Part 1: Land Use and Livestock: The big 'D'

Following up on my previous ‘brief overview’ post, today I will explore one of the many consequences of livestock farming on our environment by looking at a specific type of land use consequence : the big 'D'- Deforestation 

Land use, often defined as the ‘’arrangements, activities and inputs that people undertake in a certain land cover type to produce change, or maintain it" (FAO, 2013), are in fact degrading the quality of our soils, waterways, natural resources and air.

Livestock, indeed, take up a lot of space. Globally, livestock occupy the largest share of all human land uses (Steinfield et al 2007) and use up to 30% of the world’s entire land area that counting  for pastures and land used to grow grain for feeds and forage (Monfreda et al 2008). We use about 8 times as much land for feeding animals than is used for feeding humans (cowspiracy.com).

But why does it take so much land to feed livestock? Let’s think of it from a simple perspective. Livestock eat, graze, sleep and to a certain extent reproduce. With an approximate number of 50 billion living livestock on the planet (reference world bank report) it seems only reasonable that more land should be attributed to feeding the animals (which seems absurd to me considering 11% of the world population were considered undernourished between 2012 and 2014 – FAO, 2014)

In this context, acres of forest are being cleared in the Amazon which leads us to discuss how intensive livestock farming is  rapidly 

The overwhelming majority of the forest area lost in the Brazilian Amazon eventually becomes pasture which acts as the primary driver of deforestation (Barona et al 2010). As such, Kaimowitz et al (2004) indicate that new cattle are concentrated in Brazil’ s Amazon states of Mato Grosso, Pará, and Rondônia, which also represent states with the greatest deforestation in 2002 (reference)
Although other factors also seem to importantly contribute to forest deforestation – for instance, logging which indirectly affects it through an easier access for farmers to move into forested areas, logging represents a much less damaging factor to deforestation than the direct growth of cattle ranching (Kaimowitz et al 2004). 

Yet deforestation, is not the ultimate consequence of animal agriculture on forests. 

As environmental blogger Loulou Salge suggests in her blog, it is essential to clearly distinguish these two terms from one another.

Deforestation represents a decrease in the area covered by forest, with no guarantee of continuity in maintaining the forest cover  where as Forest degradation referring to a general quality decrease in its condition, being related to one or a number of different forest ecosystem components (soil, fauna, vegetation...)