The gap between milk demand and domestic supply in Tanzania is large and projected to widen. Meeting such demand through local production of affordable milk presents an opportunity to improve the welfare of producers and market agents through the income and employment generated along the value chain (VC). Efforts to maximize milk yields, production and profitability need to be balanced with long-term sustainability. We combined environmental and economic ex-ante impact assessments of four intervention scenarios for two production systems in the Tanzanian dairy VC using the CLEANED model and an economic feasibility analysis. Intervention scenarios propose increases in milk production through (i) animal genetic improvement, (ii) improved feed, (iii) improved animal health and (iv) a package combining all interventions. Results show that economically feasible farm-level productivity increases of up to 140% go hand-in-hand with increased resource-use efficiency and up to 50% reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emission intensities. Absolute increases in water, land and nitrogen requirements in mixed crop-livestock systems call for careful management of stocks and quality of these resources. An overall rise in GHG emissions is expected, with a maximum of 53% increase associated with an 89% increase in milk supply at VC level. The CLEANED tool proved effective to evaluate livestock interventions that improve incomes and food security with minimal environmental footprint. Here, our simulations suggest that due to current low productivity, the greatest efficiency gains in combination with relatively low increases in total GHG emissions can be made in the extensive agro-pastoral dairy systems, which represent the majority of herds.

Increasing population, change in consumption habits, and climate change will likely increase the competition for freshwater resources in the future. Exploring ways to improve water productivity especially in food and livestock systems is important for tackling the future water challenge. Here we combine detailed data on feed use and livestock production with Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) statistics and process‐based crop‐water model simulations to comprehensively assess water use and water productivity in the global livestock sector. We estimate that, annually, 4,387 km 3 of blue and green water is used for the production of livestock feed, equaling about 41% of total agricultural water use. Livestock water productivity (LWP; protein produced per m 3 of water) differs by several orders of magnitude between livestock types, regions, and production systems, indicating a large potential for improvements. For pigs and broilers, we identify large opportunities to increase LWP by increasing both feed water productivity (FWP; feed produced per m 3 of water) and feed use efficiency (FUE; protein produced per kg of feed) through better crop and livestock management. Even larger opportunities to increase FUE exist for ruminants, while the overall potential to increase their FWP is low. Substantial improvements of FUE can be achieved for ruminants by supplementation with feed crops, but the lower FWP of these feed crops compared to grazed biomass limits possible overall improvements of LWP. Therefore, LWP of ruminants, unlike for pigs and poultry, does not always benefit from a trend toward intensification, as this is often accompanied by increasing crop supplementation.

This dataset contains estimates of consumptive water use from four different water sources (in m3), production quantities of meat, milk, and eggs (in kg protein), percentage of crops, and percentage of crop residues in feed mix for 919 livestock production units. The dataset represents the core output of the analysis presented in the final version of: Heinke, J., Lannerstad, M., Gerten, D., Havlík, P., Herrero, M., Notenbaert, A., Hoff, H., and Müller, C.: Water use in global livestock production–opportunities and constraints for increasing water productivity, Water Resources Research, in review, 2020. Please refer to this publication for a comprehensive description of methods and references to the datasets and materials used to produce this data. When using the data, cite it as follows: Heinke, Jens, Lannerstad, Mats, Gerten, Dieter, Havlík, Petr, Herrero, Mario, Notenbaert, An, Hoff, Holger & Müller, Christoph (2019). Water use in global livestock production–opportunities and constraints for increasing water productivity [Data set]. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4265089. Please also cite the reference article that this dataset belongs to.

Population growth will in many regions increase the pressure on water resources and likely increase the number of people affected by water scarcity. In parallel, global warming causes hydrological changes which will affect freshwater supply for human use in many regions. This study estimates the exposure of future population to severe hydrological changes relevant from a freshwater resource perspective at different levels of global mean temperature rise above pre-industrial level (ΔTglob). The analysis is complemented by an assessment of water scarcity that would occur without additional climate change due to population change alone; this is done to identify the population groups that are faced with particularly high adaptation challenges. The results are analysed in the context of success and failure of implementing the Paris Agreement to evaluate how climate mitigation can reduce the future number of people exposed to severe hydrological change. The results show that without climate mitigation efforts, in the year 2100 about 4.9 billion people in the SSP2 population scenario would more likely than not be exposed to severe hydrological change, and about 2.1 billion of them would be faced with particularly high adaptation challenges due to already prevailing water scarcity. Limiting warming to 2 ∘C by a successful implementation of the Paris Agreement would strongly reduce these numbers to 615 million and 290 million, respectively. At the regional scale, substantial water-related risks remain at 2 ∘C, with more than 12 % of the population exposed to severe hydrological change and high adaptation challenges in Latin America and the Middle East and north Africa region. Constraining ΔTglob to 1.5 ∘C would limit this share to about 5 % in these regions.

