Livestock and fish could be fed more agricultural by-products, freeing up food for people
From: Aalto University
September 19, 2022
Reorganizing food
production systems to direct more agricultural byproducts and residues to
animal feed would free enough material in feed about one billion people without
requiring additional production.
While millions around
the world face the threat of famine or malnutrition, the production of feed for
livestock and fish is tying up limited natural resources that could be used to
produce food for people. New research from Aalto University, published in Nature
Food, shows how adjustment to the feeding of livestock and fish could
maintain production while making more food available for people. These
relatively simple changes would increase the global food supply significantly,
providing calories for up to 13% more people without requiring any increase in natural
resource use or major dietary changes.
Currently, roughly a
third of cereal crop production is used as animal feed, and about a quarter of
captured fish aren't used to feed people. Matti Kummu, an associate professor
of global water and food issues at Aalto, led a team that investigated the
potential of using crop residues and food by-products in livestock and
aquaculture production, freeing up the human-usable material to feed people.
'This was the first
time anyone has collected the food and feed flows in this detail globally, from
both terrestrial and aquatic systems, and combined them together. That let us
understand how much of the food by-products and residues is already in use,
which was the first step to determining the untapped potential,' explains
Kummu.
The team analysed the
flow of food and feed, as well as their by-products and residues, through the
global food production system. They then identified ways to shift these flows
to produce a better outcome. For example, livestock and farmed fish could be
fed food system by-products, such as sugar beet or citrus pulp, fish and
livestock by-products or even crop residues, instead of materials that are fit
for human use.
With these changes, up
to 10-26% of total cereal production and 17 million tons of fish (~11% of the
current seafood supply) could be redirected from animal feed to human use.
Depending on the precise scenario, the gains in food supply would be 6-13% in
terms of caloric content and 9-15% in terms of protein content. 'That may not
sound like a lot, but that's food for up to about one billion people,' says
Aalto's Vilma Sandström, the first author of the study.
These findings dovetail
nicely with earlier work from Kummu's group on reducing food loss throughout
the supply chain, from production, transport and storage through to consumer
waste. 'In that study, we showed that reducing food loss and waste by half
would increase the food supply by about 12%. Combined with using by-products as
feed, that would be about one-quarter more food,' he says.
Some of the changes,
such as feeding crop residues to livestock, would lead to a drop in livestock
productivity, but the researchers accounted for that in their analysis. Another
challenge is that the human-edible food currently used in livestock production
and aquaculture is different from the food people are used to. For example, a
different variety of corn is used in feed industries and some of the grains are
lower quality, while the fish used in fishmeal production tend to be small,
bony fish that currently aren't popular with consumers.
However, overcoming
these hurdles could result in substantial gains. Realising these benefits would
require some adjustments in supply chains. 'For example, we'd need to
reorganise the food system so that the industries and producers with
by-products can find the livestock and aquaculture producers who would need
them. And some of the by-products would need processing prior to using them as
feed,' says Sandström.
'I don't think there's
any serious problem with doing this. What we're suggesting is already being
done on a certain scale and in some areas, so it's not something that would
have to be developed from scratch. We just need to adjust the current system
and increase the scale of those practices,' Kummu concludes.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/09/220919122239.htm
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