Implications of the decline in world oil reserves for future world livestock production

Abstract

In the near future, a reduced availability of primary resources as well as environmental, ecological, social and political issues will have major effects on rural development. Escalating costs of fossil fuel will precipitate a cascade of environmental, economic, political and cultural changes for which society is unprepared. The energy supply-demand deficit has the potential to eclipse climate change as the driving force for sustainable development. In the future, fuel and other costs of crop production will be included in the sale price of products and agricultural land use patterns will move to towards cropping for alcohol, biomass and bio-fuel production, particularly in the industrialized world. Competition for grain between food for humans, feed for livestock, feedstock for fermentation industries will intensify and the use of more expensive cereal grains for livestock production will need to be substantially reduced. Accordingly, meat protein will be derived less from industrialized pig, poultry and feedlot cattle enterprises and more from ruminants nourished by forages and by-products of crop production. Developing countries will require a non-fossil-fuel dependent development strategy, which will mean that their societies will be organized very differently. Food production will come increasingly from smaller, more localized and deventralized communities with mixed farms (producing multiple crops, animals, birds and fish) rather than specialized farms producing only a few products.