Worldwide, agriculture is facing growing challenges. Indeed, the global food demand is continuously increasing as the world population and the urban lifestyle grow. World population is expected to increase 1.32 fold by 2050, hence increasing global food demand between 1.5 and 2 fold. Moreover, there is a societal resource pressure for producing more food products in a sustainable manner while using less inputs. Achieving this will require a holistic approach that connects all systems together at the whole-farm level. It is important to consider that a type of management could benefit one system and be detrimental to the other.
Such integrative approaches can fall under the scientific discipline of agroecology, defined as the interdisciplinary study of the whole-food ecosystem. For instance, it has been known for many years that excessive phosphorus and crude protein content in animal rations augment P and urea N excreted in manure, respectively. This in turn increases P runoff and NH3 emissions that could respectively impact water and air quality. Then, the concept of precision feeding has emerged to decrease P and N excretion in the environment by insuring an adequacy between dietary supply and animal requirements.
This is one solution among others that research proposes to ensure agriculture resiliency for future generations. Hence, an integrated approach studying the ecosystem impacts of animal production is needed and relevant.
This special issue aims to offer a broad overview of research conducted to mitigate livestock production impact on the environment.
For this special issue, we are welcoming papers on the following topics:
-Animal nutrition management to reduce nutrient excretion or greenhouse gas emissions
-Manure spreading strategy to reduce nutrient loss in the environment
-Whole ecosystem impact of animal production
-Strategies that reduce the environmental footprint to mitigate the impact of agriculture on the whole ecosystem
-Agriculture and livestock resiliency
-Ecosystem modelling and whole-farm analysis
Worldwide, agriculture is facing growing challenges. Indeed, the global food demand is continuously increasing as the world population and the urban lifestyle grow. World population is expected to increase 1.32 fold by 2050, hence increasing global food demand between 1.5 and 2 fold. Moreover, there is a societal resource pressure for producing more food products in a sustainable manner while using less inputs. Achieving this will require a holistic approach that connects all systems together at the whole-farm level. It is important to consider that a type of management could benefit one system and be detrimental to the other.
Such integrative approaches can fall under the scientific discipline of agroecology, defined as the interdisciplinary study of the whole-food ecosystem. For instance, it has been known for many years that excessive phosphorus and crude protein content in animal rations augment P and urea N excreted in manure, respectively. This in turn increases P runoff and NH3 emissions that could respectively impact water and air quality. Then, the concept of precision feeding has emerged to decrease P and N excretion in the environment by insuring an adequacy between dietary supply and animal requirements.
This is one solution among others that research proposes to ensure agriculture resiliency for future generations. Hence, an integrated approach studying the ecosystem impacts of animal production is needed and relevant.
This special issue aims to offer a broad overview of research conducted to mitigate livestock production impact on the environment.
For this special issue, we are welcoming papers on the following topics:
-Animal nutrition management to reduce nutrient excretion or greenhouse gas emissions
-Manure spreading strategy to reduce nutrient loss in the environment
-Whole ecosystem impact of animal production
-Strategies that reduce the environmental footprint to mitigate the impact of agriculture on the whole ecosystem
-Agriculture and livestock resiliency
-Ecosystem modelling and whole-farm analysis