A review of environmental impact assessment frameworks for livestock production systems

Using the CLEANED approach to assess environmental impacts in the dairy value chain in Tanga, Tanzania

Our understanding of food security in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has been hampered by limitations in the temporal and spatial representativeness of data. Food balance sheets provide scalable estimates of per capita food availability, but fail to represent food access, stability and their causal linkages. In contrast, rural household surveys represent detailed conditions for one or multiple points in time, but are influenced by survey timing and are often limited in geographical coverage. This study draws on a large sample of rural land-holding households in SSA (n = 6,353) to identify household level food access deficiencies and to understand the associations with rural livelihoods and food sourcing behavior throughout the year. Food access deficiencies were identified using food security of access and diet diversity indicators. Dietary diversity and channel of access (farm or purchased) were enumerated for the “flush” and “lean” periods and food security of access was enumerated for the lean period only - making the results of this study independent of survey timing. As many as 39% of households were classified as severely food insecure (in terms of food access) and as many as 49% of households were likely to be deficient in micronutrients in the lean period. Vulnerability to food insecurity and micronutrient deficiencies differed by household composition, agricultural livelihood characteristics and agro-ecological zone. Dairy, fruit and vitamin A-rich produce were predominantly accessed through the farm channel. Households with a livestock component to their farm had a lower prevalence of severe food insecurity and higher diet diversity scores. These findings have implications for the development of nutrition-sensitive and nutrition-specific interventions. Interventions need to be tailored to agro-ecological zone, household composition, scale of operation and production mix. Increasing income will not necessarily result in improved diet diversity or healthy dietary choices. Interventions focused on income generation should monitor and promote crop and livestock production diversity and provide nutrition education.

Review of life-cycle assessments of livestock production: perspectives for application to environmental impact assessment in developing countries

Rapid ex-ante environmental impact assessment for livestock value chains

Using the cleaned approach to assess the environmental impacts of livestock production

The potential to use large-scale dietary transformations to meet nutritional needs of the world’s poorest populations may have been largely overlooked. A case study is presented of food nutrient supplies in eight selected countries within the context of their growing demand for livestock-derived food (LDF). For almost all the countries and under a range of scenarios of economic and climatic change in 2050, we find that per capita protein supply from LDF will increase relative to that from plant sources. Survey data indicate higher LDF consumption, up to 22%, among children in households that keep livestock compared to others. However, projections that four of the selected countries will import at least 40% of their LDF protein highlight the opportunity to increase livestock sector production and the potential to develop smallholder inclusive policies.

SUMMARY Household surveys are one of the most commonly used tools for generating insight into rural communities. Despite their prevalence, few studies comprehensively evaluate the quality of data derived from farm household surveys. We critically evaluated a series of standard reported values and indicators that are captured in multiple farm household surveys, and then quantified their credibility, consistency and, thus, their reliability. Surprisingly, even variables which might be considered ‘easy to estimate’ had instances of non-credible observations. In addition, measurements of maize yields and land owned were found to be less reliable than other stationary variables. This lack of reliability has implications for monitoring food security status, poverty status and the land productivity of households. Despite this rather bleak picture, our analysis also shows that if the same farm households are followed over time, the sample sizes needed to detect substantial changes are in the order of hundreds of surveys, and not in the thousands. Our research highlights the value of targeted and systematised household surveys and the importance of ongoing efforts to improve data quality. Improvements must be based on the foundations of robust survey design, transparency of experimental design and effective training. The quality and usability of such data can be further enhanced by improving coordination between agencies, incorporating mixed modes of data collection and continuing systematic validation programmes.

