Livestock production: recent trends, future prospects

By P. K. Thornton. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2010

2,177 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The livestock sector globally is highly dynamic. In developing countries, it is evolving in response to rapidly increasing demand for livestock products. In developed countries, demand for livestock products is stagnating, while many production systems are increasing their efficiency and environmental sustainability. Historical changes in the demand for livestock products have been largely driven by human population growth, income growth and urbanization and the production response in different livestock systems has been associated with science and technology as well as increases in animal numbers. In the future, production will increasingly be affected by competition for natural resources, particularly land and water, competition between food and feed and by the need to operate in a carbon-constrained economy. Developments in breeding, nutrition and animal health will continue to contribute to increasing potential production and further efficiency and genetic gains. Livestock production is likely to be increasingly affected by carbon constraints and environmental and animal welfare legislation. Demand for livestock products in the future could be heavily moderated by socio-economic factors such as human health concerns and changing socio-cultural values. There is considerable uncertainty as to how these factors will play out in different regions of the world in the coming decades.

Subfields: Ecology, Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law, Water Science and Technology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3e2c69345946b05ed2797b492b1d7e1b09bf1c99

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Ecology

1. P. K. Thornton
2. H. Dagevos
3. Mario Herrero
4. E. Röös
5. P. Fleming
6. G. Ballard
7. M. Patel
8. T. Garnett

In Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law

1. A. Al-Dawood
2. Mario Herrero
3. E. Bakker
4. M. Mazinani
5. H. Dagevos
6. B. Rude
7. C. Toulmin
8. Brian C. O'Neill

In Water Science and Technology

1. L. Rosa
2. Paolo D'Odorico
3. A. Al-Dawood
4. H. Dagevos
5. E. Bakker
6. M. Mazinani
7. J. Pretty
8. B. Rude

Citations in the corpus

• Could consumption of insects, cultured meat or imitation meat reduce global agricultural land use? (2017, background): “New technologies raise the possibility of supplying high quality food from novel sources, e.g. cultured meat, also known as in vitro meat (Thornton, 2010).”
• Food and feed trade as a driver in the global nitrogen cycle: 50-year trends (2014, background): “The amount of meat and milk ingestion per capita is expected to continue rising during the next 40 years for both developing and developed countries (Thornton 2010).”
• Nanotechnology in agri-food production: an overview (2014, neutral): “28 In recent years, the food industry has made great progress in areas such as the improvement of new packaging products, the development of new functional products, transport and controlled release of bioactive substances, detecting of pathogens by using nanosensors and indicators, and…”
• Physiological adaptability of livestock to heat stress: an updated review. (2018, background): “The change in climatic variables such as temperature, humidity, and radiation are the most serious factors that affect the growth and production ability of livestock (Thornton 2010).”
• Population, World Production and Quality of Sheep and Goat Products (2020, background): “The reason of increasing interest in consuming animal products includes increasing world population, income and urbanization (Thornton, 2010).”
• LivestockPlus - The sustainable intensification of forage-based agricultural systems to improve livelihoods and ecosystem services in the tropics * (2015, positive): “Further, the livestock sector and associated market chains employ 1.3 billion people worldwide and contribute to the livelihoods of some 600 million smallholder farmers (Thornton 2010).”
• Climate Change, Global Food Security, and the U.S. Food System (2015, background): “Livestock operations provide a livelihood for over a billion people, including 600 million households in less developed areas (Thornton 2010).”
• Conservation agriculture in African mixed crop-livestock systems: Expanding the niche (2014, background): “The crop residue demand by the livestock sector is unlikely to decrease in this part of the world, as meat and milk consumptions are projected to more than double by 2050 from their values in 2010 (Thornton, 2010).”
• The Global Food‐Energy‐Water Nexus (2018, background): “The growth in demand for animal products (Box 2), combined with a shift toward a more crop-dependent livestock sector, has substantially increased competition for crop use between direct human consumption and feed to support livestock (Thornton, 2010).”
• The future of the global food system (2010, background): “A variety of strategies are explored in the review by Thornton (2010).”
• The Potential Use of Probiotics to Improve Animal Health, Efficiency, and Meat Quality: A Review (2020, background): “Tremendous progress has been achieved over the past five decades in this regard, mainly due to improvements in genetic selection, health status, nutrition, and the use of antibiotics and growth promotants [2].”