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Science 9 December 2005:
Vol. 310. no. 5754, pp. 1621 - 1622
DOI: 10.1126/science.1117856
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Policy Forum

AGRICULTURE:
Losing the Links Between Livestock and Land

Rosamond Naylor,1,2* Henning Steinfeld, 4 Walter Falcon,2 James Galloway,5 Vaclav Smil,6 Eric Bradford,7 Jackie Alder,8 Harold Mooney3

Global meat production is becoming increasingly industrialized, spatially concentrated, and geographically detached from the agricultural land base. This Policy Forum reviews the process of livestock industrialization and globalization, and its consequences for water, nitrogen, and species-rich habitats in meat- and feed-producing regions often vastly separated in space. It argues that pricing and other policy mechanisms which reflect social costs of resource use and ecological change are needed to re-couple livestock and land in producer countries, drawing on examples from Europe and the United States. It also argues that consumers can play an important role in setting a sustainable course.

1Julie Wrigley Senior Fellow, 2Center for Environmental Science and Policy, Stanford University; 3Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA. 4Animal Production and Health Division, FAO Headquarters, 00100 Rome, Italy. 5Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22904, USA. 6Department of Geography, University of Manitoba, Manitoba R3T 2N2, Canada. 7Department of Animal Science, University of California at Davis, Davis CA 95616, USA. 8Fisheries Centre, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada.

*Author for correspondence. E-mail: roz{at}stanford.edu

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