I thank the HLPE for the opportunity to comment on the V.0 draft of its report. I offer the following suggestions as a contribution to the panel’s work.
First, I welcome the focus of chapter 4 around the task of identifying and developing pathways towards sustainable agricultural development. As a member of the ESRC STEPS Centrei I agree that the concept of pathways – multiple, diverse and inclusive – is a useful and practical one to help researchers, policy makers and practitioners create a sustainable future through the integration of social, technological and environmental knowledge and action. I hope that the HLPE will maintain this focus in the final version of chapter 4 and I invite the report’s authors to draw on the insights of STEPS researchers’ conceptual, methodological and empirical contributions over the past decade, including work on agriculture and livestock.ii
Second, I suggest that the report needs to demonstrate the HLPE’s awareness of the ways in which emerging technologies and novel foods, including various alternatives to conventional meat, may have an influence on future markets and production systems for conventional livestock. These alternatives include edible insects (also known as ‘mini livestock’) and other substitutes for conventional meat, such as protein foods based on algae and fungi or laboratory-cultured meat. This may not be a major topic or one with immediate implications, but it is still significant enough, I believe, to merit brief consideration in a report like this one.
On edible insects, I recommend the recent FAO report on the topic (Huis et al., 2013) and the works cited therein. We included a box on other novel protein foods, with some web links and cited works, in a recent IDS publication on the potential of edible insects as food and feed (Glover and Sexton, 2015, Box 1.1, p.9).
Third, more generically I would point out that some topics discussed in the body of the V.0 draft of the report do not appear in the conclusions and recommendations, or do so in a notably low-key manner. For example, in lines 28—35 the tone implies that in the context of intensification of livestock production (which is acknowledged to imply concentration and specialisation within industrial systems), nothing more can or need be done to acknowledge the continued relevance of small-scale, mixed farming systems than ‘be attentive to opportunities to engage and retain [them] where possible’. This is rather feeble in light of the discussion and works cited in the foregoing chapters of the report.
Finally, I would encourage the HLPE to give greater attention within the report to issues of sustainable consumption, which are touched on here and there throughout the report, but scarcely reappear in the conclusions or recommendations. For example, lines 30—33 affirm that rising demand for animal products need not be taken as a ‘given’ yet, nonetheless, this is more or less accepted, at least implicitly, in the draft report’s conclusions. I think that a flagship review like this one ought to look more closely and consider more seriously whether inexorably rising demand really is inevitable, and also at whether measures to influence, moderate, or reduce demand for meat and dairy products are at all feasible or realistic — and not simply assume that there is little to be done except plan to meet projected demand. In our own recent foresight study on the potential contribution of edible insects (as an example of a novel food), participants in a scenario exercise found it conceivable that consumer demand for conventional meat might fall, perhaps quite sharply, for instance in response to a major outbreak of zoonotic disease or antibiotic-resistant illness that might be traced to contemporary intensive livestock rearing operations (Glover and Sexton, 2015). We concluded that such a scenario is quite plausible, even if it is not widely anticipated, and our work suggests that the HLPE should take such systemic shocks and surprises into account.
I hope that these comments and suggestions are useful. I am happy to elaborate on them or provide further information if required. I look forward to seeing the revised report in due course.
References
Glover, D. and A. Sexton (2015). Edible Insects and the Future of Food: A Foresight Scenario Exercise on Entomophagy and Global Food Security. IDS Evidence Report 149. Brighton, UK: Institute of Development Studies. Available from http://www.ids.ac.uk/publication/edible-insects-and- the-future-of-food-a-foresight-scenario-exercise-on-entomophagy-and-global-food-security
Huis, A. van, J. van Itterbeeck, H. Klunder, E. Mertens, A. Halloran, G. Muir and P. Vantomme (2013). Edible insects: future prospects for food and feed security. FAO Forestry Paper. Rome, IT: Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations. Available from http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/i3253e/i3253e.pdf
i The STEPS Centre focuses on Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability. The Centre has been established for its first ten years with funds from the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). For more information on the STEPS Centre, please refer to http://steps-centre.org/.
ii Information on the STEPS Centre’s ‘pathways approach’ and methods is available from http://steps- centre.org/methods/pathways-approach/ and http://steps-centre.org/methods/pathways-methods/. Publications based on STEPS research in agriculture, including livestock, can be found at http://steps-centre.org/publications/ (using the search filters).
Dominic Glover