Symposium 2025 wrap up

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A very warm welcome to our 2025 GAAFS symposium. This slot was meant to be done by Professor Geoff Simm, who sends his regrets. Unfortunately, he's sick. He had a cold earlier in the week and he thought it was getting better, but he had to pull out this morning. He's coughing a lot and he didn't want to spread the germ, so he's very disappointed he couldn't be here. So I'm just stepping in. My name is Alan Duncan. I'm part of the staff team at the Global Academy, what used to be called the Global Academy of Agriculture and Food Systems, but we've changed our name, see if I can get it right. The Division of Global Agriculture and Food Systems within the Vet School. So I will be helping to facilitate the day. It's great to see so many people in the room and lots of interesting conversations and networking already happening. Just a few housekeeping notices before we kick off. Firstly, there is no fire alarm test scheduled for today. So if the fire alarm goes off, it's real. There's a fire well, There may not be a fire, but we do have to act on it. There is an exit there, and the fire assembly points are kind of on the grass area out here. There are washrooms out this door, and if you move in a kind of diagonal direction that way, along the corridor by the posters, there's washrooms there. We'll be taking a few photographs through the day. As you registered, you gave your preferences for whether you wanted to be photographed or not, so we will respect that. So that's the housekeeping. Now let's come on to the substance of the day. It's great to see all of you in the room. This event is hosted by guests. We're an interdisciplinary group of around 40 staff and a similar number of students, many of whom are in the room, working on all aspects of food systems. We operate under two main themes, healthy people, healthy animals, healthy planet is one theme, and the second theme is sustainable agri food systems. So coming on to the topic for today, the role of livestock in global food systems. It's a hotly contested topic, one which is close to my heart. On the one hand, we see growth in livestock production globally, and the scale of that growth and its impact on land and other resources contributes to global climate change and to nature challenges. So that's the on the one hand, but on the other hand, livestock production and consumption of animal source foods also makes significant contributions to lives and livelihoods globally. So it's a kind of two edged sword, and that's what we'll be thinking about today. Today's symposium is intended to shed light on the role of global livestock in food systems in different contexts. We'll highlight some of our own work in the Division of Global agriculture and food Systems, that of colleagues elsewhere in the school, and also of partners globally. So we've brought in some people from far flung parts, as you'll see a bit later. The symposium will be divided into three segments. The first one on nutrition and health, secondly on nature and climate change mitigation, stroke adaptation, and finally on livestocks and a just transition. As you'll have already seen, there's an interesting set of posters, many posters, actually, in the corridor along that way. And we'll have plenty of time over lunch to interact with those posters and those presenting the posters and a process also for giving feedback and asking questions of those who are presenting the posters. More on that later. We want the event to be as interactive as possible. That's why we're doing this in cabaret format. So you're all around tables. We'll have some table conversations later, as well as some plenary Q&A. So for each section, we start with a set of plenary presentations. We then move into some table conversations discussing those presentations. Then we have an opportunity to pose some questions to the panel. So that's the format for today. I'll say a little bit more about that as we come to it. So I think that's all I have to say by way of welcome. Great to see you all. And I'm going to pass over to our first session chair, which is Deksha Kapoor. And she's going to lead the session on nutrition and health. Deksha. Thank you. Thank you, Alan. I welcome you on to the very first session of the symposium, the role of livestock in nutrition and health. Is that okay? Okay. Thank you. We have two fantastic speakers for this session today, Jacqueline, Theresa, and Lindsey Jacks. Both of them need no introduction at calfs. Is that okay? No? Okay. Cool. Thank you. And we'll start with Jacqueline's first session. She is going to be talking about trends in sorry, let me just go over the slides. Yes. Oops. Sorry. Yeah. That is not how this was supposed to go, but okay. So we have Jacqueline with us. She's a final year PhD student at the Global Academy, sorry, Division of Global Agriculture and Food Systems. And she is also a public health nutritionist. She works with the FAO on looking at individual consumption data. Those who know the WHO GIFT tool, she works closely with that team. So welcome, Jacqueline. Today, her talk is about temporal trends and meat consumption and burden of disease in Brazil. Um, The floor is open for you now. Okay. Thank you very much. Can everybody hear me on this? Okay. I'll use this one to make it easier for me. Awesome. Really good to be here. Thank you, everyone for coming. It's very exciting to see so many people, and I hope you enjoyed the day. So as Deksha mentioned, I'll speak a little bit about meat consumption in Brazil. So because today we are it's all about the role of livestock on food systems and also the role of livestock on diets, nutrition and health, I thought it would be very nice to start with this food systems framework to remind ourselves on the role of food systems in shaping diets. There are many, many food systems framework, This is my favourite one because this one frames diets as being the results of supply chains, food environments, and consumer behaviour. So essentially, these three components of food systems, they shape what we eat. And the quantity, quality, diversity, and safety of what we eat. Our diets will then determine nutrition and health outcomes. So my presentation today will be about diets in Brazil, livestock in Brazil, but trying also to understand the supply chain, food, environment, consumer behaviour, and all these drivers and how these drivers are shaping the diets in Brazil. So I wanted to start with this because we will come back and try to understand what's going on and how this shape diets. Oops, sorry. So here is just a very quick overview of how much meat and animal source foods are present in the Brazilian diet. So essentially, for one in every four calories consumed in Brazil, they are coming from animal sourced foods, which I personally think it's a lot. And if we try to break it down, what are the animal products that are composing the diet, we have milk, poultry, and eggs representing around 5% of the calories. We have beef representing nearly 4%, and then ultra processed meat. And here in ultra processed meat, I'm talking about ham or salami or, you know, this sort of meat. We have cheese, milk based products like yoghurt, processed meat. The difference between process and tra process would be that processed meat is mainly a meat that is salted or sometimes teamed fish or this type of meat, Park and fish as well, composing the Brazilian diet. Now, we can see here that we observed some changes in the Brazilian diet over time. So 30 years ago, 18% of the calories were coming from livestock, and these increase around 24% over time. But if we look at the quality of the meat or at least animal sourced foods in the diet, we can see that fresh products, they virtually remain the same. Actually, they decreased a little bit, and what increased over time in the Brazilian diet was mainly processed a little bit and a lot of tra processed foods being more and more and more present in the Brazilian diet. And this is really important because ultra processed foods have been associated with a lot of diseases. So this calls a lot of attention. We can see here that Brazil eats a lot of meat and a lot of animal sourced products, and this is happening for different genders, for all different income levels. So the 25% people with lowest income, we have the 34% of them eating meat in excess, and this grows with income. The richer they are, the more meat they consume. And similarly, for age groups, in all age groups, we observe people eating meat in excess. And because this is happening in Brazil, we have consequences for health outcomes. So we think about mortality caused by diabetes, around 2% of all the mortality coming from diabetes can be attributable to excessive meat consumption. A little bit of the same for cancer. So sometimes of cancer are caused by excessive meat consumption and a lot of heart diseases as well. And this has obviously consequences for individual health, but also a more broad consequence for society because this requires a lot of money. So specifically for cancer, around 4% of all the money that goes to treat cancer in Brazil, we can say it is due to excessive meat consumption, excessive red meat, and around 5% is due to excessive processed meat in the diet. I really wish we had these numbers for type two diabetes and heart diseases. These numbers don't exist yet, but I hope to calculate them in the future and share these results with you. Moving on a little bit. So what are the reasons why do Brazilian people eat so much meat? And I would like to discuss three main drivers. The first driver is that is environmental biophysical drivers. So Brazil is so big. It's a country where we can grow pretty much everything, every type of food. We have a lot of territory that favours growing food and growing livestock as well. So it's just very abundant. We have everything in excess, so it makes it easy to produce and also to eat. There's also political and economic drivers influencing the amount of meat we consume. So for example, Livestock products, they contribute 6% of the GDP in Brazil. They employ a lot of people, so 20% of the employed population, they are employed in the livestock value chain. 1% of the population are employed in beef farms, so it's just a lot of employment, and this drives a lot of consumption. There's power concentration. So I guess two or three of the biggest meat companies in the world. They are from Brazil, and they have a lot of power, a lot of lobbies, so they influence policies and decisions, a lot of what's going on. I don't know if you followed a while ago a sort of fight between France and Brazil where French farmers were concerned that Brazilian meat would arrive in France with a very low price, and they said very bad things about Brazilian meat. They said, This is low quality, horrible meat. And then the big giant meat company JBS, decided not to sell meat for the French supermarket anymore, ref. So that's the amount of power they have influencing a lot of what is happening. And there's also political campaigns. So our current president, he was elected, promising that Brazil would be prosperous again, and every Brazilian would be able to have barbecues every weekend. And now people are actually very angry at him because this is not happening, so popularity is very low. So this is the politico and economic context driving the excessive meat consumption. And then there is a socio cultural as well, very strong socio cultural aspect in culinary traditions, pretty much every meal in Brazil will have a piece of meat, and also the symbol of prosperity that I learned with my friend Mariana, who will present later. But here I want to give two examples. One is sort of a personal example. When I moved to the UK, my dad was really concerned of what I was eating. And one day I took a photo of my dinner, which was probably pasta or something, and he was like, Where is the meat? I was like, Dad, I'm just not eating today. He was like, Why? Are you having any trouble? Are they not paying you well? Do you want me to send you money? I said, No, it's all fine. It's okay. And just to move away from personal example, I was just reading, you know, something about two brothers from a low income family that decided to go vegan, these twin brothers. And they do a lot of campaigns teaching people on how to go vegan. And then when they go home, the family is really angry at him at them because the family say, we work so hard so you can buy meat. Why are you going vegan? So this is just to illustrate the socio cultural aspect, really strongly influencing the amount of meat people eat. And now it's just a reflection on, can we reverse this increasing trend of meat consumption in Brazil? I'm not sure if I have the answer, but I would like to reflect on it a little bit. So here is just me trying to think about if Brazilians continue eating the same that they are eating now, which is this little one here, just because the population will grow over time, we will see a increasing demand for beef. We don't want this scenario, but it's very possible that consumption per capita consumption will increase. And then, again, the annual demand for beef will increase as well. And then I have here three scenarios where we would, you know, just follow dietary guidelines. And here I use the upper and lower bound of the World Cancer Research Fund, which I believe it's a very reasonable target for Brazil. And just for illustration purposes, I use the Eaton set, which I think is just not achievable in Brazil at all because we would need