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

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Highlights

  • The systems with both beef and milk or cereals produce more protein and energy per ha.

  • Unlike the finishing systems, the cow-calf ones are mostly net producers of protein.

  • Cow-calf-finishing systems using very little concentrates are net protein producers.

  • The grass-based systems use more land area per kg of carcass but mostly non-tilled land.

  • Some trade off exist between meat production cost and feed-food competition.

Abstract

Context

Livestock production, and more particularly ruminants, is criticized for its low conversion efficiency of natural resources into edible food.

Objective

The 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.

Methods

The 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 conclusions

The 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 60,000 106J.ha−1) than specialized beef systems (up to 50 kg of HEP and 1600 106J.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, cow-calf-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.

Significance

Although 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.

Graphical abstract

Net Human Edible Protein and Energy Efficiencies of meat production (M_HEP_eff and M_HEE_eff).

Notes: M_HEP_eff=HEPof meatHEPof feedand M_HEE_eff=HEEof meatHEEof feed. Calculations are based on farm case studies.

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Introduction

A necessary, but not sufficient, condition to ensure global food security as defined by the FAO (FAO, 1996) is to produce food in sufficient quantity and quality to feed all people at all times at an affordable price. Meat and milk from domestic herbivores provides 16% of global protein consumption, with 20% of meat and 83% of milk from cattle (FAOSTAT 2016 in Mottet et al., 2018). Due to the increase in the world population, which could reach 9.6 billion people in 2050 and with the projected rise in living standards, cattle production will need to increase by 60% between 2002 and 2050 at the global scale to meet the anticipated increase in demand (). However, the development of diets based on high beef consumption seems incompatible with the objectives of reducing the pressure agriculture exerts on the planets resources and many studies envisage a reduction in meat consumption will be necessary to achieve sustainable development objectives (Willett et al., 2019). Livestock production, and more particularly ruminants, is indeed criticized for its low conversion efficiency of natural resources into edible food (water consumption, land and biomass use, greenhouse gas emissions per unit of beef consumed by humans), being less efficient than other food production methods (Gerber et al., 2015). However, ruminants have the capacity to make use of resources (roughage, co-products i.e. products that are produced as a consequence of the production of biofuels, human food, etc.) that cannot be consumed by humans but can be utilised as a source of feed for livestock and should therefore be able to contribute to human food security. To take into account this aspect of ruminant production systems, Wilkinson (2011) proposed an indicator to assess the net contribution of livestock to biomass, protein and energy production, taking into account only the portion of food consumed by animals that can be consumed by humans. Similarly, van Zanten et al. (2016) defined an indicator which weighted the areas used for animal consumption by the potential of this land to directly produce edible plant products for human consumption.

Several studies estimate the net contribution of cattle farming to food security. Using the GLEAM (Global Livestock Environmental Assessment Model) model Mottet et al. (2017) simulated that on a global scale nearly 7 kg of protein that is edible for humans is used, on average, to produce 1 kg of protein from cattle farming, but with significant disparities depending on the production system used. In the United States, Tichenor et al. (2017) estimated that land would have been used more efficiently if it had been dedicated to crops directly edible by humans, instead of grass-based beef or dairy production systems. Laisse et al. (2018) also estimated that, for two typical French beef production systems, the net protein efficiency of production (ratio of human edible meat protein to human edible feed protein) is less than one, demonstrating that both systems were net protein consumers. On the basis of this observation, which is rather unfavourable to ruminant farming, the project SustainBeef aimed to assess how European beef production could make a greater contribution to food security. To this end, a clear picture is required of the contribution made by different European beef production systems to food security. The objectives of this paper are to propose an evaluation of the contribution to food security of different European Union cattle farms, in order to constitute benchmarks for European beef production systems and to identify key drivers of food security and levers for improvement.

Sixteen case studies were selected in order to give a picture of the diversity of beef production systems that exist across five European countries (Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland and Italy) and which account for half of the dairy and beef cows in Europe (Eurostat 2016). These systems cover cow-calf systems (production of calves from a herd of suckler beef cows), finishing systems (finishing of calves), cow-calf-finishing systems (from the herd of suckler beef cows to the finishing of calves) and dairy systems (these cattle are mainly reared for their milk but also produce meat). The SustainBeef Project proposed an evaluation tree to assess the sustainability of the beef farms for the social, environmental and economic pillars. Each of the pillars is characterized by different components, which are in turn assessed by a number of criteria that can be measured by indicators (Bockstaller et al., 2009). The current study focused on the food security component of the social pillar. Food security was assessed using three criteria that fall within the concept of physical availability and economic accessibility defined by Jones et al. (2013) and the Food Security Index (2020). The boundary of the studied cases is the farm gate, consequently the distribution and consumption of food that are also important in the evaluation of food security are not considered in this analysis.

Section snippets

Presentation of case studies

The food security indicators were calculated from data of 16 European beef production systems. A case study representative of a region in a European country described the technical choices made by the farmer in terms of animal husbandry, land use and investments and provides information on the economic results of this system. These case studies were chosen to explore the diversity of beef production systems in the five countries studied according to three main criteria: country of origin,

Human edible protein and energy production at farm gate

At farm level, Human Edible Protein per hectare (F_HEP_ha) production varies from 20 to 394 kg per hectare of utilised agricultural area (Fig. 3). Systems selling milk and cereals, in addition to meat, have a higher F_HEP_ha than systems producing only meat. This is explained by the high proportion of HEP contained in cereals (60–70% on average) and the large quantities of milk produced. The GE-F2 farm produces less HEP than other diversified farms because it sells corn silage, which contains

Discussion

The objectives of this study were to propose an evaluation tree of the contribution to food security for different cattle farms, to constitute references for European beef production systems and to identify opportunities for improvement.

The first criterion evaluated was energy and protein production at farm level. The data shows that while farms specialized in beef production produce no more than 43 kg of human-edible protein and 1600 MJ of energy per hectare, systems selling milk and cereals

Conclusion

This study provides an indication of the contribution of cattle farms to food security both at farm and beef production levels, integrating food production, feed-food competition and production costs, as well as proposing avenues for improvement. This data has been estimated only on a sample of case studies. Although they have been chosen to be representative of existing farming systems they should not be considered as average values for each country. The results show that the production of

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

This study was carried out in the framework of the SustainBeef project (https://www6.inrae.fr/sustainbeef/Project), born from the response of 5 European countries (Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland and Italy) to the ERA-net Susan European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (www.era-SusAn.eu), under Grant Agreement n°696231.

The authors would like to thank Michael Mathot (CRAW) and René Baumont (INRAE) for their help and their constructive comments.

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