Dr Pramod K Rout
Principal Scientist
Office of the Secretary (DARE) and Director General (ICAR)
IISD's invited Distinguished Guest Blog

Indigenous livestock breeds have unique characters such as adaptation to specific eco-systems, better thermoregulation ability, resistance to diseases and endurance in long distance grazing. Livestock production system characterization is essential for sustainable production. Sustainable livestock production and agricultural production must be viewed as flow of energy among soil, plant and livestock as a cycle. Sustainability in livestock production system needs to be analysed based on indicators such as ecological adaptability, viable economy and energetic efficiency of the production system. Sustainability of intensive and extensive livestock production system can be analysed through tools such as life cycle assessment (LCA) and material and energy flow analysis. The environmental footprint of every production system needs to be analysed. Sustainable livestock management is closely associated with energy flow. Sustainable livestock farming can bring resource efficiency, strengthens resilience and secures social responsibility of agriculture and food system to ensure nutrition as well as food security. Sustainable key factors are water conservation, soil conservation, soil nutrient management, land use planning, energy recycling system, conservation of biodiversity.

The various beneficial aspects of livestock farming are development of global agricultural economy, rural livelihood up-gradation, rural women's empowerment, sustainable rangeland management, conservation of domestic animals and enhancing soil fertility and nutrient cycling. As per the report of FAO, the grazing land is more than the cropping land. The grazing land covers about 60% of the total agriculture land, and support 360 million cattle and 600 million sheep and goats. About 10% of the world's beef meat and 30% sheep and goat meat are produced from grazing animals worldwide. In addition, sustainable livestock farming not only save the land for cropping but also helpful in maintaining nitrogen and phosphorus balance. The goat's excreta are rich in nitrogen and phosphorus. By adapting biogas production techniques from ruminant farm organic wastes, methane gas can be produced to meet the energy demand of farm house, and the slurry leftover after biogas production can be used as bio-fertilizer for foliage feedstock production for animals.

In a sustainable livestock farming system one can monitor the feed conversion efficiency (FCE). It is a biological process to calculate the number of products in terms of milk, meat and other derivatives produced per unit of feed supply to an animal. The efficiency can be increased by application of new technologies in converting feed energy to milk or meat energy. The individual consumes feed as source of energy; the source of energy is converted into different products such as meat, milk, and fibre in livestock. The energy gained by an individual is used for body maintenance such as digestion, metabolism, growth and immune function. After fulfilling the body requirement, the energy is channelized for milk or fibre production.

Livestock farming, especially the farming of ruminant's domestic animals can convert cheap and commonly available plant resource as high quality human edible food. It is only the ruminants can increase quality food supply by exploiting inedible biomass to produce edible protein. It gives an idea about the food use efficiency. Ruminant systems are more efficient as compared to non-ruminant system on the basis input and output edible to human. Animal products are relatively rich in high value energetic proteins, vit-B12, vitamin D and Zinc. The practice of conventional type of livestock production is in a process of shifting to sustainability intensive practice for more production and food security. About 30-40% of cereals grown globally are used as feed for livestock. Small ruminant farming system is the best way and means for the better utilization of marginal lands with prevalence of pastoral system, low level of mechanization, and production of typical products like cheese, high quality meat, therapeutic proteins and various fermented products. Even small ruminants are more efficient feed converters as compared to large ruminants when supplied with coarse forage with low nutrient content.

Precision Livestock Farming is required to increase biological and production efficiency of livestock farming to increase profitability. Precision livestock farming is an integrated livestock production system based on management and marketing of animals according to their individual merit. Generally, livestock production and management address the group management and care, although significant individual variation in performance observed between animals. It was difficult to identify and analyse the performance an individual in a large commercial unit or small holder production system. Precision livestock farming uses information technology to assess the individual animal with respect to physical resource and bring improvement accordingly to optimize economical farming. This helps us to identify poor performance animals in the flock and cull those individuals from flock. The electronic identification has made it possible to identify individuals in accurate manner at faster pace. Profit is the major driver of livestock production system. Profit will be determined by effective production and optimum management practices. Feed is one of the major inputs and varies from 58% to 70% for livestock farming input cost. However "high input cost can be reduced by implementing precision grazing and feeding management regime". Similarly, the labour cost constitutes 18-25% of farming input cost and can be reduced by effective management and use of technology.

Dr Pramod K Rout is the Principal Scientist, at the Office of the Secretary (DARE) and Director General (ICAR), Krishi Bhawan, New Delhi, 110001.

This is an IISD's Invited Guest Blog, under Distinguished Personality Category.