Meaning of sustainability in animal agriculture.?

Question

I need help to discuss the meaning of sustainability in animal agriculture. Are any of the animals currently produced commercially in California sustainable?

Answer 1

Sustainability in animal ag usually referes to free range animals, not kept in cages, and fed natural organic feed, or food that grows naturally  (i.e., letting chickens roam free to eat seeds, bugs, etc.. instead of just feeding them chicken feed or just corn).

As far as I know, there are no major sustainable animal farms in Ca.  There are plenty of Sacramento local sustainable farms, for both animals and crops.

Answer 2

Sustain means maintain, uphold or prolong.

So that is sustainability in literary sense.

Now when I keep animals, say cows.

Each cow eats about 30 kg fodder a day, and produces some dung and urine.

So, if you can develop system on a unit piece of land in such a way that:

1. enough fodder is grown for unit number of cows.

2. this growth of fodder is based only on the dung and urine of these cows.

Such a system is sustainable with reference to animal fodder.

So what about the medicines & water?

And more importantly the economics?

You can consider all these points and determine the sustainability of the said 'animal agriculture project'.

In doing so you may have to consider enegry, labor, cost of knowledge etc.

So if you take this broader meaning of sustainability, you may even consider caged animals in this project. But such a project may not be economically sustainable.

Answer 3

When it comes to animal sustainability, it means having the ability to maintain long term profitability while maintaining the natural resources of the farm.  This includes soil fertility, water quality, animal productivity, etc.  

For example, one could make a large profit several years in a row, but if doing so means depleating the soil fertility, increasing erosion, damaging or polluting streams or the water table, reducing the health of the animals or the manager, then they system is not sustainable.

Instead of a "flash in the pan", most sustainable operations, whether animal, crop or whatever, are the result of the "slow burn" where the manager utilizes available resources but doesn't depleat them.

Some people consider a sustainable operation as one where there are no inputs from outside of the farm brought in such as feed, animals, fertilizer, etc.  I've found this is usually more true with organic farmers or the back to nature nuts.

In short, consider sustainability as the ability to utilize a farms natural resources (including the people that live and work on it) without depleating them.  A sustainable operation is one that will be here next year, the next decade and so on.