to move from here to here. Um, in order to achieve the Elance set target, but I think this is just going to be very difficult to happen. And then obviously, if we got to one of these three scenarios, we would see demand decreasing, greenhouse gas emissions decreasing, and also the burden of diseases decreasing. But on the other hand, we would also see the sector losing money in a way, and here I'm just talking about farmers. I'm not even thinking about the big, huge corporations. So even if you want to head towards this direction, what is going to happen with farmers and how is the big companies, act in relation to this? And actually, last week, I saw a very interesting presentation of someone showing that these big meat corporations, they are actually investing in increasing the meat packing facilities meat packing plants. And because they are investing on that, they really need payback. So whatever we try to do to decrease meat consumption, they are going to push against it because they need a payback for the investment. So How are we going to achieve this? I'm not sure yet, but I hope we have good discussions about this today. And just to wrap up, okay, I have time. Just the key points that I would like to highlight. So first is that we have political, economic, and social and cultural factors that make Brazil produce, but also eat a lot of meat. The second is that we see people eating a lot of meat, and this is happening across gender income levels and age, different age. While we see fresh meat consumption being stable or even decreasing slightly, we see processed meat growing and becoming more and more present in the Brazilian diet. And perhaps it's time for us to degrow the sector, eat less meat, but also degrow the sector in a whole. But is this even possible, maybe, but we would need structural changes that allow for alternative sources of income for people. So it's just very hard to reach that, but perhaps possible. So those are my takeaways, but I would very much be interested in listening to your takeaways. What are the key points that you get from listening to me talking today? So we will have time for discussions later, and perhaps you can discuss this or you can reach me during the breaks, or if you don't get to me because we have a lot of people, you can always get in touch and share with me your thoughts. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Jacqueline. Next, we have Professor Lindsey Jax. Lindsey has been at the university for about five years, ma'am? I think so. Yeah. Yeah. And she's the personal chair of nutrition and Global Health within the vet school. Today, her talk is going to take us through the intersection of nutrition, public health, and livestock. And I'm to that here. Sorry. Yeah. So Oh, great. Thanks so much, Tika and it's great to be here today. So we're going to shift gears a bit and I'm going to talk a little bit more broadly about the health effects of transitioning to plat forward diets like what Jacqueline was suggesting might be feasible in Brazil. I don't know if people are familiar with the term plat forward diets. Has anyone here heard this term? Oh, actually, fewer people than I maybe thought. So platform diets is sort of a rebranding of what used to be called flexitarian diets because flexitarian is not very sexy, and so we thought platform diets would be much more interesting and appealing to people. So a platform diet is sort of on the far end of the spectrum in terms of reducing animal source foods. And I've got to put in a box here what we tend to consider in the UK context, our animal foods. It's limiting these things, but it's not completely eliminating any one of these animal source foods. But as you shift towards a vegan diet, you kind of eliminate more and more of these categories of animal source foods. So today, what I'm focusing on primarily is this plant forward diet. And just to give a couple of examples of what this looks like visually in terms of the plant forward diet, this would be something like this corn chowder here, which has eggs in it, for example, or if you were to have cheese on top of your beans on toast or even a chickpea curry that had some small amounts of chicken in it. So it's using animal source foods as a sort of garnish like these eggs, rather than the centrepiece of the meal. So when you're thinking about planning your meal planning your meals for the week for a plant forward diet, sort of starting with the plant foods rather than the meat. So as an American who grew up in the New England area, it's a very meat and potatoes kind of diet. So when my siblings, for example, plan their meals for the week, I ask them, what's your process? They think, Oh, we're going to have chicken tonight, and therefore, we're going to have this, this and this with the chicken or we're going to have beef tonight and this is what we're going to have or fish around, they start with the meat or the protein of the meal rather than the plants. So plant for diets are trying to kind of shift that thought process. Kind of shifting to thinking about what the health effects of these are. The health effects of meat are, I feel like maybe just the algorithms of my news sources. But these headlines are I'm constantly bombarded by these. And the headlines seem to change, like a lot of things in nutrition. You may perceive that they're always changing. So you can get headlines that say, eating red meat is really bad for you and it increases your risk of cancer or increases your risk of dementia. Um, but then you can also get headlines that meat or this is, like, on pork. People have maybe been reading all these headlines about lard, which I think are stemming from RFK junior. But anyway, it's like lard is going to be it's healthier than vegetables and fruit. It's so good for you, and we should all be eating this. So there's a lot of confusion because people consumers are seeing all of these things, and it's very confusing. Is meat bad for you? Is it good for you? What should I be doing in my own life? I think that one of the things that I find really interesting is that and why you should really be hesitant to just read the headlines and try and get to the original source, is that you can get completely different headlines from the same study. This was a report that our team at the Global Academy published at the beginning of last year, I think it was. And some of the headlines that came out of it. So there were some headlines that were saying, like, Oh, the study found that reducing meat and dairy is going to increase risk of micronutrient deficiencies. There are a lot of problems with this. And so we have to be really careful about doing this. And then there were other headlines that were very positive and, like, reducing meat and dairy is going to help us beat climate change. And it's very interesting because obviously these are from the same study, but they kind of had different perceptions. So depending on which headline you saw, you would actually get different key messages from that same exact report. So I wanted to just start with my conclusion, so you can take a nap if you want for the rest of the talk. But this is kind of the conclusion, and I'll kind of give you the evidence that I think hopefully backs this up a bit. So whether you reduce meat or dairy, whether that has a good or bad impact on your nutrition and health, depends on what else you're currently eating, what the rest of your diet looks like, and also what, if anything, you eat instead of the meat or the dairy. Apologies. I'm not going to talk much about fish today. So for those of you in aquaculture, I'm happy to chat. I know I'm very interested in that, but most of what we're doing now works on meat and dairy. So let's just take two examples of that point before we jump into some of our research. The first is an example of just thinking about what the rest of your diet is and therefore, how important meat and dairy might be for your diet. So if you consumed a diet that looked like this, which was primarily rice, maybe a tiny bit of vegetables, and then meat large amounts of meat occasionally, If you were to stop eating meat, your proportion of calories would then jump up in terms of relying on this starchy staple and you would eliminate most of the micronutrients in your diet. Reducing meat in a context like this would be very bad for nutrition and health outcomes. Thank you. Let's take another example. So not thinking about the rest of the diet, but substitution and what you might have instead. So sugary drinks are an interesting thing in that they're one of the few things in nutrition that is unequivocally bad. There's nothing good except personal pleasure, maybe things like that. But from a nutrition and health standpoint, they could disappear tomorrow, and there would be no harmful impacts on people's health. There would only be beneficial things. So it's sort of the tobacco of the nutrition world. And for that reason, if you were to get rid of the dairy in your diet, which maybe is coming from milk and instead have iron Brew or other choose your guilty pleasure, you would see really adverse health effects. So yes, you're moving to a plant based diet, although if you look at the ingredients list of iron Brew, it's kind of questionable if it's plant based. Um, But you would be kind of shifting away from animal source foods. But again, because you're substituting into that as something that's actually worse for your health, then you won't see the nutrition and health benefits. So we need to consider what else you're consuming in the diet, but also what you might be consuming instead of the animal source products. So let's take a quick look at some of the actual scientific evidence that backs up these statements. So this was one of the first studies that was done that tried to look at this question about the whole diet really matters. Not all plant based diets are created equal. So this was a study, a prospective cohort study that looked at more than 100,000 adults in the US, adult women and men, and followed them over about 30 years and looked at whether or not they developed diabetes. And they also every four years, measured what these adults were consuming in terms of their dietary intake. And what they did was quite interesting because they didn't just look at people who were vegetarian or vegan or consuming a plant based diet, but they constructed these two indices, which this was about five years ago, but now you'll see these indices used quite a lot in nutritional epidemiology research. So they distinguish between a healthy plant based diet and then an unhealthy plant based diet, and they gave everyone in that study a score on these diets. And then they looked at how these scores predicted their risk of developing diabetes, adjusting for loads of different compounding factors like smoking, alcohol, physical activity. And what they found is that the healthful plant based diet was significantly associated with a reduced risk of diabetes. For every 10% increase in your score, you reduced your risk of diabetes by about 9%. However, the unhealthy plant based index was not significantly associated with diabetes, so it was not protective. Again, going back to the example of the milk to the iron brew, you can have a really unhealthy plant based diet that doesn't reduce your risk. Thanks. So one of the questions we're increasingly getting asked when we're thinking about how healthy plant forward diets are is what about all of these newish products that are entering the market that are plant based? And unfortunately, studies like the one I've just described do not have many people who consume these products. That study I described started in 1986, I think, sometime in the 1980s. And these products just were not on the market then. And so when we look at the impacts of these, unfortunately, consumption is quite low in these long term cohort studies. To take an example, and I'm sorry if you've already heard me talk about this study, a very recent example of a study that looked at a different big cohort called the UK Biobank cohort here in the UK. It's very similar structure where they've enrolled hundreds of thousands of people and followed them over time. Slightly different and they only measure diet at one time point. Anyway, this study made headlines because they concluded that people who follow a plant based diet have higher ultra processed food intake. And a lot of the images associated with news coverage showed these, um, these plant based meat and dairy meat alternatives. The interesting thing though, is that if you actually look at the consumption, this is one of the figures from their appendix, you can see that consumption of these products, this is the meat alternatives and that's the plant based milk alternatives. Consumption of those products is very low. It's making up roughly 3% of calories in the vegan diet and just 2% in the vegetarian diet, and even less in the pescatarian and flexitarian diets. So most of the processed foods in these studies, things are not what we would call biomimicry products, but rather kind of other ultra processed foods that are common across all of these diets. So there are only two trials that have ever looked at the health impacts. To date, there are only two trials that have looked at these health impacts. One of them was this swap meat study that was done at Stanford. Most of the participants were Stanford students in California and this study was funded by Beyond Meat, which is a big player or company in this space. They not only funded the study, but supplied all of the intervention