Interventions to Build Resilience in the Animal Protein System

Today's defining challenge for the animal protein system (APS) is to continue providing affordable and nourishing protein sources for the world, while addressing major resource constraints now imposed upon animal agriculture: labor, water, climate, and other environmental concerns, including biodiversity and soil health. However, the APS is composed of complex food supply chains and well intentioned interventions can have unintended consequences. Thus, it is essential to bring greater understanding to all aspects of this complex system when proposing or monitoring the effectiveness of any changes in production.

Our multi-disciplinary research team includes leading environmental experts, life cycle assessment specialists, economists, as well as data scientists . With funding from USDA/NIFA, we are now in the second year of a three-year effort to address resilience in the US animal protein system, based primarily on major enhancements to the University of Minnesota's current Food System Supply-chain Sustainability (FoodS3) model.

Our long-term goal is to develop an innovative data-based modeling framework for evaluation of interventions in the APS as the public and private sectors continue to pursue the mitigation of tradeoffs within both resilience and sustainability frameworks (defined broadly to include socioeconomic factors). This will include a capability to explore how to best mitigate the potential tradeoffs associated with possible APS interventions. Here are a few examples of the types of interventions that could be further explored using this modeling framework:

· Modification of feed to reduce methane initiatives

· Carbon-taxing policy that targets methane and/or fossil-fuel based crop fertilizers

· Complete vertical integration of certain supply chains, based on claims around C-footprint

· Improved genetics (faster in pigs and chickens)

· Benefits of improved animal health (e.g., mitigating mastitis in dairy, pork resistance to PRRS virus, dramatic solution to avian flu)

· Better response to animal disease outbreaks

· A more distributed supply chain on the processing end (e.g., increasing the number of small- and medium-sized slaughtering facilities to build resilience)

We will continue to fully engage stakeholders throughout this effort, and this breakout session will represent the second of our planned engagements with the broad community having a direct interest in APS performance: ranchers/farmers engaged in animal agriculture, agribusiness, brands & retail, and NGO's, all of whom are well represented at the Summit. We will present a prototype of the novel modeling system and invite attendees to directly engage with the tool, which can simulate responses to various kinds of regional, national, and global shocks: climate/weather-related (e.g., drought, sustained heat waves, floods), animal-disease, human-disease (e.g., COVID), transport disruption (trains, trucks, barges, sea-faring freight, etc.).

Attendees will also provide live feedback on how we should best prioritize which interventions are of greatest interest and thereby help guide our development efforts, particularly in the environmental, human nutrition, and socioeconomic domains. We will conclude with a direct invitation to all attendees who wish to remain actively engaged in the model development process and help the team identify interventions that would be of greatest interest to explore as we pursue ideas that could help build greater system resilience and improved sustainability outcomes.

Host or Publisher Dave Gustafson