy. METHODSThe analysis is based on 16 representative beef production systems in France, Belgium, Ireland, Italy and Germany and covers cow-calf systems, finishing systems, dairy and mixed dairy-finishing systems, with or without cash crops. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONSThe results show that, at the farm level, systems producing both beef and milk or cereals have higher HEP and HEE production per hectare (up to 370 kg of HEP and 60000 10 6 J.ha -1 ) than specialized beef systems (up to 50 kg of HEP and 1600 10 6 J.ha -1 ) and have lower production costs (approximately €6 kg -1 of HEP in mixed beef system and €29 kg -1 of HEP in a specialized cow-calf-fattener system). Beef systems are almost all HEE net consumers. Results are more variable concerning net HEP efficiency. The cow-calf enterprises are mostly net producers of HEP but, in order to produce human edible meat, these systems need to be combined with finishing systems that are mostly net consumers of HEP. In most cases, cowcalf-finishing systems are net consumers of HEP (between 0.6 and 0.7) but grass-based systems using very little concentrates or systems using co-products not edible by humans are net HEP producers. The grass-based systems use more land area per kilogram of carcass but a major part of this area is non-tilled land, thus these systems are not in direct competition with human food production. The lowest meat production costs are the finishing systems producing the most live weight per livestock unit (LU) per year and dairy systems in lowland which share the costs between milk and meat. SIGNIFICANCEAlthough most of HEE and HEP efficient farms typically have higher meat production costs, some grassland based systems stand out positively for all indicators. These results pave the way for improvements of the contribution of beef production systems to food security.

The net contribution of livestock to the supply of human edible protein: the case of Ireland

“…(2019) and Mosnier et al . (2021). They also demonstrated that cattle fed with inedible fodder are efficient producers of ASF (Wilkinson, 2011; van Zanten et al ., 2016; Laisse et al ., 2018; Mosnier et al ., 2021).…”

“…(2019) and Mosnier et al . (2021), for example, compared pasture-based cattle systems with concentrate-based cattle systems and concluded that unlike pasture-based cattle, concentrate-based cattle are inefficient protein producers. Their results on monogastric pigs also correspond to ours whereby, pig systems fed with HDP intense grains are demonstrated to be inefficient HDP producers (Wilkinson, 2011).…”

“…However, as pointed out by Mosnier et al . (2021), land-efficient grass-based ruminant systems not only contribute to food supply, but can also deliver other ecosystem services, such as nutrient cycling, carbon sequestration or biodiversity conservation. Hence, if the LUR is utilized with other metrics that quantify nutrient flows and GHG emissions in a multi-criteria framework; then, it could be used as a more holistic tool for planning optimal future-food systems within planetary boundaries at regional, national and global levels.…”

“…For each livestock system, we determined the refined EPCR, as given in Eqn (1) (Wilkinson, 2011; Laisse et al ., 2019; Mosnier et al ., 2021):where HDP i is the amount of human-digestible protein corrected for quality in feed ingredient i used in the livestock system ( i = 1, n ). The HDP value of each feed ingredient was corrected for protein quality by multiplying the crude protein value of each product with a digestible indispensable amino acid score (DIAAS; see Table 2).…”

“…Several metrics have been developed to measure the net contribution of livestock to the supply of edible protein, such as the edible protein conversion ratio (EPCR) and the land-use ratio (LUR) (Wilkinson, 2011; van Zanten et al ., 2016; Laisse et al ., 2019). The EPCR compares the amount of HDP in animal feed over the amount of HDP in the animal product (Wilkinson, 2011; Laisse et al ., 2019; Mosnier et al ., 2021). The LUR compares the potential HDP from a crop grown on the land used to produce the livestock feed against the HDP in that livestock produce (van Zanten et al ., 2016).…”