products. They just substituted out these plant based products in for the meat products. And what they found was that, I won't have time to explain this, but they looked at a biomarker in people's blood called TMAO, which is an early marker of cancer and cardiovascular disease risk. They found that it's quite messy in this figure actually, but what they found is that there was a drop going from the animal products to these plant based products. You saw a reduction in this biomarker, so they concluded that these products may be potentially beneficial for health in the long run. But a study that recently came out tried to replicate this. This study was more than double the sample size, also funded by the food industry, but it was that food industry is not directly involved or invested in plant based products. In this study, they did not find any significant health benefits or risks, for that matter, in switching to these biomimicry products. So it wasn't replicated. So we really don't know. I mean, these are the only trials that have been done, which is sort of the gold standard in our field. I think that what we have to do is great, consider when we're thinking about what are the health effects. We not only need to consider what else you're consuming, but also what are the public health priorities for the population that you're working with. Are micronutrient deficiencies very prevalent and therefore, do you need to consider particularly the micronutrient content of animal source foods or the leading causes of death, things like heart disease, stroke, and lung cancer, which are associated with red meat consumption as Jacqueline mentioned. A final thing because I worked out nicely even though I didn't see Jacqueline slides. So I've recently, this is my final slide, found is that cut point of 70 grammes of meat, which Jacqueline referenced, this was a modelling study in the UK that looked at the impact of different cut points on nutrient intake and how many people have deficient nutrient intake for iron and zinc in the UK context. And what you see is that there's not a big difference, actually, if you go 70-50. It does go up a bit if you go down to zero, particularly for zinc, but I just wanted to highlight this because this table is why the cut point, at least in the UK context of 70 was chosen. And I think it's just interesting that it was that high when there wasn't really evidence of, you know, very big public health impacts if you went a bit lower. And so, yeah, that's it, my conclusion. So thanks. Right. I'm going to pass over to Dylan Edgar, who's going to chair this session. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the second session on the role of livestock in nature and climate mitigation and adaptation. Our first speaker is Philip Thornton. He's a research and innovation strategist at Climate. He's an Hello. Okay. First speaker is Philip Thornton, sorry, a research and innovation strategist with climate. He's an emeritus fellow at Erie, an honorary professor in Edinburgh and a visiting professor at Cornell. And today we'll be presenting on climate and livestock in Africa. Thank you very much. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Yes. Yeah, thanks also to the organisers for the opportunity to speak this morning. So I'm going to talk about climate and livestock in Africa and future transitions. So this builds in some ways quite nicely on some of the things we've heard already. So I'll speak very briefly, give you a bit of context, a couple of quick examples of what you might call early stage transitions of the way in which livestock systems are really changing, and then a bit more broadly, rethinking or thinking about how African livestock systems might actually need to change in the future. And then a couple of concluding comments. So a bit of context about Africa, for those of you who may not know so much about Africa, food demand is rising rapidly. We know this population growth is incredible. There'll be another billion people by 2050. At the same time is that socioeconomic change, we often hear that Africa is not developing very fast. But actually, if you look at the numbers there is economic growth in Africa and sometimes quite impressive, but there are big regional variations and national variations. Africa is urbanising very rapidly like everywhere else on the planet just about it'll be 60% of people by 2050 will be living in the cities. Um, there's already a big youth bulge and that's going to become even more even larger by mid century, there'll be 1.6 billion people of working age, and at the same time, diets are shifting and expectations of livelihoods are shifting. This is all within the context of climate change, increased frequency of droughts and floods and crop failure, season failure, and so on. Increased impacts on human and livestock health and well being. But on the other side of the coin, we know livestock produce something like 12 to 17% of greenhouse gases. The methane is particularly important because of its high or relatively high global warming potential, something like 28 times that of carbon dioxide. It also has a relatively short life in the atmosphere, which makes it a pretty good target if you're looking for one of the gases to mitigate. At the same time, land use, farm size or land is often being fragmented into increasingly increasingly smaller, sorry. That doesn't make sense. I decreasingly small holding sizes, often supporting families on perhaps even less than a hectare and constrained movement as a result of this fragmentation. At the same time, arable land has expanded by 30% in the last 20 years, but the environmental costs of that land conversion are often very high. So in view of population growth and in view of the huge youth bulge that is already afflicting the afflicting or affecting the African continent, what's likely to happen to the livestock sector? And a couple of quick examples here. Dairy consumption is significantly increasing. That's driven mostly by population growth. Meat consumption is also rising, particularly in poultry and pork. Um a lot of the livestock productivity gains are actually done through they arise because of animal number increases rather than increases in productivity per animal. There are in the highland systems of East Africa, there's been quite a lot of progress in production growth, but that tends to be, that's the exception rather than the rule. For the small scale dairy, pig, and poultry sectors, these are likely to continue to be really important for local food security. But of course, as economies grow, then conditions may increasingly favour more industrialised production. And then at the bottom there, we'll be saying, well, what's the future role of small scale and extensive livestock production in Africa and the continent? It's highly uncertain. Having said that, there are already changes that we can observe and people are observing and the situation is quite dynamic. Just a couple of very quick examples of some of these changes. You can think of these as sort of early stage innovations, if you like, and whether these will all go to scale or not is not really known yet, but they have potential. So one is insect farming for fish and poultry feed in Kenya. So converting organic waste into protein and fats that can then be fed to fish and to livestock in general. Um, there's considerable potential for this and in Kenya, the government of Kenya is already supporting something like 1,300 insect farmers. This is one way in which it may be possible to overcome seasonal shortages of high quality feed. It could help to reduce competition for land, and of course, very importantly, could help to create jobs. There's various things that that would need to happen. And for this sort of to become a sort of a widespread activity. So raising awareness and particularly sourcing and utilising reliable, food loss and waste streams as the feed for the insects that's currently a challenge, and that may also require work on the regulatory environment as well. Another example is aquaponics in coastal Ghana. So this is a sort of circular system where, that combines agriculture with hydroponics, and of course, not forgetting the microbes in the water that can help turn fish waste into plant nutrients. So it's quite a nice sort of circular system. You can feed the plants with plants like duckweed. You can even feed them insects. And this is quite a fast growing sector in Ghana. And basically to meet domestic demand for fish, which is rocketing. And it's also there's some quite nice examples where it's been shown to be highly profitable and as well as empowering for women farmers. And so, again, benefits raising domestic production and then reducing import dependency and also job creation. And again, with various actions that would be needed to take this sort of to greater scale awareness and know how government support, access to microfinance, for example. The third example is some agrvoltaic systems in the pastoral agro pastoral transition zones. This one's a little bit further out perhaps in terms of the time horizon, because basically the potential of doing this is currently very much unknown, although there are pilots in all regions of Africa, but how this may end up looking is pretty unknown. But the idea being that you can diverse or it may be possible to diversify household incomes from electricity generation using solar panels, such as in the photo and then combining that with feed or with livestock production using shade tolerant crops. This could also be bundled with local it in places that are very sort of far from or perhaps off grid, if you can store, there may be options for local electricity storage that could then be utilised at a future date. Again, various benefits and further action, and this one would be particularly affected by the issues associated with land tenure, which is in Africa in many parts of Africa remains a bit of a challenge. I'll skip that. We've been we've heard this morning already thinking around, well, what is it that future livestock systems might actually look like, again with a focus on Africa. I think this is one place where the development of, if you like, participatory collaborative visions of what future livestock systems might look like could play a really big role. Capacity development in methods and tools for these kinds of participatory processes, visioning, foresight, and these are ways and methods in which you can help to address the huge uncertainties that face some of these systems. These can be linked to national and local science policy dialogue platforms, and some really good examples of those in some of the countries of West Africa and East Africa also. And at the same time, trying to come up with some consensus, even at fairly local scales, about what futures food systems might really look like and with actions that can then fit in with what has been going on at the country, local or continental level on, for example, climate strategy, climate development strategies and action plans, nationally determined contributions, national adaptation plans, and so on and so forth. Trying to make these into a coherent and aligned policy policy context. There's been a bit of talk recently on things on this idea, localised modernity, it's sometimes called in the literature, but something that combines crop and livestock systems that are sort of mixing of the more traditional methods, and even crops and livestock with technologies, modern technologies that can then address particular parts of the parts of the system. There are obvious benefits for some of the indigenous and traditional African crops and livestock with various benefits, particularly around livelihoods and income and nutrient densities and so on and so forth. And so these kinds of things can have quite substantial potential impacts by combining the more traditional production methods and systems with some of the best of modern technology. Particularly the issue around producing food nearer to where it's near to where it's consumed so that you can then start to shrink sort of the supply lines, if you like. At the same time, thinking around what would that kind of approach mean for public agriculture research for development? I think a couple of points to highlight here would be promoting this idea of multi and transdisciplinary science. Because basically the livestock sector itself is very much embedded within the national economy. It's related to the food system in general, to the health sector, to the energy sector, and these things are the sort of approaches that can really help to try to pull some of these things together are really needed. And just also mention transformation labs done by these sort of collaborative environments done at the very local level where people can come together, actors in the food system and then experiment and try things out and see what works and what doesn't work, and these kinds of things can be very useful. Also innovating for change and accepting that they are going to be costs to these kinds of changes that might need to be made, and also at the same time, recognising that there are going to be huge benefits to reorientating livestock systems in some of these countries. The data are shown on this slide very much at the global level, but still we know that, for example, adaptation costs are growing through time. The longer we and the longer we are not actually doing what we need to do, then the costs for adaptation are going to be increasing all the time. Perhaps just to conclude, just a few points, reconfiguring livestock