Milk-and-Dairy-Products-in-Human-Nutrition-FAO

Chapter 8 – Dairy-industry development programmes: Their role in food [...] 343
Above all, DIDPs and programmes generating information and innovative solutions
in the dairy value chain must employ evidence-based learning during formulation
and implementation, and must gather baseline information on nutritional status of
target populations and conduct objective monitoring to track actual or potential
health and nutrition impacts of programmes.
In these processes, committed and competent people and enterprises (stakeholders)
are more important than geography, climate or politics.
8.9 Environmental sustainability
Producing, processing and distributing milk and dairy products, like other foods,
affects the planet. There is increasing interest in evaluating the “carbon footprint”
of discrete food supply chains from input services to primary production to consumption
and waste disposal. There are limitations on the use of life-cycle analysis
to assess the impact of livestock on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and there is
a need to consider issues such as carbon dioxide emissions from land-use changes,
carbon sequestration, resource-efficient use of poor-quality agricultural land and
the use of feedstuffs that cannot be consumed by humans, such as crop residues and
agro-industrial by-products, to reduce dependence on cereals.
Animals are often seen as competitors with humans for food staples such as maize
and other grains, but this is not the case everywhere. Animals often increase efficiency
of total farming systems by consuming materials with no human food value such as
grasses, tree leaves, household food wastes, crop residues and by-products (Neumann
et al., 2003; Scholten, 2010). Pradel, Yanggen and Polastri (2006), for example,
conclude that, in Peru, improved rye grass pastures and improved dairy breeds offer
promising alternatives in the trade-off between economics and GHG emissions.
Smallholder dairying fosters environmental sustainability in integrated farming
and optimizes use of local natural resources. Methane emissions can be significantly
reduced by modest increases in productivity and technological changes. On the
other hand, if dairy products are imported, energy consumption is far higher (FAO,
2008). Smallholders in developing countries use little energy in milk production
compared with farmers in industrialized countries. Other energy- and resourceefficient
advantages include: (i) the use of animal and human power for producing
feed and fodder; (ii) feeding of crop by-products that do not need additional energy
to produce; (iii) relatively low consumption of energy-intensive concentrate feed;
(iv) the predominance of grazing over stall feeding; (v) keeping animals in low-cost
sheds or in the open; (vi) use of human power for milking; and (vii) use of manure
for biogas production for cooking and lighting/heating and for fertilizing crops
(Dugdill and Morgan, 2008; FAO, 2008).
Many of these features were displayed by an integrated crop–fish–livestock
intervention in Bangladesh, in which smallholder dairying significantly improved
the food security and well-being of 6 000 extremely poor, landless farming families
in an agro-ecologically friendly way (Box 8.6). The approach is now being promoted
in other poor areas of the country (Dugdill, 2007; FAO, 2007b).
Environmental issues associated with livestock, such as loss of biodiversity, land
degradation, high water demand, air and water pollution and climate change are
highlighted in Livestock’s Long Shadow (FAO, 2006). The overall contribution
of dairying to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2007 was about 1 969 million