Researchers find that substantial amounts of agricultural land and water could be saved by replacement of livestock feed with agricultural by-products. This article presents a predictive model which explores the impact of feed replacement with agricultural by-products on agricultural resource uses.

This book examines the soybean’s rise to dominance as one of the world's most important and controversial crops. Through charting the history of the bean, the book reflects on the globalisation of the agrifood system, changing production systems, power imbalances, institutional governance, capital accumulation and social history.

Rising global demands for soy as animal feed is contributing to deforestation in the Global South. Every year the UK imports around 3 million tonnes of soy, mostly for pig and poultry feed, requiring an area the size of Wales to produce. This report details the urgent need to transition away from this pig and poultry feed model and toward a more sustainable and localised mode of production.

This paper maps the global potential for producing 34 varieties of seaweed and uses five scenarios to model the impacts of expanding the use of seaweed for human food (10% of diets), animal feed (10% of intake), transport fuels (50%), all three of the previous uses, or supplementing ruminant feed (0.5% of feed) to reduce enteric methane production and increase feed conversion efficiency.

This report by the animal welfare campaign group Compassion in World Farming outlines and makes counterarguments to four narratives that it argues are being used to justify factory farming, i.e. intensive livestock farming based on high levels of edible crops as feed inputs. The four narratives are: that factory farming is necessary to feed a growing global population; that it is efficient; that it is a source of cheap food; and that it is compatible with climate mitigation targets. The report also examines the influence of large animal feed production companies on the food system.

The global availability of food calories for people could increase by 13%, and protein supply could increase by 15%, if livestock were fed more by-products and residues in place of some feed that is edible to humans, specifically cereals, pulses, vegetable oils and whole fish. This study combines data from several sources to trace feed composition throughout the global food system.

In this report, WWF explores what would happen if the UK were to feed livestock only on “low opportunity cost” feed sources such as grass, food waste and industrial byproducts. It argues that pressures on arable land could be reduced while producing more food overall than in a completely vegan food system; that a reduced livestock population would free up land for nature restoration; that the UK’s impacts on ecosystems in other countries would be reduced; and that space would be made for more extensive forms of grazing and mixed farming, such as agroecological farming using crop rotations. For comparison, see the Sustainable Food Trust report Feeding Britain from the ground up for a similar vision for the UK’s food system (albeit with a non-zero level of grain-fed livestock production).

This paper assesses the extent to which national dietary recommendations for animal products could be met by livestock fed with low opportunity cost biomass (LOCB) such as food waste, grass and by-products. It finds that animal products fed with domestically available LOCB could provide between 22% (Netherlands) and 47% (Switzerland) of nationally recommended protein intakes.