systems to be more resilient, sustainable, and equitable. These are huge challenges just because of the complexity and their interconnectedness with many other parts of the economy. There's a need to design and implement market incentives to help spread the costs and the risk. The whole variety of these exist, supply push, demand pull mechanisms, realigning subsidies, for example, for climate action. There are some nice examples going on in Southern Africa and Malawi in particular, where the subsidies fertiliser subsidies actually being utilised for more direct climate action with small scale farmers. Safeguarding against undesirable effects, developing and applying the simpler tools for monitoring and metrics for resilience and adaptation. And this all has a role or has implications for how we go about collecting data and monitoring uptake of innovation and making sure that it's actually having the effect for the development benefits that we're all after. Building trust, embracing change. This idea of promoting discourses and discussions and dialogues, because there are so many competing interests that are operating within food systems, but dialogues that can really help to facilitate action. And as we've seen over the last few weeks, multilateralism, where's it going? Is this a massive bump on the road or is it genuinely going to be the end of multilateralism as we know it? There was an article in the press the other day, in fact, yesterday by the CEO of the Gates Foundation about development may actually start going backwards because there are so many, many of the large donors, the large funders are actually declined. The funding is actually decreasing. So do we need to find new or different financing mechanisms, perhaps more public private partnerships or more better mixtures of public, private and philanthropic financing? How can we make this all work for the betterment of food systems and the people who depend on them? And then this idea finally of embracing localism, perhaps. How do we effectively balance the need? We want to make huge impact, where we want to do this as many places as possible. But those are often it's very difficult to get those always to operate in the same direction. Thanks so much. Thank you. Our next speaker will be Alfy Gathone-Hardy, a senior lecturer in sustainable resources at the University of Edinburgh. Alfy's career has spanned academia, consulting, parliament, and government, but his most important and rewarding role was as my undergraduate supervisor. Alfy's presentation will ask the question, which meat is good for biodiversity? I think I might stop now. Lovely to be here and to see lots of familiar friendly faces and unfamiliar friendly faces as well. What I want to do is take us back to the UK. In the UK, when we talk about meat from the environment perspective, we normally talk about how much meat can we afford? We've got this limited budget of power and limited budget of land use. How much meat can we afford to have within lead? I want to change the question to the other way now. So how much meat do we need to have to support bs? Is it working better now? Can you hear me? Brilliant. I think this is what Dylan like it is he can never understand my lectures. I'm going to first of all, tell you the story about a butterfly, and then I'm going to talk about what I've grandly called a conceptual model, and then I'm going to give you an answer about how much livestock we need. So So I'm going to start with this butterfly. This is the large blue butterfly. It's a very beautiful butterfly that's incredibly nasty butterfly. Many of you may know the story of this already, and we can see it here feeding on thyme in Southern England and it'll lays egg on me and here we've got its egg. Most insects look much nicer magnified as the egg does, and the egg will feed here, we've got the caterpillar, the larvae, will feed on the thyme for three weeks, hardly growing at all, actually. And then when it's in early summer, in the afternoon early evening between about 5:00 and 7:00, this caterpillar will drop to the ground. And it'll hope to be discovered by a red ant. So if it's discovered, it might be eaten, which is sub optimal for it. But if it's not eaten, then it tries to not be eaten by releasing hormones and pheromones, it will squeeze out essentially honeydew, sugar solutions. And the ant, if it doesn't eat it straight away, may spend up to an hour kind of essentially engaging with it. And after about an hour, this will then inflate itself and arch its back in a way that we assume is mimicking the larvae of an ant. And something magic happens and the ant is fooled and the ant takes the larvae back to its nest. And in the nest, it takes on even closer pheromone of the ants, and it lives there, and it starts to feed on the sisters of the ant that brought it in. So this is a still from the BBC. There's a lovely film about this in the recent wild isles. And it will feed on many, many larvae. So over 1,500 larvae. And these nests are quite small. They're normally about 2000. So it will essentially destroy the nest by feeding on it. And then it'll pupate and it'll come out the next spring as another butterfly. And so this is to me, this is an incredible story. This is my bread and butter. This is why I do the work. And the reason it links to livestock is that this butterfly who is so beautiful and so nasty she got her comeuppance, sorry they got their comeuppance in 1979 when they became extinct from the UK. And the reason they became extinct was because of lack of grazing. So the red ants that they feed on are not the ones that make these mounds, but they live in the same habitat. But they rely on temperature of having a very short sword above them. So without the grazing, the ants suffered. Without the ants, the sorry, the butterfly became extinct. And it got reintroduced in the early 80s, and now we have one of the best colonies of this in the world. So my point about this is here, we've got interaction of livestock and biodiversity, and we've got it really for what I'm very crudely calling fun. And by fun I mean this is lovely. This is a brilliant story, but we don't need this. So we don't have it in Scotland. It's too cold for it up here. We did fine without it for four years. We can do totally fine without this butterfly, but it's incredible, and it's amazing. But we also have biodiversity for function. And so we might think about in terms of things like mitigating climate change, in terms of making sure our flood events aren't too extreme, et cetera. So when we look at biodiversity, we can look at it in terms of its role in terms of fun or cultural and function. I'm delibly not talking about visional services here because we're going to see meat as a residual. Okay, so this is my conceptual framework. So I'm starting off with a vegan country. We're producing no we're eating nothing at all. The only meat we're allowed to eat is the meat which is actually beneficial to biodiversity. So I'm ignoring health. I'm ignoring jobs, I'm ignoring. That immediately gives us a question of what biodiversity do we want and how much bioversity we need? And this is, I'm afraid, is a topic that anyone who's listened to me before. This is where we're just stuck and we don't know. We can't really answer this. But we can have some kind of vague gets. And then reiterating this point, we've got the cultural services or the fund service and the regulating services. So what I'm going to do, and I'm going to take us through these concentric rings starting from the middle. So the role of livestock in terms of benefiting biodiversity from the direct benefits, and then the indirect benefits, and then wider land use efficiency. So the direct benefits, this is some work that did with the brilliant Pertut Ankle Bth Bridge, where we sat in a field not that far from here, and this was a region ag site. And so the field is split into three. So this third here, the cows were in that last week. This middle field, the cows are in today, and this furthest field is a clean field. The cows haven't been there for a long time, they're going to go there next week. We put bat monitors out. What we saw is comparing the number of bat activity to the ones where the cows were last week, we had four times more bat activity. Comparing it to where the cows are today, we had 12 times more bat activity. The cows are providing something which is encouraging bats to feed in that location. Um, and here you can see, what you can see this, I think we're the first people in the world to do this of trying to measure the number of bats using so you can just about to see the bats swooping over the cows in the thermal image. Maybe you can't. I don't know. The cows really liked the camera, but they are there, I promise you. Um, Okay. But to get proper data on this, I want to talk about one specific bat. This is the horseshoe bat, and it's called the hoshoe bat because it's adapted nose where it makes it loud noise comes from roughly the type of horseshoe. So horseshoe bats, our biggest bats, being written, our biggest bat is pretty small and they weigh about the same as an AA battery. Big decline in population, and they're roughly 40 centimetre wingspan about the size of a pair. There was a natural experiment in terms of horseshoe bats when foot and mouth came along. There was a big colony near the Forest of Dean. All the local cows were shot, and we saw a big decline in the population of the horseshoe bat. They were doing grand until about mid July. It turns out that in mid July, specifically the etodius dung beetle comes along, and that's incredibly important for lactation. Everything was going fine and then the mothers especially totally their health dropped off, the young dropped off. We know that we need eodius beetles to maintain the population of great horseshoe bats. We can calculate how many A Frotis Beetles we get from livestock. We can then look at how much livestock we need to support one colony of about 350 horseshoe bats. This gives us requirement of having Low density livestock without any worms, et cetera. And we're going to say, let's have one colony every we're never more than 15 kiloets away from the colonies to one colony every 30 kilometres. We require 0.16% of our land to provide that. So really, not very much. Do I trust the figure? A bit. Um. So this bottom figure here is all of UK agricultural land, excluding rough grazing, you would require about 21,000 hectares of rough grazing. Um, Okay. So if we think of indirect benefits, so many of the most biodiversity interesting areas in Yuk Kush are associated originally with livestock. So for example, ponds or you can see a ham. There's a hedge in the background. But this is a picture this is from the farm I grew up in. And what's interesting though, is we don't need the livestock to maintain this. So lot very kindly paid us 770 pounds per pond to restore them recently. So we've got subsidy cost about 800, so it wasn't ideal, but so my point, though, is that we can associate ponds with livestock and the bioversity with livestock, actually, that's a bit unfair because we haven't livestock in this area of the farm, and we're mainting the pond. So where we can clearly associated is species rich hay meadows. So species rich hay meadows are the meadows where we collect hay, so hay being a dry form of grass, which is used for overwinter storage. And our home meadows are our most exciting biodiversity sites within the UK. So we'll have 2030 species of grass sorry, 2030 species of vascular plant within a square metre. It's absolutely beautiful and amazing. So how many haymadows do we need? So I suggested this talk to Jeff whenever it was, six week I six week ago, eight. I've talked to lots of my colleagues about this and some people have given answers, and some people have said they don't know. The ones that gave the answers, I now trust less than the ones that didn't give any answers. And so I've done that thing of trying to get the right answer and giving up and just plumbing for 10%, 10% kind of worked, and it also is the EU target for high maintenance of high maintenance biodiversity areas. And so I've said, if we've got 10%, let's say half of it down to livestock. And so what we see there is this is the kind of figures. It's just straightforward. This is 5% of the area. So that's not ideal. Best we could do for now. Last bit is land use efficiency, and I haven't done any calculations on this, but it's a really important point to include. The first part is feeding people, not pigs. 40% arable land in the UK, just looking at wheat in Bali is going to pigs. If we do a calories to calories perspective, which I recognise is not ideal necessarily, that gives us about 20% land use efficiency. This suggests about 32% of our entire croppable land is available if we are vegan. Yeah. So we're compensating for the calories, at least that we dock at those. So we've got some space. Another way of looking at it is kind of the role of waste. So here is some data of it's European, but if we just look at the UK one here, just for carrots, for example, suggesting on average, we waste about 30% of our carrots every year. These figures are all pretty dodgy, but let's use them for now because that suggests there's a lot of carrots around, which maybe we could use that to kind of increase land efficiency. And the final point is this slightly cong grass which I've adapted from Gribaldi's work, where where maybe we're not when we're putting in semi natural habitat, we're not simply not simply taking food production out. So the idea here is this is looking