High-Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition launches sustainable livestock development report

A High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE) is the science-policy interface of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), which is, at the global level, the foremost inclusive and evidence-based international and intergovernmental platform for food security and nutrition.

HLPE reports serve as a common, comprehensive, evidence-based starting point for intergovernmental and international multistakeholder policy debates in CFS. The HLPE draws its studies based on existing research and knowledge and organizes a scientific dialogue, built upon the diversity of disciplines, backgrounds, knowledge systems, diversity of its Steering Committee and Project Teams, and upon open electronic consultations.

HLPE reports are widely used as reference documents within and beyond CFS and the UN system, by the scientific community as well as by political decision-makers and stakeholders, at international, regional and national levels.

In October 2014, the CFS requested the HLPE to prepare a report on sustainable agricultural development for food security and nutrition, including the role of livestock. An important planning meeting was held at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).

Delia Grace, a veterinary epidemiologist and food safety expert at ILRI, served as one of ten members of the HLPE livestock project team members.

What follows are excerpts from the report, which was launched at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) on 1 Jul 2016, in Rome. ILRI Director General Jimmy Smith, who the day before gave a keynote presentation at a Partnerships Forum on Livestock at the Rome-based International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), attended the FAO launch of the report on the role of livestock in sustainable agricultural development.

This report focuses on the livestock sector because it is:

• a powerful engine for the development of the agriculture and food sector
• a driver of major economic, social and environmental changes in food systems worldwide
• a uniquely powerful entry point for understanding the issues around sustainable agricultural development as a whole

Livestock production is central to food systems’ development and is a particularly dynamic and complex agricultural subsector, with implications for animal-feed demand, for market concentration in agricultural supply chains, for the intensification of production at the farm level, for farm income, land use, and for nutrition and health. Livestock has often set the speed of change in agriculture in recent decades.

Livestock is strongly linked to the feed crop sector, generates co-products including manure and draught power, and in many countries acts as a store of wealth and a safety net. It is integral to the traditional practices, values and landscapes of many communities across the world. Livestock has significant effects on the environment, both positive and negative, particularly when indirect land-use changes and feed crop production effects are taken into account…

The report offers policy-makers and other stakeholders a framework to design and implement feasible options of sustainability pathways for agricultural development. It will hopefully contribute to sustainable food systems and to food security and nutrition for all, and more broadly to the 2030 Agenda, now and in the future…

As reflected in its title, this report is focused on livestock because of the importance and complexity of its roles and contribution to sustainable agricultural development for food security and nutrition…

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