Current approaches to estimate freshwater use in livestock production systems generally fail to consider the competition for water resources with alternative uses, such as production of food crops food or other ecosystem services. This article presents a new method to account for the competition for freshwater use between food crops and animal feed, while assessing freshwater use in livestock production systems. The developed water use ratio (WUR) is defined as the maximum amount of human digestible protein (HDP) derived from food crops from the consumptive water use (CWU) appropriated to produce 1 kg of animal-source food (ASF) over the amount of HDP in that 1 kg of ASF. The CWU for livestock production is first categorized according to the land over which it is consumed, based on the suitability of that land to produce food crops. Then, the method assesses food-feed competition by determining the amount of HDP that could have been produced from food crops, using the same CWU currently used to produce ASF. The method enables identification of livestock production systems that contribute to global food supply without competing significantly over water resources with food production, based on their CWU. Three beef production systems in Uruguay are used to illustrate the method. During the backgrounding and the finishing stages, which are analyzed in this study, cattle can be kept on natural pasture (NP), seeded pasture (SP) or in feedlots (FL). The following three systems were analysed: i) NP-NP, ii) SP-SP and iii) SP-FL. Results show that the NP-NP system uses the largest amount of water per kg of beef output. However, results also show that the SP-SP and SP-FL systems can potentially produce more HDP by growing food crops than by producing beef. Based on the traditional measure for water productivity, i.e. the quantity of CWU per kilo of beef produced, we would conclude that the NP-NP system is least efficient, whereas based on the WUR the NP-NP system is the only system producing HDP more efficiently than food crops. Sustainable intensification not only implies improving agriculture and livestock productivity per unit of resource used, but also improving the number of human beings nourished. Results from this study illustrate the importance of considering competition and trade-offs with other uses when evaluating water use efficiency of livestock systems to promote sustainable intensification.

Ongoing and projected changes to rural communities in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are unprecedented in scale and pace. This paper investigates to what extent significant changes in livelihoods, poverty and food security performance are already taking place. The study focuses on households in Lushoto district (n = 147), a remote but urban linked area of Tanzania. Within the short time period between 2012 and 2015, 77% of households made changes in farm resources or farm characteristics. Households in the study site can be broadly classified as u0027Rising high value cropu0027, u0027Rising livestocku0027, u0027Subsisting mixedu0027 and u0027Subsisting cropsu0027. Some of the most substantial changes we observed in the three year period of study were most likely not related to any of the agricultural orientated interventions that are being promoted in the region, but are likely endogenous changes. The land expansion seen in the u0027Risingu0027 households (n = 58) provides a counterpoint to the trend established in the literature of decreasing farm sizes across lower income countries more broadly, and specifically in Africa. The strategy of land expansion is risky, potentially representing a future of winners and losers, ultimately with some land-holders falling further into poverty rather than leveraging their agricultural enterprises to improve their well-being. Our results show that in sites like Lushoto with a good rural to urban connection (increasingly common in SSA), households can be agile and diverse and agency interventions are aiming for a moving target. In order to achieve income and food security outcomes, targeted and rapid monitoring tools will be needed.

Ongoing and projected changes to rural communities in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are unprecedented in scale and pace. This paper investigates to what extent significant changes in livelihoods, poverty and food security performance are already taking place. The study focuses on households in Lushoto district (n=147), a remote but urban linked area of Tanzania. Within the short time period between 2012 and 2015, 77% of households made changes in farm resources or farm characteristics. Households in the study site can be broadly classified as ‘Rising high value crop’, ‘Rising livestock’, ‘Subsisting mixed’ and ‘Subsisting crops’. Some of the most substantial changes we observed in the three year period of study were most likely not related to any of the agricultural orientated interventions that are being promoted in the region, but are likely endogenous changes. The land expansion seen in the ‘Rising’ households (n=58) provides a counterpoint to the trend established in the literature of decreasing farm sizes across lower income countries more broadly, and specifically in Africa. The strategy of land expansion is risky, potentially representing a future of winners and losers, ultimately with some land-holders falling further into poverty rather than leveraging their agricultural enterprises to improve their well-being. Our results show that in sites like Lushoto with a good rural to urban connection (increasingly common in SSA), households can be agile and diverse and agency interventions are aiming for a moving target. In order to achieve income and food security outcomes, targeted and rapid monitoring tools will be needed.