at increasing levels of semi natural habitat on the x axis and production on the Y axis. And if we look at the yellow line, for example, so the top line, as we start putting more semi natural habitat in, more bidiversity friendly habitat in, this might actually increase production. So by mitigating disease, by providing natural enemies, for example. So it might be that when we think we're losing production because we're taking land out, maybe we're not. Maybe we're increasing production. I think this is less likely to happen with livestock because we're likely not to have them in such close intimate relationship with the other cfable land, but we don't know. No one's got data on this. And the other point I want to make is if we look at this axis, the common axis we have is yield and measured in tonnes per hectare. But really, what we need to do is look at people fed per hecta. So this is what matters because it's incredibly important that UK doesn't increase its biodiversity at the expense of more land use change in Africa, for example. So it's really important that we don't offshore our biodiversity. But if we shift our diets, I don't know how that's someone else's job. If we shift our diet away from the meat consumption to less meat consumption, we might have much less land down to crops, but feed more people. So this is my answer. So this is how much meat we can get per person if we only grow meat which is supporting biodiversity. So I was really aware, and it goes back to the question that our group asked of, should you give a single answer? And I'm really aware that this answer is wrong, and it's probably the only thing you remember, and it's so wrong. It could be orders of magnitude. But according to me, we can get 1.2 kilogrammes of meat per person in the UK. So Apparently, a slice of bacon is 30 grammes. On that level, we can have, I think it was four slices of bacon in a month, equivalent of beef. There's really up. My point though, is I think this question is important. We want to reframe the question away from how much meat can we afford to what's the role of meat in providing biodiversity. I want to say thanks to Beth, who's the person who did all the back work with me and my colleague Barbara Smith, who did the thinking with me. And then to conclude this point, livestock have a role in supporting biodiversity. There is no objective route to determine which or what biodiversity we need, and consequently, of which or what livestock we need. And this is kind of Lindsey's point about it's up to us as academics. Maybe to guide is not up to us as academics to decide. So we can guide. It's not up to us to decide. This is a normative question, how much biodiversity, which bidiversity do we want needed? This is the bat thing. Approximately 110 adult cows required to support a single colony of greater horseshoe bats. I love how greater horses bats. If we don't climate change might bring them up here at the moment, they're still temperature limited further down. And then 5% of all lowland area, including the low and grassland area across the whole of the UK, allows us to have about 1.2 kilogrammes of beef per person. So thank you very much. Thank you, Alfred. Our next speaker is Masud Cade za Frey. Masud is a mathematician and quantitative geneticist at the Roslin Institute, focusing on developing mathematical models and computational methods to measure and improve livestock resilience. Masud will present on how advances in livestock science and technologies have enhanced projections of climate change impacts. Okay. Great. Thank you very much for the introduction. Hello, everyone. So first of all, I'd like to thank. Try to shout louder. First of all, I'd like to thank the organisers for giving me this opportunity. It's such a great pleasure and honour. First of all, I wanted to highlight the importance of the livestock in our lives, but I think Jacqueline did a great job of doing that. So I'm going to skip that. I wanted to also talk about the environmental concerns from the livestock, but that was also covered, and whether we like it or not, the consumption of animal based proteins is going to increase for the socioeconomic and demographic reasons that Philip pointed out. I also wanted to highlight that they are important in biodiversity, which was covered by Alfy And so I'll just jump into my second slide, which is livestock is also a victim of the climate change. So now we know that we are going to need more livestock, so livestock is going to affect climate change. But actually, a direct effect of climate change is heat stress which affects the animals fertility, production, feed intake, and metabolism, and that means we're going to have less product per animal. There's also indirect effects such as drought, which causes us to have lower quality and quantity of feed per animal, but also we may not have enough water for the livestock. So extreme events like floods have shown to have a spike in the presence of pathogens on pasture, and this is very important for ruminants that room on the pasture. And I think I read in a report that only in 2023, 20% of livestock production was lost because of the disease. And imagine now with the climate change being going on, we're going to have even more loss. So it seems there is a positive feedback loop between livestock and climate change. Well, there has been some uh interventions or how to technologies to mitigate and adapt to this. I put some of them here. So for long, there has been attempts to improve the productivity. So basically getting more production per animal. More recently has been attempts to improve the feed efficiency of the animals to tackle the problem of not having enough feed or lower quality feed. Some attempts to improve heat tolerance, animals that are more resilient to heat for long, there has been attempts to make vaccines and improve the disease resilience of the animals, and much more recently, attempts to reduce the enteric fermentation of the cattle. But the question here comes that which of these strategies are better or like, what is the wider implication of each of these interventions that we can implement. And to answer such big questions, if you want to look at the bigger picture, we need a model that looks at the bigger picture. And these models are the economy, society environment or ESE models. These models are actually used for informing policy or making consumer recommendations. I've just taken a picture from the Internet to show how complicated they are. So all these lines are basically the interaction between the sectors. Well, you might have, let's say, an oil price increasing which affects the water quality. So we want to look at what policies we need to put to counter the effect of oil price. And when we looked at these models, to our surprise, none of these ESE models implemented the technologies that I showed in the previous slide. So the core of our proposed perspective was here that by integrating these advances, whether it's a new insight, we learn about how climate change affects livestock or a new technology that is being implemented, we can have better projection for the future so that we can make better policies. And now I just want to talk about the case study that we did. So on one hand, we had the effect of heat stress, and on the other hand or on the other side of the coin, we had genomic selection, which is a fairly recent technology improvement that has happened in the livestock. So heat stress has been subject of much attention. I think the early papers go back to 70s or 80s where people realise the hotter it is or the more humid it is animals have lower production or they eat less. Recently, there was this paper by Philippine colleagues where they looked at how heat stress affect the global production of cattle in 2050. And they showed that the production drops by 5% because animals eat less, so they produce less. But because they also eat less, they have lower enteric fermentation. So the greenhouse gas emission will also drop. So we wanted to build upon that and look at how about pigs and broiler chickens and layer chickens and sheep and goats. But also, heat stress affects the feed conversion ratio. That is how efficient animals are. Basically, the hotter it is, it has been shown that they become less efficient. So here I wanted to tell you how we collected that data. Basically, you can combine temperature and humidity into one value, which we call THI index. And it has been shown that the higher the THI index, the lower the production of animal and the less efficient they are. The efficiency here is FCR, which is the opposite of FCR, the opposite of efficiency to it. So the higher the FCR, the less efficient the animals are. And for the climate conditions in 2050, we used a climate model from the CMIP six project. So now, this is one side of the coin. This is the bad part where, like, climate change and heat stress is affecting our animals. On the positive side, we have the genomic selection. Now, to tell you about the genomic selection, I want to go back and tell you what traditional artificial selections are. So in the animal science, we assume that one animal in a population of animals is like a like everything else in our life is normally distributed. Majority of animals are average, some are very good and some are very bad. By selecting the very good animals, we basically shift that normal distribution slightly to higher values. After several generations, and this has happened historically, we get chickens that are four times bigger and cows that give four times more milk. Now, this is the old story. The new story is that now we have access to DNA data, and this makes selection much more effective. And which is specifically breeding because it's permanent. Once you grow your chicken to a larger size, there is no way it's going to shrink back. Or it's worldwide. If a UK company, for example, works on increasing production for chicken, they can send the eggs to Africa or China or some other place, and they will also benefit. And it's fairly new. I think genomic selection came around 2010. It was proved a few years after that it really works, and It is now becoming the new standard worldwide, and it's becoming also very cheap to implement. So now we have the data that we needed. We also needed to model to put this data into a model, an ESC model. Oh, okay, here I wanted to tell you how we got the data for genomic selection. So basically, we can drive a formula based on the historic data from the literature and also how genomic selection improves the effectiveness. And then by compounding this over the number of generations for animals, we can get a relative increase in efficiency and production by the year 2015. Okay, so now we have the data, we have both sides, the negative side and the positive sides. We need a model. And for the model, we use the magnet from the Wachingan University, which is used by the European Union and Scottish government. And as a baseline for the model, we use the SSP two. I think for the interest of time, I'll skip why we chose SSP two where we can discuss it. And so here, I think the core of my presentation and everything I want to tell. So first, we look at the scenario one, which we are accounting only for heat stress. So we have a projection, an old projection for 2050 not accounting for heat stress. That's basically the 0%, the zero and the scenario one, which is accounting for heat stress. And we see that there is already some changes in the projection we get with respect to the projection we had previously. So greenhouse gas emission increases by 0.2%, not much, but for example, look at the food affordability, which drops by 4% compared to when we do not account for heat stress. Now, on the other hand, when we put genomic selection into our model, we see that the effect of heat stress is negated and actually is reversed. So now greenhouse gas emission drops by 1% compared to what we had projected for 2050, not accounting for any of those. But I think more than the numbers, I want to highlight here that how these numbers have changed, that we have a significant change in our indicators if they account for for this technology, for this new insight that we obtained. There is, of course, some limitation. For example, here, I'm looking at heat stress and showing that genomic selection negates the effect of heat stress, but that doesn't mean it negates the effect of climate change. I'm not saying that. There's also some other simplifying assumptions we have taken. For example, we assume that genomic selection improves worldwide equally. That is not the case in developing countries, is going to have a massive impact more impact than in developed countries. I have it here actually. We haven't looked at other technologies that are being implemented. For example, now it's becoming common practise to breed for disease resilient and heat resilient, which we have not included in our model. And finally, my takeaway message is, yes, livestock is bad for the environment and we need to reduce the consumption, but it's not going to be reduced for now, so it's going to increase, and we need to do something about it. We may have some solutions, but we don't know how effective they are. And in order to assess, we need to use ESE models to understand if they are effective or not. But that unfortunately is not an easy job, and it requires an interdisciplinary collaboration between many fields and requires a lot of experts. