I wanted to offer a challenge to the students attending the Symposium and, hopefully encourage them to dedicate themselves to working to expand the understanding and adoption of Integrated Cropping Livestock Systems (ICLS). ICLS will be essential in meeting the needs of the world of 2050, which is only 27 years away! (I’m writing this on the 14th of December 2023, so it’s more accurate to say it’s only 26 years away!) This is within the professional lifetimes of today’s students and recent graduates. They can help humanity meet the critical challenges we face.
These projections about the world of 2050 have been published by many sources:1
- World population is going to increase, primarily due to people living longer, not the birth of more children
- Food production needs to double. Reducing food waste will be critical, but that alone won’t be sufficient
- There will be a two thirds increase in the demand for animal source protein. This, I argue, is a dramatic underestimate for reasons I’ll discuss later.
- Terrestrial food systems must operate on virtually the same land area as today. But our agricultural lands are under pressure, including arable land degradation and urban development. ICLS has demonstrated that more food, and nutritionally higher quality food, can be produced from the same land area with the same or lower inputs.2 Improving its practices and increasing its adoption will be essential to meeting the needs of our mid-century world.
- Seventy percent of humanity will live in urban areas by 2050. Food and the nutrients it contains will be shipped from areas of food production to urban areas. What can be done to ensure that these nutrients are in their most utilizable form while improving system circularity?
- The global population is aging: The median age and life expectancy will increase. This will be most prominent in Africa and southwest Asia. This should influence projections about the quality of diet needed, but it doesn’t seem to have affected the models.
- Most of humanity, including two thirds of children, will live in the tropics. (approximately a third of the land mass).
Let me repeat, the ICLS research and demonstration efforts of today’s professionals and students in tropical and subtropical regions are essential to meeting these challenges.
"Humanity's past is rooted in the Savannah and
humanity's future will be rooted in our grasslands."
Professor Frédéric Leroy’s presentation at the XXV International Grasslands Congress this year communicated an essential reality - "Humanity's past is rooted in the Savannah and humanity's future will be rooted in our grasslands."
This thought should energize all grassland and forage scientists.
There would be no Homo sapiens without ruminants.
There would be no modern societies without ruminant animal agriculture.
The needs of the 2050 world will not be met without increasing the productivity and efficiency of ruminant animal agriculture globally.
ICLS will be an essential component of this imperative mission.
FAO, 2011. World livestock 2011-livestock in food security. Food and agriculture organization of the united nations (FAO).
UN, 2009. Food Production Must Double by 2050 to Meet Demand from World’s Growing Population, Innovative Strategies Needed to Combat Hunger, Experts Tell Second Committee.
UN, 2015. World Population Ageing 2015 - Highlights United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division
UN, 2017. World population projected to reach 9.8 billion in 2050, and 11.2 billion in 2100 – says UN.
UN, 2019a. World Population Prospects 2019: Highlights. Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division.
UN, 2019b. World Urbanization Prospects: The 2018 Revision. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division.
Bell, L.W., Moore, A.D., 2012. Integrated crop–livestock systems in Australian agriculture: Trends, drivers and implications. Agricultural Systems. 111, 1-12.
de Moraes, A., de Faccio Carvalho, P.C., Anghinoni, I., Lustosa, S.B.C., de Andrade, S.E.V.G., Kunrath, T.R., 2014. Integrated crop–livestock systems in the Brazilian subtropics. European Journal of Agronomy. 57, 4-9.
Franzluebbers, A.J., 2007. Integrated Crop–Livestock Systems in the Southeastern USA. Agron. J. 99(2), 361-372. https://doi.org/10.2134/agronj2006.0076.
Sekaran, U., Lai, L., Ussiri, D.A., Kumar, S., Clay, S., 2021. Role of integrated crop-livestock systems in improving agriculture production and addressing food security–A review. Journal of Agriculture and Food Research. 5, 100190.