Key Challenges and Future Directions in Livestock Resource Management

The livestock sector sits at a crossroads. It feeds over a billion people, supports rural livelihoods, and contributes nearly 40 percent of the world’s agricultural GDP – yet it also faces mounting pressure from climate change, biodiversity loss, and a global population expected to reach 9.6 billion by 2050. Meeting the food demands of that future without degrading the natural systems we depend on is one of the defining challenges of our time. Addressing it requires more than incremental fixes – it demands long-term planning, coordinated global action, and a clear vision for where livestock management needs to go.

The need for long-term planning and collaboration
Infrastructure and investment gaps
Multi-stakeholder collaboration as a core strategy
Conservation prioritization and breed database creation
The scale of the problem
Why breed databases are essential
Prioritizing at-risk breeds
Vision 2050 for livestock sustainability
The demand challenge
Pathways to lower emissions and higher productivity
Four Betters: FAO’s transformative framework
Building climate-resilient genetics for the future

The need for long-term planning and collaboration

Livestock management has historically been reactive – responding to crises as they arise rather than planning ahead. That approach is no longer adequate. The National Academies of Sciences have noted that the challenges posed by the livestock sector cannot be resolved by a single actor or a narrow set of actions – they require integrated, multi-stakeholder efforts spanning research, governance, and investment. This is a fundamental shift in thinking: from siloed national programs to coordinated international frameworks.

Infrastructure and investment gaps

One of the most persistent barriers to sustainable livestock management is the lack of adequate infrastructure – particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Without reliable veterinary services, market access, data systems, and rural connectivity, even well-designed policies fail on the ground. Research published in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems highlights how climate advisory services in Uganda successfully cut livestock losses through real-time weather and market information – but only because strong mobile network infrastructure and public-private partnerships were already in place. Where that foundation is missing, the same interventions fall flat.

This illustrates a broader truth: sustainable livestock transformation is not just about biological or ecological solutions. It depends equally on building the institutional and physical infrastructure that allows those solutions to be adopted at scale. Governments, international agencies, and the private sector all have a role to play in closing these gaps, especially in regions where livestock production is growing fastest.

Multi-stakeholder collaboration as a core strategy

The Nature Conservancy’s research across ten global livestock systems found that there is no single solution that works everywhere. Context matters enormously – the environmental, economic, social, and cultural dimensions of livestock production vary widely across regions. What this means in practice is that effective policy requires deep collaboration between financial investors, researchers, policymakers, and local communities to co-design solutions that are credible, legitimate, and actually adoptable.

FAO’s Global Conference on Sustainable Livestock Transformation has formalized this collaborative approach at the international level, building consensus on how the livestock sector can contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals – and then shifting the conversation from commitments to real on-the-ground action. Regional forums following the 2023 conference have continued this work, recognizing that durable change requires alignment across all levels of governance.

Conservation prioritization and breed database creation

While much of the public conversation about livestock sustainability focuses on emissions and land use, there is a quieter but equally serious crisis unfolding: the erosion of animal genetic diversity. Globally, livestock production is increasingly concentrated around a small number of high-output breeds optimized for industrial systems. This narrowing of the genetic base poses a significant long-term risk – particularly as climate change introduces new stressors that locally adapted breeds may be better equipped to handle.

The scale of the problem

FAO’s State of the World’s Animal Genetic Resources report identifies the marginalization of traditional production systems and their associated local breeds as the most significant threat to genetic diversity in the livestock sector. From a total of 8,774 reported breeds across 38 livestock species, the vast majority are local breeds reported by only one country – and 85 percent of local breeds from non-OECD countries have an unknown risk status because population data simply does not exist. Breeds are going extinct before their characteristics can even be documented, let alone assessed for conservation value.

Why breed databases are essential

Systematic breed databases are the foundation of any rational conservation strategy. FAO’s guidelines on animal genetic resource conservation describe the purpose of such data banks clearly: they should provide comprehensive, accessible descriptions of each breed’s production traits, physical characteristics, reproductive performance, and population distribution, as well as adaptation to specific environments. FAO launched the Domestic Animal Diversity Information System (DAD-IS) in 1996 to enable national coordinators to update breed inventories online, but data gaps remain severe in many developing regions.

Beyond simply listing breeds, databases need to capture phenotypic and genotypic traits, environmental context, and indigenous knowledge. Research on animal genetic resources and climate adaptation makes the case that for climate resilience purposes, the most valuable breeds are often those currently reared in harsh environments – exactly the populations least studied. Past research has disproportionately focused on breeds in developed countries where climate control is common, leaving critical data gaps where they matter most.

Prioritizing at-risk breeds

Having a database is only the first step – the harder challenge is deciding which breeds to prioritize for active conservation when resources are limited. FAO’s Global Plan of Action for Animal Genetic Resources is candid about this: some loss of local breeds is likely inevitable given ongoing changes in production systems and limited conservation budgets. The international community must consciously decide which genetic resources are worth preserving – and back those decisions with adequate investment.