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Kirsty Blair, and I'm a communications manager for the Transforming the future Transforming the debate about Livestock Futures project in the Division of Global Agriculture and Foo Systems, and also part time PhD student. So we're in for a treat this afternoon, so I hope you're all awake and enjoyed your lunch. And This session looks at the role of livestock in livelihoods and just transitions. So we've got a great lineup of speakers for the final session, and I'm really looking forward to the discussions that happen afterwards. So first up, we've got Professor Isabelle Bolenbg, who is interim programme leader for People policies and Institutions at the International Livestock Research Institute. Isabel has over 20 years of experience in agricultural systems across Africa, and Southeast Asia, with a focus on livestock value chains. She's also a visiting professor in the Global Agriculture and Food System Division. And you will be discussing the role of livestock in livelihoods, particularly in lower income countries. So over to you as well. That's great. Is it working? Can you hear me? Yeah. Great. Thank you very much for the nice introduction. Yes, that's I'm Isabel from Abe. Yeah, so changing gear a bit from this morning and talking about livelihoods. The word livelihoods is sometimes is kind of confusing for some people. It's a very interesting word for me in terms of livestock because it starts with the same livestock. And I think those two concepts, those two are quite very much related. So in terms of livelihoods, when we talk about livelihoods, we usually start with economics. I'm an economist, so I think it's important to start with that. And it's really about the importance of livestock in terms of gross domestic products. So the value that livestock as a sector actually contributes to the economy. And, uh, And even though it was discussed this morning, I think it's quite important to realise that it's actually important in all countries of the world, with a global average of about 40%, actually quite high in the high income countries and quite variable in the low income countries. And this is actually growing because of demand for animal source for increasing in this part of the world. And I think it was discussed a bit this morning. So, as well, what is very important to consider when you look at adverse figures, is that some of it is hard to measure contribution of livestock in terms of in terms of manure use for soil fertility, in terms of ecosystem services that was discussed this morning actually not included. So really, those figures kind of underestimates the value of livestock in in national economy. So that was at national level or at a global level. Now, if you go now at lobal level at household level in terms of smallholder income, and in lower mid countries, smallholders contributes most of the food production. Livestock as well contributes significantly to smallholder income. Those various studies have shown sometimes 12% 2-40% or a large range, and the figure has one of 15% on average. In systems where often livestock is one of the few economic opportunities like in pastoral in pastoral systems, those figures can increase up to 40%. So something that wasn't much discussed this morning and is quite important in the settings where I work is about resilience. The fact that actually livestock being as well an asset, actually helps pastoral systems and farmers as well in this cop livestock to actually absorb and absorb shocks, the effect of shocks could be climatic shocks, could be other shocks. Um, compared to other economic activities, particularly in the dwland. So for example, a study in Asia showed that most households are actually relying on the sale of animals to cope with food shortages and other shocks like having medical expenditures. In Kenya as well as the work on index based life like insurance has shown that, you know, with people having bought bought that insurance are less likely to actually be forced to do things that they wouldn't want to do it. Like, for example, selling animal distress sale of animals or overusing size of the meals or depending on food aid. So really in terms of world economy, a livestock is important for, I mean, in terms of contributing to income, but as well, really being able to actually resist, be more able to cope with the impact of the effect of tough shocks. So because of that, a lot of what we call development programmes from government or from NGOs or from some support some private sectors are implementing what we call livestock interventions. And this slide is quite heavy, but summarised here as well. One of the major intervention that has been tried has been implemented, sorry, in the countries is what we call livestock livestock asset transfer. And it's part on its own, when, you know, we are an NGO or uh, a gman is providing an animal, it could be a cow, it could be some hens, or it could be some goats to a farmer for that family to start having an asset producing not only for sale, but as well for home consumption. So what do you call a Bt asset as its own or as part of what we call a graduation programmes where we have extension. You may have other intervention that bring together the different interventions. So this is something that some people are criticising because, of course, it's about giving things for free. But in of long term impact. He has been shown relatively successful actually in terms of increasing incomes and there was this very famous study using or controlled trials in six countries in the developing countries saying that it increased income, including in the long term, not just at the time of the transfer, but having longer term income. Uh, in terms of in terms of lifecycle revenue, in terms of food security, in terms of daily incomes, as you see here, and as well in terms of resilience, people actually able to withstand the shocks. And very importantly, as well, is besides those more obvious live indicators that are income nutrition is about other indicators which like capacity to save, reduce anxiety because of more ability to better kind of smoother your consumptions and of course, enhance nutrition and health. Another big topic I wanted to discuss today with you today, which was interestingly not discussed at all this morning, or maybe I missed it, is the importance of livestock for gender and progress towards women empowerment. So, uh, So very often when we talk about livestock and gender, we're trying to look at what we call gender responsive approaches or gender integrated approaches. So when you have a technology like the one we discussed this morning, be it a better feed options, or a better breed options, as we heard, we're trying to see how can we ensure that men and women have the same chance of adopting and benefiting and participating in diverse This is great, and we've been doing it quite a bit. And the fact is because most livestock in those countries are raised by women and therefore, the importance of animal for their livelihoods, given that land being owned mainly by men because of the title deeds and patriarchal norms, livestock is actually one of the few assets that women are able to control and own and get an income that they can directly managed. So we worked on that about, you know, ensuring that the technologies that are developed by our colleagues from the technical areas, as I call them both, you know, makes sense for both men and women. But we are trying to reverse the equations on how can actually livestock be used as a pathway towards women empowerment and gender equality. So really about trying to look at that dimension as an end on its own and not just as an avenue. So what we have asked to be careful is that the Roman intervention that work on transgender, we've seen that actually most asset transfer have positive effect on women empowerment. When they are coupled with extension. But the one that focused more about output markets, so supporting access to a cooperative in terms of dairy or to a livestock markets can actually be quite negatively impacted because it requires actually more labour and more work for the woman. So, indeed, women, maybe the household as a whole, may actually be able to get a higher income, but kind of at the expense of more workload on the woman. So really important to really understand the trade offs between the different interventions. Trying to summarise what is here on this slide. So one example that I felt would be of interest to this audience is about how can you actually address gender norms that prevent women from participating in a very particular case of chicken business in Tanzania. So the case is that chicken business where we move beyond the farm. So not only woman as chicken producers, but women are actually buying and selling their own chicks is actually a good opportunity for them to have a good and decent income. Hillary and many other people have been working on new breeds of chicken, who are adapted to the context are more productive, better have new requirements, and therefore, how can we leverage that innovations to actually not only increase income, but as well really support women towards higher women empowerment. The issue is restive many issues, but one of the issues is restrictive gender norms, whereby you have an issue of actually accessing markets, going on a motorbike or people just not willing to support you as a brother, as a father, as a husband to you to actually go into this business. So um, yet we've seen that having this kind of package package of new breeds with other skill set could actually be a very positive have a probability positive effect on women's livelihoods. So what we've done is beside providing, of course, access to these breeds and for trainings, there's a social media campaign in Tanzania where where we actually look at one of the key issue of gender restive norms and engaging communities both at community level, face to face, but as well on social media. It's actually Facebook here about, you know, engaging communities about what do they think if your sister, your wife, your mother is actually engaging in a business as a chicken business, and therefore, as well, engaging males in the men in those conversations with positive feedback. That was an example about how livestock, how livestock can actually really be leveraged to support women empowerment. Something that I didn't really hear that much in the morning and is really, really key in the countries where we are working is the other or other big effect of livestock on peoples. We didn't discuss nutrition and unhealthy was discussed this morning environment was discussed this morning. But really in the system where it is working, livestock farming as well a big effect in terms of overall farm productivity. So manure being used on crops, stoves and corporate tube being used for feeding. That's really looking at the whole farming system, productivity, I think is quite important. And other very cultural reasons, like in many parts of the world, AOL, livestock is very strongly associated with festival, with cultural practises. We hear about dowry payment in cattle, we hear about specific products used for religious or social events and just the prestige attached to livestock in many parts of the world, including here in the UKM show. So for me, it's about including there's always there's multiple pathway that will take us to the sustainable and equitable lifesock feature. I think Philip did a very great job is learning about those different pathways. For us, it's really about for me it's about denting those synergies between the different interventions and therefore, identifying as trade offs and supporting decision makers in identifying those trade offs and kind of finding a solution that is fair for the majority of people what these people are aware about those trade offs. And when we do that is which voices are we listening to? Which voices are we including in those conversations? Are we just taking the easy way out and just listening to one type of voices, or are we bringing the different voices together and just bringing about our affordability, as we discussed this morning already about healthy animal safe food and healthy people. The issue of one health is quite important. The fact that everybody actually has a right to benefit from livestock, looking at equity and fairness, which I just mentioned and really, of course, about environment and biodiversity. We at different dimensions. A that, thank you very much. Thank Thank you, Isabelle. That was a perfectly timed talk to the second. So next up, we've got doctor Mariana Hazeta, who is a postdoctoral researcher at bargaining and University and Research. Mariana's work sits at the crossroads of food, sociology, sustainable diets, and emerging technologies. In recent years, she has been focusing on how cellular agriculture and precision fermentation technologies are being integrated into food systems. So her presentation today is titled Is Precision fermentation a Farmer's Thing? Integrating Dutch dairy farmers perspectives in just transition. So Mariana, over to you. Thank you so much. Is this working? Perfect. Thank you so much for the introduction. Thank you so much for having me here and for doing the afternoon session. Thank you very much. Extra. Thank you for you guys. My presentation is Ps and fermentation, a farmers the integrating Dutch dairy farmers perspectives in just transitions is part of the project that I developed in Bingen University with my colleagues in the philosophy group. So for us to know, to understand, if it is a farmer's thing, let's start with you do you guys know what prestin fermentation is? So