Page 52 - Farm and Food Policy Strategies for 2040 Series

etc., which, together, spell declines in acres, gallons of water, electrical kilowatts used per unit of
food produced. The reports also set yardsticks for future progress.

Check them out:

Cattlemen's Beef Board’s 2014 Beef Industry Sustainability Assessment, a detailed study “to
provide a bench mark (to) help all beef operators ... find individual means of improving the
efficiency and sustainability of their operations,” the Beef Board states.

National Pork Board’s Retrospective Assessment of U.S. Pork Production: 1960 to 2015 (posted
in January 2019), which reports these trends across 55 years in impact per hog marketed: 76%
less land used, 25% less water used, 8% reduction in carbon footprint, and 7% less energy used.

FARM Environmental Stewardship program of the National Milk Producers Federation. Co-ops
launched FARM (Farmers Assuring Responsible Management) a decade ago, has enrolled more
than 37,000 out of 40,000 total U.S. dairy farms and has built a team of 400 professional
evaluators to help farmers meet benchmark standards.

Emily Yeiser Stepp, senior FARM director, said the Environmental Stewardship initiative began
less than two years ago, and already “about 750 farms have had a FARM Environmental
Stewardship evaluation conducted.”

The American Egg Board did likewise for egg farms. “We call it the 50-year study — 2010
compared with 1960,” says Mickey Rubin, executive director of the AEB's Egg Nutrition Center.
He reports the industrywide found “egg production in 2010 resulted in about a 71% reduction in
greenhouse gases ... water use was also down significantly ... (as was) land use. At the same
time, hens are producing 27% more eggs and living longer.”

Thompson-Weeman points to the gamut of livestock sustainability studies and asks: “What could
those numbers look like when they do new studies in 2050? We could have an even smaller
footprint.”

Breeders on sustainability’s front lines

Although organic producers and many other proponents of sustainable agriculture exclude gene
editing and transgenic tweaks to livestock and crop genomes from their notions of acceptable
tools, biotech advances will likely end up essential to keeping farm animals healthy and livestock
operations efficient.

Clint Nesbitt, senior director of science and regulatory affairs, at the Biotechnology Innovation
Organization (BIO), says animal and plant breeders have a huge range of genetic advances in the
works, but new disease resistance traits are probably most likely to advance in the decade ahead.

“With the change of climate, disease pressures are going to be a really big deal to try to
stay on top of and are an increasing problem for animal production,” Nesbitt said. “Just
keeping the animals alive is (going to be) a big factor.”

Growth traits, such as the first-ever one approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the
fast-growing AquaBounty salmon, will also advance in the next several years, he thinks, because

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