Studies on genetic improvement of local breeds show that adding market value to local livestock breeds is one of the most effective conservation strategies available. When breeds become economically viable – through premium markets, geographic designations, or integration into broader production systems – the economic incentives that drive their displacement can be reversed. This requires coordinated efforts from governments, breed societies, and market actors, not just conservation scientists.

At the regional level, gene banks offer an insurance policy against irreversible genetic loss. Developing regional repositories for animal genetic material – particularly in Africa and South Asia where local breed diversity is highest – can support breeding programs and protect resources that have not yet been fully characterized. These investments require cross-border cooperation and sustained funding, neither of which comes easily, but the cost of inaction is far higher.

Vision 2050 for livestock sustainability

What does a sustainable livestock sector actually look like by 2050? The answer being developed through international processes is ambitious but increasingly well-defined. It is not simply about reducing harm – it is about a fundamental transformation in how livestock systems relate to food security, environmental health, and human welfare.

The demand challenge

FAO projects that demand for animal protein will increase by more than 20 percent between 2020 and 2050, with the sharpest growth in developing regions. In sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia alone, demand for livestock products is projected to rise by 25 to 150 percent. At the same time, business-as-usual trajectories would push global livestock production emissions toward 9.1 gigatonnes of CO₂ equivalent annually by 2050 – a more than 40 percent increase from current levels. These two trajectories are incompatible. Producing more while emitting far less is the central technical challenge of Vision 2050.

Pathways to lower emissions and higher productivity

A 2023 FAO assessment identified the most promising interventions to collectively reduce projected livestock greenhouse gas emissions by 55 percent relative to a no-mitigation scenario. These include productivity improvements through better animal management (responsible for approximately 20 percent of the reduction potential), improved breeding practices (15 percent), enhanced animal health (10 percent), and adoption of improved feed and nutrition protocols (5 percent). Notably, the report found that rumen manipulation using methane inhibitors could also contribute meaningfully – a technology that is still maturing but shows strong promise at scale.

Parallel to emissions reduction, the World Wildlife Fund emphasizes that sustainable livestock production must also protect native forests and grasslands, improve soil health, and reduce water pollution – dimensions that go beyond the carbon calculus. Sustainable forage systems, rotational grazing, and agroforestry are practical tools that can simultaneously boost productivity and deliver environmental co-benefits like carbon sequestration and biodiversity support.

Four Betters: FAO’s transformative framework

FAO has organized its vision for livestock transformation around the principle of “Four Betters”: better production, better nutrition, a better environment, and a better life for all. This framework insists that sustainability in the livestock sector cannot be reduced to environmental metrics alone – it must simultaneously deliver food security, support the livelihoods of the 1.3 billion people who depend on livestock, and ensure that the benefits of transformation are equitably shared. FAO’s 2023 work on agrifood solutions underscores that just over a third of countries have included livestock-related mitigation measures in their climate commitments – a significant gap that needs to close before 2030 if the 2050 goals are to be achievable.

Building climate-resilient genetics for the future

Underpinning all of these ambitions is the need for a livestock genetic base that can adapt to a changing climate. Research from the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT highlights how selective breeding programs are being developed to produce animals with better feed efficiency and lower methane output per unit of production – directly linking genetic improvement to emissions reduction goals. At the same time, indigenous breeds that evolved under harsh conditions – heat, drought, disease pressure – represent an underexplored reservoir of adaptive traits. Incorporating these genetic resources into future breeding programs is not just a conservation goal; it is a practical strategy for climate resilience.

Research published in Food Policy reinforces the point that co-designed innovations – those developed with the active participation of farmers, local communities, and policymakers – have far greater credibility and uptake than solutions imposed from above. The path to 2050 runs not through top-down mandates but through inclusive, place-based strategies that are grounded in local realities and supported by global frameworks.

The trajectory toward 2050 is not inevitable – it depends on decisions being made now about investment, policy, and priority-setting. The breeds we allow to disappear today cannot be recovered. The emissions we lock in through infrastructure built in the next decade will shape the sector’s footprint for generations. And the communities we fail to include in the transition will be the first to bear the consequences of getting it wrong.

What do you think? Given that 85 percent of local livestock breeds in developing countries have an unknown conservation status, where should global funding priorities lie – in documenting what we have before it disappears, or in actively scaling the sustainable production systems that could make traditional breeds viable again? And as demand for animal protein surges in the Global South, is a 55 percent reduction in livestock emissions by 2050 a realistic goal, or does it require a more fundamental rethinking of what sustainable livestock management means?

References

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Table of Contents

The need for long-term planning and collaboration 🔗

Infrastructure and investment gaps 🔗

Multi-stakeholder collaboration as a core strategy 🔗

Conservation prioritization and breed database creation 🔗

The scale of the problem 🔗

Why breed databases are essential 🔗

Prioritizing at-risk breeds 🔗

Vision 2050 for livestock sustainability 🔗

The demand challenge 🔗

Pathways to lower emissions and higher productivity 🔗

Four Betters: FAO’s transformative framework 🔗

Building climate-resilient genetics for the future 🔗