I was recently invited by the European Association of Animal Production to talk on this subject, and a discussion of ongoing changes in the world and the challenges that these pose for animal scientists would seem to be an ideal topic for this, my final Editorial for the Journal. However, it is a very large topic, so please forgive me if I provide more options than actual solutions. I also apologise for the production focus: I recognize that many of our readers research products and processing, and I will mention this where I can.
Before considering the challenges it is important to understand, if we can, how the world is changing. Some principal changes are extremely well known but need to be reiterated. The world must either accommodate and feed more people or else human society must either regulate population size in a controlled way or accept that natural (or man-made) disasters will do that more or less indiscriminantly (living in the developed world is no guarantee of protection). As we feed more people, we must try to avoid any further increase in global warming, and the relatively unpredictable climatic extremes that follow. We must do these things in a world which is simultaneously becoming smaller and more integrated (for travelling and net-surfing individuals) but more politically divided and chaotic (there are “global superpowers” but no accepted global political direction or leader). We must adapt to major demographic shifts, not only in relation to migration but also in terms of an increasingly aged population (the major global reductions in infant mortality occurred sufficiently long ago for the “saved” tranche to have now reached old age) and a population that is heavily and increasingly impacted by obesity-related ill health. We also have to work within a society that, when things go wrong or there are problems, is often more inclined to look for a culprit than for a solution.
Given the first two of these changes, animal production scientists might be forgiven for thinking that “more food, less impact” fully defines their remit, but I would suggest that this is too simplistic. Had we been astute, that approach would have worked well in the post-war years, but the “less impact” element was not understood, whether it be environmental impact or health impact, and the “meat and wheat” agricultural revolution ensured that political cheap-food policies were achieved. If the other changes that I describe do not appear particularly relevant to animal production, then we do have a problem and I hope that I can address that to some extent.
To better understand where we need to go as a scientific community, it might be helpful to consider where we have come from, and where we have got to. Fifty years ago my animal physiology higher education was dominated by reproductive biology, so I chose to pursue lactation research instead. I could equally have focused on animal nutrition or quantitative genetics, but didn't particularly enjoy either. As a result, I did not subscribe to the “feed and breed” animal production research philosophy that prevailed then (and arguably still does). As a young scientist I attended meetings of the Physiological Society, Nutrition Society and Society for the Study of Fertility, amongst others, and very happily interacted not only with other animal scientists but also with a broad spectrum of academics including clinical scientists who, at that time, recognized that animal scientists were well ahead both in reproductive biology and nutritional biology. Influenced by this, I was a small part of the momentum that reformed the British Society of Animal Production into the British Society of Animal Science. I did not see this as a failure to recognize the importance of animal production, but rather as a belief that animal production science was about a lot more than producing animals for consumption. I think that I was fortunate in two respects. Firstly, a reasonable amount of core research funding was still available and allocated in a way that encouraged curiosity and endeavour. Secondly, our ability to generate data, whilst significant, was very much less than it is now, such that I had more time to think, hypothesise and devise experiments to test my ideas. My research was exploratory, rather than descriptive. From there, my scientific development occurred against a backdrop of reduced funding, enhanced technologies, less inter-disciplinarity (although there was oft-stated desire for the opposite) and a great deal of talk of “knowledge transfer”. My research objectives moved from a desire to improve production efficiency to an equally-strong desire to improve production animal well-being. Meanwhile, reproductive biology had transformed human infertility whilst nutrition science had created a multitude of dieticians and, I would say, an overenthusiastic view of the extent to which specific aspects of diet (bioactives, probiotics, antioxidants) could impact health in a way that a balanced diet could not. And animal scientists had retreated into their own much larger but regrettably much more segregated academic world. In retrospect it should have been more obvious that we had inordinate amounts of knowledge, indeed, most analyses would probably conclude that we already today have the scientific knowledge required to feed nine billion. However, the two examples just cited clearly show that knowledge did not always produce the desired end point (infertility declined, good, but ill health linked to poor diet proliferated). Returning briefly to cheap food policies. Above all, these were achieved because the research was ground-breaking for the time, the knowledge was transferred into the farming community and the fast-food conglomerates implemented the conversion of knowledge into objective. For me, there are three take-home messages from this discussion:
• production animal science can and should be about more than producing animals for consumption
• knowledge does not become useful until it is not only transferred, but also implemented
• objectives need to be properly thought out and defined, be careful what you wish for!