I see some people saying yes. How many people know what presion fermentation is? Okay, congratulations because not a lot. So in a nutshell, and the people who are here, if you guys are scientists, help me out. But in a nutshell, very quickly, president fermentation is a new process of production of conventional foods in the sense differs with the bottlins presented today that is not a plant based. The final product would be an animal product and consists in changing the DNA of a microorganism, for instance, east. In order for it to fermentation, express a protein, for instance, causin that is the protein that we are currently studying in Wingen. In order to have as a final product milk, for instance. This process claims to be sustainable, safe, and ethical. However, the discourses have been focused on the technology development and in the markets. But I ask who participates in the process of the development of this technology? A bit of the same question that Isabelle is also asking, so I think it was a perfect transition from the previous presentation because this technology presents big changes in the horizon. Precision fermentation, especially regarding dairy, that is the casine mile that is the one that we are currently studying in Vaingen shifts protein production from rural areas to fermentation labs. It also involves different relationships when we talk about production and supply chains. For instance, the deepest one so far that we have been mapping is the lack of need for cows. Because once you map the DNA, you can make the microorganism produce the cusine And in this sense, you don't need the cow anymore, right? You don't need to keep the cow. So this changes a lot as we've been talking during the day and also demands new professional expertise. So now I ask a different question then. That is, who benefits from this technology then? First of all, who is involved? And by being involved, we ask who can benefit out of this? So some of the questions that other sociologists have also been asking are, what happens to rural communities, who cares for the countryside, and what happens to the animals? Because if you only focus on the markets, if you only focus on the technical matters, who asks these questions? In our field, we have a lot of buzz regarding sustainability, regarding animal welfare. But we also have to pay attention to the things that we are not talking about the things, the silences that we have in the fields. And this is directly linked to who is going to benefit out of it in the end. So a little bit about the context where I'm coming from this research is coming from. I don't know if you guys have been following the past years. The Dutch farmers at the crossroads in the Netherlands, we have been experiencing social unrest in opposition to the Dutch government nitrogen strategy for the transformation of rural areas. Very long policy name. But what it means is that the farmers are feeling cornered, they're feeling they're not supported by the government and they have been protesting a lot. They have really been pushing back, thinking that they are not being taken into consideration when these environmental policies were done. The idea that lead grown, cultivated meat, precision fermentation, all these buzz names regarding the technology of cellular agriculture will soon destroy farming and save the planet by destroying farming. And finally, the portrayal of farmers and their lifestyle as incompatible with a future where fighting climate change is a priority. And this sense would have to be in the losing end of the changes for sustainability. This is also some of the conversations that we've been having in the morning as well during the lunch because many times when promoting a technology or when promoting a change, it really has to oppose to what is being done so far. And this is also what the farmers have been feeling regarding innovation. They have been feeling that they are criticised without being understood and without being able to participate in this process of change. However, there is a very, very important thing to consider, that is the temporality and the cost of opportunity. Well, as pointed in the previous presentations, the cost of the conventional agriculture is increasing due to the unpredictability of climate change. So more and more, the farmers are having to bear the cost of climate change in their production and the cost of not being part of the process. So The regulations will be built by and for other actors. If farmers don't perceive this as something that could benefit them, that could somehow be part of their future. If they don't engage with the development of this technology which is unfortunately so far has been the case, regulations, these products are being regulated now. These products are being regulated today, this year because we cannot in the European Union, so far consume products made of cell agriculture. We had the first products submitted last year, so it is a very, very important time for us to be discussing this because once the regulations are in place, the regulations can benefit other actors, for instance, big companies. It also represents loss of markets and new competitors if they believe that this is not something that could be part of their future, this is not something that they would like to engage. And finally, it dislocates the production chains. This is a picture of Brazil and the flood that we had there last year that killed a lot of animals and ruined lots of farms. So the farmers are also feeling that not only in the Netherlands or in Brazil, but they are feeling that it's time to change some kind of change, some kind of change is necessary. You cannot continue doing as you did before. But which kind of change is welcoming them? Which kind of change is dialoguing to them and is making it possible for them to engage. So the research we've done in the Netherlands focused on Dutch dairy farmers. I wanted only family farms because I wanted to see how the tradition, especially in the Netherlands, the dairy tradition, influenced in the decisions that they would take and who are open to innovation. And we set innovation as something that they could they could choose how they perceived innovation. I did 50 interviews, same structure interviews, and farm and visits. I stopped doing interviews when they started to be repetitive, so when I reached saturation point. And I asked them about their memories and family and individual perceptions as well. And I also had two intergenerational discussions with farmers from different ages. So we could contrast also how the experiences that people had in the past are also influencing on how they perceive innovation in the present and in the future. What we came up with is called horizons of change. So based on three points of different temporality, how do the farmers remember innovation in the past? How do they expect fear or expect or fear the present? And how do they imagine their role in the future of their production? We organised this in three different horizons because the ways that when we talk to the farmers, we asked like, how do you understand innovation? How do your parents, how did your parents innovate? We found out that innovation in the Netherlands was something so important that it was something expected when they inherited the farms. They not only wanted the farms to stay in the family, but they also wanted to know how are you going to leave your mark in the farms. But the ways that people perceive change in the previous generations also affected their openness to innovate forward. For instance, I would just bring an example. The families that adopted milking machines, We're also open to discuss about precision fermentation, because they said, when we first heard of Miki machines, it was something so distant, you know, it was something that only the universities, people were talking about this. We never thought it would be part of our farms. But then we saw in the news and then, like a neighbour, like bought one of the or rented one of the of the machines, they said it was not too difficult, but it was a bit difficult. But later on, people started to adopt. And then they finally, after a couple of years, started to implement in their own farm. So they said, Precision fermentation. I don't really know about it, but as I didn't as well, milking machines back in the time, so why not? The way that they proceed with innovation in the past makes them more open to what the future might bring. But the hurdles that they are going through right now and the lack of certainty that the regulations offer pose them lots of challenges right now because at the same time, they can be open in their imagination for something as disruptive and as different as precision fermentation. It is also very difficult for them to think about investing something in such an uncertain environment. Making the entanglements explicit amid the tensions between the horizon of memory, how their families perceive change, the horizons of the expectations, how they're facing the hurdles right now, how it's difficult to plan ahead because they don't really know which way the regulations are going to go. Allows for paving the way for including them in possible futures of what we call these horizons of imaginations. So these three horizons help give an empirical and normative account of change in the context of uncertainty and transformation because I think this is also a theme that is across the different presentations that we had today. We are living in a time of uncertainty. We are also living in a time where everybody, farmers included, understand that transformation is needed. But how do we take how do we make transformation when we don't really know what's going on, how to move forward, right? So sustainable transition in food systems should prioritise the inclusion of different stakeholders in order to reach justice and autonomy. And just some preliminary results that we had with our interviews. When we talked to the farmers, they brought up three different matters that would be key for them to consider precision fermentation as a technology that would be willing to use. Financial, it's who is going to fund this? Am I going to have to buy myself the bioreactors to make it or is it going to be funded by a cooperative some of them were willing to chip in. Cooperatives are really important mode of production in the Netherlands, or is it going to be funded by the government? If the government cares so much about the environment, can they use this money to fund then bioreactors for us to transition to production? The second one is organisational. Who is going to who is going to be part of these chains? Because, of course, when I interviewed dairy farmers, they were also part of a big chain of an ecosystem of production. So, am I going to have the whole the whole process in my farm or am I going to produce feedstock and then give it to the co op? Or am I going to rent the land for another company to implement the bioreactors. The third one is a technology transfer. They said, Okay, we are farmers. Do we have to invent our own process of procedure fermentation, or is it going to be just a big business thing? Or is there any plan for technology transfer and to have some kind of cooperation with the government? How is it going to be available for us to be part of this process? Because time is key. This technology is still in development, so there is still time for the farmers to be part of it. Now it's a perfect time for them to be part because otherwise, when the processes are in place, it's going to be too late. They can still influence the the scientists doing this kind of research. Imagination must be an active practise of bringing these different perspectives together. So this is not something that happens automatically. Just by creating the technology, this is going to impact positively the society. This is not automatic. It has to be actively brought the perspectives of the farmers in order for them to be included in this process. And there is not one ideal sustainable future. So what are the different visions of the future and by whom are they being constructed? And by bringing together these visions, it would lead to a more inclusive, sustainable technology development. