Periodic Reporting for period 1 - PATHWAYS (Pathways for transitions to sustainability in livestock husbandry and food systems)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2021-09-01 al 2023-02-28
The core aim of PATHWAYS is the delivery of policy pathways towards sustainable livestock production systems in Europe, while respecting planetary boundaries. PATHWAYS adopts a participatory approach to create a sense of ownership and ensure proposed practices and solutions are meaningful for practitioners in the field. Based on visions for animal production in 2050 by farmers and European stakeholders, PATHWAYS develops scenarios of different livestock futures. These scenarios are assessed for their performance and trade-offs against a sustainability evaluation framework which is informed by a range of sustainability assessments. This framework includes characterising current European livestock production systems, as a baseline to evaluate the impact of improving livestock management practices, and providing new indicators to better capture animal welfare, biodiversity and emission improvements. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methods for livestock systems will be further developed to include impacts on GHGs, biodiversity, animal welfare, crop-livestock interactions and feed-food competitions as well as nutritional characteristics and social wellbeing. Furthermore, the project is assessing the extent to which livestock production systems can promote a circular bioeconomy and ecosystem service delivery across different spatial scales. By analysing the European livestock value chains for the physical flows, actors involved, power dynamics and sustainability performance, PATHWAYS is able to specifically target different stages of the value chain when proposing pathways for sustainable futures. To explore consumer expectations and sustainability concerns related to animal production, PATHWAYS evaluates the proportions of different consumer types and their motivations for decreasing levels of animal protein in diets, as well as consumers’ mind sets and willingness to pay for sustainable livestock production. To ensure future diets are nutritionally balanced, the project calculates the nutrient intake for different “food baskets” for different groups of people. Additionally, possible trade-offs between nutritional needs and environmental impacts will be assessed. The PATHWAYS knowledge exchange, dissemination, and transfer of outcomes’ is facilitating the dialogue between a range of stakeholders to promote the flow of knowledge on potential developments in livestock food systems.
In the first 18 months of the project, the PATHWAYS participatory approach involved the training of Practice Hubs (i.e. groups of farmers in 16 innovative case studies) and Multi-Actor platform (MAP, i.e. European livestock sector stakeholders from policy, NGOs and research) facilitators, the initiation of Practice Hub and MAP activities and the development of visions for sustainable livestock systems in 2050. Practice Hubs were furthermore involved in on-farm data collection and the formulation of ideas for Living Labs to be initiated by the project. Members of the MAP participated in a workshop on scenario development, which further defined the visions developed by Practice Hubs and MAP into five initial storylines. Work on the “Holistic Policy and Innovation Evaluation Framework” began with a review of impacts of past EU policies on the sustainability of the livestock sector, and the current and proposed EU policy framework relating to livestock production. Furthermore, interviews with policymakers and other stakeholders from NGOs, farm advisory and research were carried out to gain insight into the dynamics of livestock policy development to inform the evaluation framework. To define the Status Quo of European livestock farming, PATHWAYS has characterized 171 livestock production systems for 8 livestock categories, producing maps and a dataset to highlight the systems’ attributes. At the same time, the project identified indicators for animal welfare, biodiversity, and emissions factors, to be included in the evaluation framework. Work on life cycle assessment (LCA) included building a framework for methodology development, and an ongoing review of methodologies relevant for livestock systems. Work on ecosystem services and carrying capacities linked to livestock production focused on engaging stakeholders through a survey around prioritising ecosystem services, as well as developing concepts, data and methods to set up the geo-SOL model. Work on nutritional aspects has identified data sources for defining i) the nutritional needs of different groups, ii) the nutritional composition of a large range of food products, and iii) environmental impact of food products. A first sample of a hundred products has been included in the food basket calculator. The physical flows of the most relevant livestock value chains at the European scale have been mapped and existing sustainability assessment tools and methods have been reviewed as a first step to develop a methodology to evaluate the sustainability performances of these value chains. The website development, online resources, communication materials and dissemination events have contributed to the success of the project in having a solid following and outreach for the first 18 months. PATHWAYS has been represented at 12 external events and has had 5,294 visitors on its website, 205 subscribers and 831 cumulative followers on social media.
While the participatory approach is challenging, it has enormous potential for triggering sustainable changes in the European livestock sector. PATHWAYS contributes to unlock this potential through its work in farmer Practice Hubs, each of which is organised by teams of trained facilitators an industry partners, and a Multi-actor platform of stakeholders of the European livestock sector. PATHWAYS is also developing a sustainability assessment framework, which will enable the project to analyse different scenarios of a European livestock future against a set of environmental, social and economic criteria as well as policy targets. For this purpose, PATHWAYS, for the first time, defines the baseline impacts of current livestock husbandry systems.The development of new indicators (i.e. Tier 3 GHG emission factors than can capture more details of management systems) as well as the improvement of LCA methods will allow to better assess economic, environmental and social performance of current and innovative livestock systems, as well as the feasibility of different technical improvements. This will be accompanied by novel and complementary sustainability metrics through the GEO-Sol model, which at its current stage will allow the project to assess the contribution of livestock to circular landscapes and the extent to which livestock husbandry systems contribute to eutrophication and biodiversity loss. Additionally, mapping the physical flows of livestock value chains and reviewing existing value chain sustainability frameworks helps to establish a robust scientific background for the design of sustainability assessment metrics tailored specifically to livestock value chains. Reviewing evidence on the impacts of policies on different livestock systems with regards to different sustainability criteria and system change approaches helps to understand the nature, scale and potential for change towards greater sustainability in the livestock sector.