And so to the challenges, and where to begin? I am confident that we have the knowledge and skills to feed nine billion people, with dairy playing a major role in achieving that. So the question becomes, can we do that in a responsible way? By which I mean, with due respect for the health and welfare of farmers, animals and consumers (we will come to environment later). Socioeconomic factors largely dictate farmer welfare, economics in the case of developed countries and a mixture of economics and out-and-out survival in developing. Others are much better qualified than me to address these as challenges, but I would highlight the desire of FAO and others to focus on enhanced smallholder production as a means of improving life for rural farmers whilst feeding our population. I suggest that it will do the former, but not the latter. This is part of perhaps the most fundamental decision point for future livestock production. Which is more sustainable, the extensive (“edible from inedible”) route or the intensive (“more from less”). And whilst we might talk about “sustainable intensification”, what does that term actually mean? Should we be focused on breeding more resilient animals that are capable of coping with adversity, or on optimizing management systems so as to remove adversity?
Can we feed more people, from fewer animals? We have come a long way through selective breeding and improved nutrition, but is it right that we should continue to focus on further improvement of the top 5 or 10% of dairy animals, especially given the concerns (probably greatly overstated) that increased productivity inevitably means compromised welfare? Or should we be more cognisant of the fact that some of the highest milk-producing countries are working with very low-producing animals (Fig. 1). This is not new, and efforts to address the problem have in the past made things far worse, not better. But in the meantime other changes have happened. In particular, economics have driven ever larger herd size, and we have developed sensing and management technologies that allow health and welfare to remain optimised despite those increases. In the same way that technology leapfrogging introduced mobile phones into countries that previously lacked reliable landline telecommunications, large, housed, dairy units of high yielding Holstein-Friesians are increasingly appearing in the more aggressively-developing countries, and they work. Simultaneously, some of the world's largest dairy corporations are taking more and more interest in the enormous market potential of lesser developed countries, particularly in Africa.
Milk production by country (blue) and per animal (green) for selected countries. Adapted from FAO data and Oxford University graphics.
Can we feed more people, from less land? Land use is evolving and there are far more demands on it, for energy crops, for recreational use, for biodiversity and so on. At the same time technologies are being developed that allow us to optimise land use in ways that were unthinkable a relatively short time ago. For livestock production, we are at a simply-expressed but rather intractable decision point: should we focus on expanding into marginal environments, or on improved use of prime land? In all probability this is not a “one size fits all” issue, so when we talk about, for instance, breeding for more resilient dairy animals, we need to be aware of how and where they are going to be used.
Can we feed more people, by reducing waste? Globally, around one-third of edible food production is never consumed. This figure does not differ greatly between developed and developing countries, but the point in the food chain where waste happens is vastly different: at point of use (ie in the home) in the former and post-harvest (ie inadequate supply chains) in the latter. Clearly, the solution varies depending on where the problem occurs, and both sets of problems are much closer to the remit of our processing readers than to animal scientists. Certainly, circular bioeconomies (whereby recycling and reuse create major reductions in waste) often seemed to ignore livestock altogether, at least when they were first proposed. I find it interesting that “plant forward” has become the latest in a variety of terms that marketeers have come up with in an effort to persuade us to forsake animal-derived foods. At a global population level, it is simply not going to happen. Meat and dairy provide excellent nutrition, and beyond that they confer significant status for many. Joined-up thinking needs to prevail such that livestock do figure in circular bioeconomies (and do so safely: remember BSE).
