A 12% switch from monogastric to ruminant livestock production can reduce emissions and boost crop production for 525 million people

Cheng, Luxi; Zhang, Xiuming; Reis, Stefan ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2428-8320; Ren, Chenchen; Xu, Jianming; Gu, Baojing. 2022 A 12% switch from monogastric to ruminant livestock production can reduce emissions and boost crop production for 525 million people. Nature Food, 3 (12). 1040-1051. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-022-00661-1

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s43016-022-00661-1

Abstract/Summary

Ruminants have lower feed use efficiency than monogastric livestock, and produce higher reactive nitrogen and methane emissions, but can utilize human-inedible biomass through foraging and straw feedstock. Here we conduct a counterfactual analysis, replacing ruminants with monogastric livestock to quantify the changes in nitrogen loss and greenhouse gas emissions globally from a whole life cycle perspective. Switching 12% of global livestock production from monogastric to ruminant livestock could reduce nitrogen emissions by 2% and greenhouse gas emissions by 5% due to land use change and lower demand for cropland areas for ruminant feed. The output from released cropland could feed up to 525 million people worldwide. More ruminant products, in addition to optimized management, would generate overall benefits valued at US$468 billion through reducing adverse impacts on human and ecosystem health, and mitigating climate impacts.

Item Type:	Publication - Article
Digital Object Identifier (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-022-00661-1
UKCEH and CEH Sections/Science Areas:	Atmospheric Chemistry and Effects (Science Area 2017-)
ISSN:	2662-1355
Additional Information. Not used in RCUK Gateway to Research.:	Publisher link (see Related URLs) provides a read-only full-text copy of the published paper.
Additional Keywords:	agriculture, sustainability
NORA Subject Terms:	Health Agriculture and Soil Science Atmospheric Sciences
Related URLs:	Publisher
Date made live:	19 Apr 2023 12:04 +0 (UTC)
URI:	https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/534300

Item Type:

Publication - Article

Digital Object Identifier (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-022-00661-1

UKCEH and CEH Sections/Science Areas:

Atmospheric Chemistry and Effects (Science Area 2017-)

ISSN:

2662-1355

Additional Information. Not used in RCUK Gateway to Research.:

Publisher link (see Related URLs) provides a read-only full-text copy of the published paper.

Additional Keywords:

agriculture, sustainability