Available online 24 March 2015
Review
Reducing the global environmental impact of livestock production: the minilivestock option
Highlights
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- Livestock production is among the most eco-degrading of anthropogenic activities.
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- Sharply increasing demand for animal protein is set to compound the problem.
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- The paper deals with a more eco-friendly alternative to livestock–minilivestock.
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- It is comparable to macrolivestock in terms of protein and other nutrient content.
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- The enormous potential and the advantages of utilizing minilivestock are described.
Abstract
Livestock
production is among the most ecologically harmful of all anthropogenic
activities. It has massive direct and indirect contributions to global
warming besides causing widespread ecodegradation in other ways. But
livestock production cannot be reduced because, as it is, the global
demand for animal protein is far higher than the supply. Whereas in
developed countries people get about 95 g of protein per day in their
diets, of which nearly 60% is made up of animal protein, in developing
countries the protein intake is only about 45 g/day and of it a mere 15%
is made up of animal protein. This gap in the availability of animal
protein for a large fraction of the world's population who desires it,
is continuing to increase because of the increased globalization-induced
rich-poor gap across the world.
Besides the fact
that conventional ways of animal protein production using
livestock―chicken, goat, pork, beef―are highly eco-degrading; in terms
of availability of pasture lands as well as enhancement in productivity
of edible zoomass with inputs from science and technology, the upper
limits of animal protein production have already been reached. The
ocean-based food production has similarly reached unsustainable levels.
As a consequence, now onwards the demand will increasingly outstrip
supply.
In this backdrop it is essential that we
look at the potential of minilivestock, especially insects. As brought
out in this paper, human beings have evolved as entomophagous species
and there are even suggestions that some of the special proteins and
other constituents present in the insects might have helped the human
brain to develop as rapidly as it did to enable its evolution into Home sapiens.
Moreover, several species of insects are prized delicacies in advanced
countries like Japan, Australia, and Europe. Hence, insects are not
restricted to being ‘subsistence food’ of grossly impoverished people as
one might imagine though a lot of species do help the world's poor to
survive. If other virtues of insects are considered― especially their
high food-to-zoomass conversion efficiency, quick growth rate, enormous
variety, and world-wide distribution―their potential as a much more
sustainable source of animal protein than conventional livestock would
become obvious.
Keywords
- Global warming;
- Methane;
- Minilivestock;
- Macrolivestock;
- Entomophagy;
- Insects
Copyright © 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