Achieving climate smart agriculture depends on understanding the links between fanning and livelihood practices, other possible adaptation options, and the effects on farm performance, which is conceptualised by farmers as wider than yields. Reliable indicators of farm performance are needed in order to model these links, and to therefore be able to design interventions which meet the differing needs of specific user groups.However, the lack of standardization of performance indicators has led to a wide array of tools and ad-hoc indicators which limit our ability to compare across studies and to draw general conclusions on relationships and trade-offs whereby performance indicators are shaped by farm management and the wider social environmental context.RHoMIS is a household survey tool designed to rapidly characteriSe a series of standardised indicators across the spectrum of agricultural production and market integration, nutrition, food security, poverty and GHG emissions. The survey tool takes 40-60 min to administer per household using a digital implementation platform. This is linked to a set of automated analysis procedures that enable immediate cross-site bench-marking and intrasite characterisation. We trialled the survey in two contrasting agro-ecosystems, in Lushoto district of Tanzania (n = 150) and in the Trifinio border region of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras (n = 285). The tool rapidly characterised variability between farming systems at landscape scales in both locations identifying key differences across the population of farm households that would be critical for targeting CSA interventions.Our results suggest that at both sites the climate smartness of different farm strategies is clearly determined by an interaction between the characteristics of the farm household and the farm strategy. In general strategies that enabled production intensification contributed more towards the goals of climate smart agriculture on smaller farms, whereas increased market orientation was more successful on larger farms. On small farms off-farm income needs to be in place before interventions can be promoted successfully, whereas on the larger farms a choice is made between investing labour in off-farm incomes, or investing that labour into the farm, resulting in a negative association between off-farm labour and intensification, market orientation and crop diversity on the larger farms, which is in complete opposition to the associations found for the Mailer farms. The balance of indicators selected gave an adequate snap shot picture of the two sites, and allowed us to appraise the 'CSA-ness' of different existing farm strategies, within the context of other major development objectives. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The problem: Various studies show that the developing world experiences and will continue to experience a rise in consumption of animal proteins, particularly in cities, as a result of continued urbanization and income growth. Given the relatively large water footprint (WF) of animal products, this trend is likely to increase the pressure on already scarce water resources.Aim: We estimate, analyse and interpret the changes in consumption of meat and milk between the 1980s and 2000s for three income classes in Nairobi, the ratio of domestic production to imports, and the WF (the volume of freshwater consumed) to produce these commodities in Kenya and abroad.Results: Nairobi's middle-income class grew much faster than the overall population. In addition, milk consumption per capita by the middle-income group grew faster than for the city's population as a whole. Contrary to expectation, average meat consumption per capita across all income groups in Nairobi declined by 11%. Nevertheless, total meat consumption increased by a factor 2.2 as a result of population growth, while total milk consumption grew by a factor 5. As a result, the total WF of meat consumption increased by a factor 2.3 and the total WF of milk consumption by a factor 4.2. The increase in milk consumption was met by increased domestic production, whereas the growth in meat consumption was partly met through imports and an enlargement of the footprint in the countries neighbouring Kenya.Discussion and conclusion: A likely future rise in the consumption of meat and milk in Nairobi will further enlarge the city's WF. Given Kenya's looming blue water scarcity, it is anticipated that this WF will increasingly spill over the borders of the country. Accordingly, policies aimed at meeting the rise in demand for meat and milk should consider the associated environmental constraints and the economic implications both nationally and internationally. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Increasing demands for meat and milk in developing countries and the associated production growth are driving the expansion of agriculture at the expense of environmental conservation and other land uses. While considerable attention has been directed at improving crop yields to alleviate the pressure on land, there has been far less attention on the implications of the expected intensification of livestock production. Here, we present and analyse the land availability and land footprints of livestock intensification for five scenarios representing various degrees of intensification of meat and milk production by cattle, sheep, goats and camels in arid, semi-arid and humid production systems in Kenya. The first three scenarios are defined by increasing levels of input and management, ranging from low (scenario S1), intermediate (S2) to high (S3) input feed crop cultivation and livestock production. Reference scenario S1 has production practices and output of meat and milk similar to current production practices. In scenarios S2 and S3, the total land used for livestock production remains the same as in S1. Two additional scenarios, S4 and S5, explore opportunities for lessening environmental pressure through reduction of the land footprint of meat and milk production. For each scenario, we quantify the potential availability of grassland and cropland for meat and milk production by cattle, sheep, goats and camel in the arid, semi-arid and humid production systems. A resource use indicator, land footprint (ha), is used to assess changes in land use associated with livestock production. We estimate that the potential increase in production due to intensification from scenario S1 to S2 is 51% for milk and 71% for meat. The potential increase due to improving production from scenario S1 to S3 is 80% for milk and 113% for meat. The area of grazing land, as a percentage of the total potentially available grazing land, decreases from 10% to 6% as productivity increases from scenario S1 to S5. Cropland usage increases from 4% in scenario S1 to 11% in scenario S5. Reduced land demand in scenarios S4 and S5 indicates the possibility that intensification may help reduce the pressure on land and hence promote environmental conservation. Overall, the results suggest that it is possible to increase production to meet increasing demands for meat and milk while also gaining land for environmental conservation through intensification. Realizing the potential presented by the intensification scenarios will be contingent upon successfully establishing and operationalizing enabling policies, institutional arrangements and markets and ensuring that relevant information, services, inputs, and other essential requirements are available, accessible and affordable to herders and farmers.