A Regenerative Livestock Strategy for Europe

Livestock production in the European Union is at a critical inflection point, facing mounting pressures from global trade instability, climate risk and biodiversity degradation, animal disease outbreaks, rural abandonment, and shifting market demands. A profound transition is needed in the way we approach livestock production, one that will allow for the creation of an agrifood ecosystem that fits Europe‘s needs, is tied to its landscapes, and serves its strategic interests. This is not a question of whether Europe needs a livestock sector. Livestock is woven into Europe‘s landscapes, cultures, rural economies, and food systems, and, when managed well, it can contribute to ecosystem regeneration, nutrient cycling, and food sovereignty. The question is what kind of livestock sector Europe chooses to build, and the current model is failing on almost every dimension that matters.

In its current state, the livestock sector:

• causes significant climate, environmental and health impacts
• is heavily dependent on agricultural subsidies
• is vulnerable to external shocks and diseases
• is highly dependent on feed inputs coming from outside the EU
• is deeply exposed to geopolitical instability
• cannot guarantee a stable income to farmers due to heavy price fluctuations and decreasing margins
• is moving towards intensive housed systems and centralized animal feeding operations (CAFOs), threatening rural livelihoods and communities

We, the European Alliance for Regenerative Agriculture (EARA), believe that these are all symptoms of a greater root cause, a central paradigm that needs to be changed. The European livestock system is in large part reliant upon the disconnection between animal production and place; a synthetic system based on external inputs, processed through an animal and converted into “cheap” outputs while environmental impacts and costs, as well as health impacts, are externalised. These systems are based on razor-thin margins, supported by public subsidies and, as a result, are fragile. Nor are they cheap when societal costs are considered as well. But another highly productive way is possible.

The disconnect between animals and the ecosystem services they provide has been driven by the pursuit of large volumes of cheap products through intensification and efficiency at all costs. Our health, animal welfare and our environment are paying the price. However, we see these as “false solutions” because these industrial systems do not accurately consider the externalities they produce: ecosystem, community and human health. This is because intensification makes livestock production appear economically viable in places where it would not be supported by natural cycles.

We argue the next EU Livestock Strategy should transition the European agrifood ecosystem towards a more place-based, nature-working model of livestock production, which the science and practice literature, listed in this paper, suggests can improve resilience, lower input dependence, support animal welfare, and deliver ecosystem services currently underprovided in today’s system.

That future system significantly reduces reliance on external inputs, and with the appropriate local and regional infrastructure in place following the transition, could create a European animal product supply chain that doesn’t require public subsidies. This system eliminates much of the waste in the system while progressing towards a true, competitive bioeconomy.

We argue that the next EU Livestock Strategy should embark on a transition towards a more decentralized, human-scale livestock production system in line with natural cycles, and rooted in bio-intensive, pasture-based, and properly managed grazing systems, where animals are integrated back where they have been for thousands of years: on the land.

This central paradigm shift is articulated in the different sub-topics throughout the submission, depicting how the future of livestock in Europe could look like, and how to get there. Here are the key arguments:

Economic sustainability: from inputs- and export-reliance, to resilience and self-sufficiency

In order to help guarantee a stable income to farmers and to build resilience in an increasingly unstable global trade environment, the EU Livestock Strategy should foster systems that promote protein self-sufficiency and focus on a high-value internal market first rather than seek to dominate exports.

Currently, the EU is heavily dependent on imported high-protein feed materials, with average import dependency of around 72% for that category over the past decade. Regenerative, pasture-based systems can be more self-sufficient and focus on providing a high-value product for the local and regional economy, in line with natural cycles, making farmers and their market much more resilient. With the right policies and infrastructure in place, many could scale to supply throughout Europe in addition to their regional markets. Moreover, getting livestock back onto the land en masse can significantly reduce production costs in many contexts by integrating livestock production with primary feed sources, while waste is converted into beneficial nutrient cycling for soils where emissions may also be reduced, depending on the system and management.

Competitiveness: from high volumes and low prices, to high value for the internal market

The current livestock system is struggling to compete on volumes and prices with outside producers despite scale and public subsidies,

and this will become increasingly difficult with the upcoming Mercosur Free Trade Agreement which will break many of the current livestock production systems. Rather than engaging in a race to the bottom where quality and high-standards are sacrificed for the sake of perceived competitiveness, the Livestock Strategy should instead centre competitiveness on an increase in high-quality production with better nutritional values, animal welfare and environmental footprint that respond to shifting market demands. Access to local processing infrastructure lowers the cost of production to make these higher quality products accessible to more people. Several studies show that products from pasture-based products have much higher nutritional values and are healthier than conventional products, which then reduces stress on national healthcare budgets. Consumers are increasingly demanding healthier food with a lower environmental impact. The opportunity is there, and high-quality products should be promoted and better communicated.

Disease Outbreaks: From sterility and control, to ecosystem integration

Disease outbreaks have an increasingly important economic impact on livestock producers in the EU. The current paradigm is based on sterility and total environmental control to remove all the possibilities of contamination. However, livestock farming inevitably coexists with environmental pathogens, climatic variability, and biological complexity. It cannot realistically become a sterile production environment. Raising animals in high-concentration closed environments only creates the conditions for devastating outbreaks, and it relies on heavy use of pharmaceutical inputs. The Livestock Strategy should promote an approach that re-integrates animals with the ecosystem and focuses on building ecosystem resilience, animals’ immune systems and breaking up diseases with multi-species integration and pasture rotation. Regenerative farmers are already doing this with great success across Europe but local, national and European regulations often inhibit the expansion of these practices to allow for achieving scale.

Animal Welfare: from a cost of doing business, to an integral part of productivity

In the current system, animal welfare becomes a cost of doing business that can put EU producers at a competitive disadvantage due to production structures that force animals into unnatural living conditions disconnected from the ecosystem. The Livestock Strategy should promote the shift to land-based systems, where animals live their lives working as ecosystem management tools where they are allowed to exhibit their natural behaviours while also producing food and fibre.

Environmental impacts: from increasing efficiency and intensification to promoting natural cycles and integration

The current model seeks to reduce emissions and environmental impacts through greater efficiency and intensification, while increasingly separating animals from the land and concentrating them in high-density areas. However, production systems that remain highly dependent on external inputs and weakly connected to local ecosystems are unlikely to fully close nutrient and water cycles or reliably contribute to soil carbon sequestration, and their environmental performance therefore remains constrained. By contrast, well-integrated, planned pasture-based management systems may provide a range of ecosystem services, including improved soil fertility, nutrient and water cycling, conservation of permanent grassland and associated biodiversity, and potential gains in soil carbon sequestration. At the same time, many current assessment methods, including many life cycle assessments, often find higher emissions for pasture-based systems than for intensive systems, but these results depend strongly on methodological choices such as system boundaries, functional units, and whether soil carbon sequestration, biodiversity, and other ecosystem services are included. As a result, the evidence base remains incomplete, and more comparative, farm-level research is needed to better quantify the full environmental performance of well-managed pasture-based systems.