Webinar series: Fueling agro-industrial livestock production

The Global Forest Coalition (GFC) invites you to participate in a webinar series looking at what is fueling agro-industrial livestock production, taking place at the end of October and beginning of November. Four regional webinars, covering Asia on 27th of October, Latin America on the 29th, Africa on the 3rd of November and finally Europe and North America on the 5th, will explore how financial support and other incentives in producer and consumer countries are driving the expansion of the industry, and which key governments and institutions are the main barriers to a real transformation in food production.

At the end of 2019, GFC hosted a series of open dialogues on unsustainable livestock production and alternatives to it. These dialogues continued as webinars in response to the pandemic, and the first series focused on how rural and Indigenous communities are being affected by COVID-19, in the context of the impacts of meat and dairy production that they already experience.

There is growing awareness worldwide of the consequences of increasing meat and dairy production and consumption. It is affecting the most pristine and valuable forest ecosystems in South America and elsewhere, as well as resulting in huge greenhouse gas emissions which impacts the planet as a whole. However, the sector continues to benefit from generous subsidies and other forms of public and private financial support. In contrast, global finance and support for small-scale, socially-just and gender-responsive alternative food production systems such as agroecology continue to be neglected, despite their potential to guarantee food sovereignty for many rural and urban communities, protect biodiversity and cool the climate.

At the recent UN Biodiversity Summit, several governments pledged to redirect perverse incentives that contribute to the loss of forests and other ecosystems, but little action has been taken so far in the meat and dairy sector. Instead, multilateral development banks and numerous other institutions are injecting substantial financial resources into agro-industrial livestock and feedstock production. Coupled with government support such as subsidies and tax-breaks, there are huge incentives for this industry, which comes at the expense of forests, peoples, biodiversity and the climate. Even where some progress has been recently made, such as the EU’s Farm to Fork Strategy, the industry’s corporate lobbying power risks it being reversed.

Our next series of webinars will therefore focus on what is fueling agro-industrial livestock expansion today: who is promoting and financing the replacement of forests with unsustainable livestock and feedstock production? This question is more relevant now than ever given the stark rise in deforestation and associated forest fires that threaten to convert the Amazon and other key forest ecosystems into savannas and soy monocultures.

To participate, please follow the links above to register – we hope to see you there!

15 Oct, 2020
Posted in Unsustainable Livestock Production