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mariana. So finally, we are pleased to have Professor Msak Chegunda, the Director of the Centre for Tropical Livestock Genetics and Health, and chair of Tropical livestock Genetics at the Royal **** Veterinary Studies. Mzk is an expert in animal breeding and quantitative genetics with research exploring disease resistance, resilience, and enteric methane emissions. His work focuses on genetic improvement to enhance the role of livestock in supporting livelihoods. In his presentation, he'll be discussing technological opportunities to improve livestocks contributions to livelihoods. Mzk, we look forward to your insights. Thank you very much. Before I start with my presentation, I just wanted to address one issue which was raised earlier on in the discussion, the importance of animal welfare and can we breed for animal welfare? Animals farm animals, specifically, therefore, productivity. Anything that brings in stress to those animals impinges on their welfare. So heat stress, ill treatment, no food, breeding the inappropriate animals in any environment which you stress them is not good for their animal welfare. So as animal breeders, what we do is try and breed for productivity, for heat resistance, and all those things. So in a way, we are indeed addressing animal welfare. So I just wanted to kind of tap onto that discussion. I hope you haven't counted the time for me because I haven't started my presentation. So this afternoon, what I want to talk about is the technological opportunities that are available in terms of making sure that those animals can contribute to sustainable livelihoods of the people who keep those animals. Oh. We've talked quite a lot about climate change. We've talked quite a lot about human population growth. This came up in the presentations this morning, biodiversity loss, which in a way, we did not talk about it as it affects livestock. But actually, when we talk about biodiversity loss, even the livestock themselves are suffering from loss, we are losing breeds of animals in the world. The other thing that may not have been talked about directly is quantity in availability as we move forward. But underneath all of that is also the fact that carbon and carbon dioxide is actually increasing in the atmosphere. We did not talk about that, but that's one of the global challenges. In the past 35 years, NASA have reported a very big increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. There is an advantage of that because that carbon dioxide has to find a sink, and that sink is crops. So if you actually look at crop surface area and biomass has increased because of that increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. That's good news, high yields. But actually, that good news comes with a bit of bad news because what's increasing is carbohydrate and not protein. And the other thing which is also bad news is that increase is associated as well with the increase of phytate and phytse which make bioavailability of micronutrients from crops not be there. So we are losing quality of the crop that we are getting. One could say that that's a big advantage for the crops. We are losing the nutrients from the crops, so a big advantage for animals. Let's develop animals that filling the gap. Unfortunately, that increase of animals or carbon dioxide rather also affects animals. In the sense that those animals become victims of climate change, as well as perpetrators of climate change. So although the increase of carbon dioxide increases the yield of crops like maize, wheat, and potatoes, the quality of those crops is reducing. And yes, like I said, animals can contribute to that because we know that animal foods provide most of the micronutrients that are decreasing from crops. Things like vitamin A, iron, zinc, calcium, yes, we can get them from livestock. But just like I said, those livestock are also victims of the same issue. So what can we do? They are not just victims because of the heat stress. We know that, of course, they are contributing to methane emissions, and one of the things that everybody talks about is that methanes ruminants are contributing. But actually, when you look at it from what's happening in the rumen, they are also losing energy. So this cycle here is indicating where the leakages are happening in the rumen for that methane to be produced. It's actually the hydrogen coming from the metabolism that is looking for a sink in the rumen, which then sinks with carbon dioxide to produce methane. And that hydrogen could have been an energy source for the animals. So even the animal that's producing methane is losing out on the goodies they could get from the feed. In which case, when you talk about a smallholder farmer not caring for mitigation, the animal does care. The animal is losing out actually mitigating that loss of hydrogen would be good for the animal to produce that milk, to produce that meat, which the farmer would benefit from. Now, we've talked about these animals being victims. I took this picture four years ago from Somaliland. This is a real picture, not a live picture because it's a steel. This was a cow that had died out of starvation just outside of a village. It wasn't the only one. 500 metres from there, we found another carcass that was destroyed. It was dry. There was no water, there was no food. Cattle were just dropping dead. Caos on the other side were surviving. But when it came to cattle, this is the kind of picture we saw. Now, This is where technologies really could help, and this is where the opportunities and technologies come in. That's the title for my talk. The opportunities for the technologies would help us monitor the situation and, of course, plan ahead. They would help us measure things and innovate. They would help us predict and, of course, mitigate the problems. But of course, we could also conserve and preserve the populations and the genetics we are talking about, including the biodiversity. Work done by a lot of different institutions, including our own colleagues and partners. I got this slide from Professor PanierjK, the director Jean of Erie indicates that we are lucky that with an animal like a cow, almost every part of that animal can help us with indicators that can help monitor those animals. We can put sensors on the other to monitor mastitis and diseases in that animal. We can put sensors on the tail to detect tail movement, which could even tell us the carving times. We can put sensors on the barrel within the barrel of the animal in terms of boluses, that can tell us the pH and also the temperature of the animal, including that loss of hydrogen I just talked about. We can put senses on the legs, in terms of parameters, the feet bit for animals. That could tell us quite a lot in terms of reproduction and also in terms of the animal welfare. We can put colours and they can tell us something as well. So there is a big possibility of using physical technologies to monitor animals and then mitigate problems as they come. We can also use non invasive technologies such as thermal imaging cabinets to start looking at the temperature losses and all that. Heat stress was mentioned earlier on. We can use these kind of technologies to monitor and mitigate heat stress. Some work done within, within CTRGH by our colleagues in Erie is using mobile phone technology to collect data. Earlier on we talked about data gaps. So mobile phones, I'm pretty sure if we counted how many mobile phones we have in this room, Alan indicated very kindly that we are not putting them out, but I'm pretty sure each one of us has two or three. It's the same case with smallholder farmers. Quite a lot of them have mobile technologies, and we are using that to capture data and also make sure that we can use these technologies to help give feedback to farmers. Most of this work is done by our partners at Arie, like I said, in the programme ADGG. Now it's Africa Asia dereginate Gs Programme. We are also working with other partners to detect methane. We've talked quite a lot about methane. Now, when you actually look at methane and that is indeed a big gas from animals, but it doesn't just exist in livestock. It also exists in the atmosphere. I got these pictures from the Internet. NASA used exactly that kind of gas methane as an indicator for new planets. They even found some on Pluto, and that indicates some life. The other telescope there is Harbour, I think, and they put things there, and it's because methane can be measured at a specific wavelength, just like any fluid. So they're using that wavelength. Some people have used that wavelength as well to design and develop a technology that now we've taken from the engineers into livestock, a portable laser methane detector, which is giving us a possibility to monitor methane emissions from livestock in extensive systems as well. Some work done by CTRGH and I will specifically talk about the technologies that we're using. So I've talked about physical technologies, but now moving on to biotechnologies. So we have in CTREH colleagues who are working with molecular technologies, cells, organoids, embryos until we get to the whole animal. One of the examples I would like to give here is the use of those biotechnologies and genomics on one of the problems that smallholder farmers in Africa meet East Coast fever. East Coast fever for some of you who have worked in that area is like the malaria for cattle. It's also caused by protozoa, by the way. But the danger is when it comes to a population, it can wipe out the whole population. Then affecting the livelihoods of the people. So we are using biotechnologies to start really getting into solving that problem. My colleagues found where the genes are and we are trying to move that forward. The other biotechnology we are using is cellular work for genetic screening. Colleagues in CTREH doing that as well, not only in cattle, but also in chickens. And we are moving forward to use that information for animal breeding. So it's not just physical technologies, it's also biotechnologies. But there's another technology that I would like to introduce to you, ladies and gentlemen, and that is knowledge. We normally don't treat knowledge as a technology, but it is. In CTRGH we have a big capacity building and knowledge transfer programme that is helping us to move that technology where it's needed. So these are some of the examples that in CTRGH we are getting involved in to utilise the opportunities in technologies, biotechnologies, physical technologies, software, and a knowledge in order to make the combination of all of that to make sure that livestock can benefit the farmers, pastors, and families that rely on them. I know my presentation was late in the afternoon and I did not want to take all the 10 minutes. So for that reason, I thank you very much for your attention. Thank Thank you very much, M k, and to all the speakers. Can we just give another round of applause to the three of them? Thank you. Great. Well, I'm the only thing standing between you and a beautiful Friday afternoon and some wine, if I'm not mistaken, out in the hallway. Darren's giving me a vigorous head nod. So just very briefly, I took some notes and have been reflecting a little bit about today's proceedings. And I think that the motto I'm coming away with is that is it depends. Um, So is livestock good or bad for our health? Well, it depends. Is it good or bad for biodiversity? I think we can conclude it depends. Is precision fermentation good or bad for farmers? I was sure that would be bad, but maybe it depends as well. So I think we've really just kind of come to this conclusion that it depends. And in my mind, that means that context matters a lot for these questions. And I think that that's really hard for us in the room who are academics in particular, Um, and particularly if you come from a disciplinary background in kind of science or math or some of the STEM disciplines, because we tend to be trained that rigour means that we have found some universal truth that always applies and that there's a value in uniformity, whether that's uniform metrics or indicators that we can apply to every country in the world and make these great global analyses that make these big conclusions and get published in nature. And that's kind of what we are rewarded for. Um, but I think what we've really learned today, and I hope we take forward with us after today, is that actually it's partial truth. So truths that only are true in certain contexts that actually matter the most when we want to change food systems. And maybe it's those kind of partial, very contextual truths that we should be looking for when we're doing our research, and that's what's going to make the change. And to get those, we definitely need to have additional voices in the room. Some people in the room, I think are farmers are engaged a little bit in farming, but maybe we just do need to widen the audience for future symposium. So we'll have a think about that within GAAFS. But I want to just say a huge thank you. Thank you, especially to the audience for making a safe space and respecting all of the speakers, all the people who have asked questions. I wasn't sitting at all the tables, but certainly at our table, it was a very safe space to sometimes difficult conversations about very controversial things. So thank you very much for coming today with an open mind and with that respect. Thank you to the many people who made today possible. A lot of work went into this in the run up to this. I think we almost lost a hand at some point, I've heard when Darren was unrolling some posters. So it was a lot of work. A lot of sacrifices were made. So many thanks to Darren, Kathy, Gordon, Christie, Allison, Cynthia, Yen. I'm sure I'm missing people, but a huge thank you for all of the work that went into today. A big thank you to our chairs for all of the sessions and also the hosts at the tables. All of them are PhD students, I think. And if you've done a PhD, you know, it's a very busy, stressful time, so it's not a small as to ask them to do all of the preparation for this and also to show up and be engaged. So many thanks to all of the PhD students who helped out today. And Yes. One final housekeeping thing. We do have all of the posters. If you want to keep your poster, feel free to take it today. If not, we're going to take them down and bring them over to the guest office. If you want to pick it up sometime in the future, please contact us. We will hold them for Until next year. And then they will be recycled or probably thrown away because I don't know if you can recycle them. So yeah, so please do grab your poster or let us know if you want to keep it. Other than that, I'll close the session and hope to see you next year for the third annual GAAFS symposium. But thank you. Have a great weekend and safe travels if you have come from afar.