Can we feed more people, whilst reducing environmental impact? If I earlier shied away from the socioeconomic factors affecting farmer welfare, then I am even more inclined to avoid too much mention of the environment, for the simple reason that there is so much complexity involved. Which argument are we to believe, is it “livestock's long shadow” or “less impact than the bison”? Of one thing I am quite sure: any analysis of the environmental cost of dairy production that takes an input approach (ie animal based) is going to be unreliable, the calculation must be output based (dilution of maintenance principle). Why should it be that ruminants have borne the brunt of the methane debate for several decades? Methanogenic bacteria are everywhere, so perhaps the answer is that the belch is a point emission (and therefore reasonably measurable) whereas paddy fields and wastefill sites (for example) are diffuse and hard to quantify. This is already changing, as satellite imaging technologies improve. As animal scientists we have found practicable ways of reducing ruminal methane production, but the outcome has not always been what one might have predicted. In the UK at least, feed supplements that reduce methane output from dairy cows have been met with considerable and very vocal opposition, and little has been done at national level to reassure consumers regarding their safety and the environmental benefits they potentially provide. Meanwhile, some UK dairy farmers are encouraging biodiversity by moving from monoculture to mixed swards, and in many cases getting improved forage and milk yields at certain times of year. It is easy to dismiss such efforts as being fairly inconsequential in the great scheme of things, but at the other, “big picture” end of the spectrum there is another decision point to address: which sustainability route would create most biodiversity benefit? Mixed swards are part of the inedible to edible argument and create direct benefit, whilst more from less releases land for more specific biodiversity effort.
Is it possible that the “less impact” mantra is actually just a distraction? Should animal science be focused on “more impact”, by which I mean positive impact on society? Despite numerous significant achievements over the years, animal science and animal scientists do not have a high or respected public profile, and I believe that we could do much more than we do to improve that. Knowledge of energetics in general and energy partitioning in particular still mainly resides in animal studies, and we almost certainly could make much more of a contribution to the obesity problem than we do. Appetite control and particularly the often contrary effects of stress as well as the significant impact of dietary protein are related subjects where animal scientists have deep knowledge. And when it comes to lactation, there is no doubt in my mind that dairy animals are far better understood than breastfeeding mothers. Having recently become a grandfather several times over, I have been appalled at the overall lack of knowledge as well as plethora of contrary advice from “experts” when it comes to lactogenesis, the lactose debate, human mastitis and lactation failure. There was a time when human lactation research was plentiful and usually very good. That is no longer the case, nevertheless most of the deficiencies I came across could be addressed by knowledge that we already have. Some would need to be adapted, most would need to be implemented, and for that to happen we need to establish much more credibility than we have at present. This is not to say that we know all there is to be known. For the mammary cellular biologists amongst you, here is a short list of questions that I might pick from if I were to start my career over again:
• How does the secretory cell accommodate regular changes in shape/size/stretch?
• Are physiological and pathological inflammation the same thing, or vastly different?
• At the membrane level, how is water flux into milk regulated, and what is the role of aquaporins?
• How is glucose trafficked so specifically and effectively to the Golgi vesicle?
• How does the secretory vesicle then locate the apical membrane?
• What factors maintain apical membrane balance in the face of gain by apocrine secretion and loss by exocytosis?
• How can the secretory cell function effectively with either “leaky” or “tight” tight junctions?
• How selective or non-selective is paracellular flux?
• How does mother/young contact impact on continuing transfer of passive immunity?
Please feel free to make contact if you would like me to expand on any of these ideas!
In finishing, I need to acknowledge that throughout this discussion there has been an elephant in the room. The major day to day challenge for most animal scientists is funding, or lack of it (something which is rapidly getting worse!) As a result, many of the most able scientists are no longer doing science, they are seeking funding. Often, they will no longer have sufficient time to educate the next generation of scientists in the most appropriate ways, nor to properly impart their knowledge to relevant stakeholders or the public at large. So I will indulge myself and assume that I have complete control of national or even international research budgets to implement just one thing that I believe would have very considerable positive impact on scientific progress. The future has to be built around the next generation, so I would reverse what I believe has been a serious dilution of the PhD, recreating the ethos of it being not a “course” or collection of courses but a broadly based training in scientific thought and technique where the end point is not simply one or more published papers but a competent scientist able and eager to expand relevant knowledge for the benefit of society and its animals. I would divert the majority of funding to that end, and guarantee it for a number of years, and in this way attract the most able of students and ensure they have the most able of mentors. What it is to dream!
