Page 51 - Farm and Food Policy Strategies for 2040 Series

described to Agri-Pulse an array of affordable, inexpensive options among whole grains, beans,
peas, lentils, vegetables, milk, etc., that would “provide for a healthy child’s dietary needs of
protein and most amino acids.”

So, like Nelson, Islas Ramos says, “the main issue is not production of protein dense foods, but
access and utilization.” She notes, for example, that one egg contains 6 grams of protein, and
says that, for growing children, an egg per day is an “excellent source of highly bioavailable
protein, providing already about half of the (daily) dietary protein needs of the child.”

Ag technologists emphasize need for livestock

The CAST outlook report comes down sturdily on the essential importance and need for
livestock on several counts.

“Nutrient-dense animal-source foods represent the predominant, most affordable source
for many essential dietary nutrients,” the report notes. Especially in developing countries,
“livestock play an invaluable role in maintaining the health and nutritional status of inhabitants
... for whom the supply of high-quality protein is often limited,” the report says.

Much of those protein-dense foods come from grasslands that comprise 70% of all world
agricultural areas” where food is produced typically “through the grazing of cattle, sheep, goats,
water buffalo, and wildlife,” CAST observes, saying that “ruminant animals are best equipped to
harvest the solar energy stored” in the forage on those lands.

The paper also explains how grass, hay and much of other farm animals’ feed, doesn’t compete
with the human food supply, but are byproducts from grain fields, dairies, distilleries, flour mills,
bakeries, seed crushing plants, and more.

So, says CAST: “The suggestion that animal agriculture should be abolished and that the global
population could subsist on a vegetarian or vegan diet is a narrow view and ... (ignores)
consequences.”

Not surprisingly, American livestock sector advocates aren’t
impressed with the Lancet report’s recommendations on animal
agriculture and see them as overly simplistic and off the mark.

As the CAST report also argues, ranchers and swine and
poultry farms have been gradually reducing their
environmental impact and carbon footprint in many ways for
decades.

On that topic, AAA’s Thompson-Weeman said “calling for less
meat consumption ... doesn’t really take into account the strides
we’ve already made and what can possibly be done in the
future.”

Indeed, several top national livestock organizations have
completed studies assessing their strides in footprint-shrinking Hannah Thompson-Weeman,
via a range of advances in efficiency, animal growth, nutrition, Animal Ag Alliance

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