Not all ruminants were created equal: Environmental and socio-economic sustainability of goats under a marginal-extensive production system

Abstract

Globally, while the livestock sector contributes significantly to the environmental impact (EI), it faces some key challenges such as to increase production to cover increased demand, to adapt to highly variable natural and economic scenarios, and to enhance its eco-environmental performance. Such complex scenarios require a comprehensive evaluation of the EI considering the carbon footprint (CF), the blue water footprint (BWF), the socio-economic sustainability (SES) and their interactions. Hence, the economic value (EV) made by the goat production system (GPS) in the Comarca Lagunera (CL), northern-arid Mexico was quantified to compare it with its EI and SES (1994–2018). Response variables included the EV of the CF and BWF and the SES of the EV-GPS. The value of each of the variables was adjusted to 2011 euros while indicating the value in United States Dollars (USD) between parentheses. The CL recorded annual averages of 390,427 goats, 64.34 million liters of milk and 3,316.12 tons of meat. When contrasting the EV-GPS [M€ 18.17 (MUSD 23.47)] with the EV-CF [M€ 3.61 (MUSD 4.67); 84.29 kg CO_2-eq kg milk-meat protein⁻¹, MMP⁻¹] + EV-BWF [M€ 2.48 (MUSD 3.20); 462.99 l H₂O kg MMP⁻¹)], a positive balance was observed. The accumulated GPS-CL economic spillover effect was M€ 454.23 (MUSD 586.83), 5.79 million minimum wages (MW) yearly and close to 400,000 MW during the studied period. The GPS is highly eco-efficient considering both the CF and the transformation of the BWF into animal protein (milk-meat) with an undisputable biological value. Besides, the greater the economic and productive efficiency of the GPS, the better the socio-economic conditions of the producer and his family, with concomitant decreases in both the index and degree of marginalization of families and municipalities where goat production develops.

Introduction

Human population growth has increased demand for goods and services, resulting in overexploitation of the world’s resources at an ever-greater economic and environmental cost (Cardoso, 2012). Globally, the livestock sector contributes significantly to the environmental impact (EI) (Steinfeld et al., 2013). Hence, this sector has a triple challenge: 1) to increase production to cover increased demand, 2) to adapt to highly variable natural and economic scenarios, and 3) to enhance its eco-environmental performance (Opio et al., 2013). Such complex scenarios require a comprehensive evaluation of the EI, mainly related to the carbon footprint (CF), the water footprint, and their interactions (Ridoutt and Pfister, 2013).

In this respect, goat production has been scarcely studied and mainly focused on evaluating the CF (Leip et al., 2010; Michael, 2011; Opio et al., 2013; Robertson et al., 2015; Weiss and Leip, 2012). Besides being limited, most studies have not comprehensively evaluated the EI of most goat production systems (GPS). This is probably because most GPS are mainly in marginal environments, mostly under arid and semi-arid conditions, and linked to underfunded financial support, common in emergent economies (Gonzalez-Bulnes et al., 2011; Meza-Herrera and Tena-Sempere, 2012). This is despite the numerous advantages of the Capra genus, which lives under extreme climatic conditions, displays a higher ability to convert different food resources into milk and meat with a higher biological value than other domestic ruminants. Certainly, distinctive characteristics of goats, from a sustainable point of view, that contribute to these being listed as the best ruminant species are: 1. Use of natural vegetation without competition with humans, 2. A more efficient use of water, 3. Maintenance of biodiversity, 4. Low use of non-renewable energy, 5. High potentials for positive impacts in new market niches, 6. Goats and their permanence-resilience-sustainability ability, 7. Maintenance of ancestral traditions, abilities and knowledge, and 8. Promotion of cultural activities under organic schemes of community social importance, under clean, green and ethical management schemes (Peacock and Sherman, 2010). Besides, as stated by Koluman and Silanikove (2018), goats disperse lower methane emissions. On this respect, it has been estimated that Africa produces 10–13% of all global methane emissions from livestock, and cattle produce 84% of it and sheep and goats only 16%. Other investigations reported that cattle emit 25–118 kg CH4 per head, while sheep and goats emit only 5–18 kg CH4 per head (IPCC, 1995). In this same context, and regarding annual emissions in Turkey, cattle produce 76.53%, sheep 20.49% and goats only produce 2.98% of annual methane emissions. Interestingly, since the most extreme climate change scenarios will significantly affect the global dairy industry, the importance of goat production will proportionally rise as global warming increases. Undeniably, goats will accomplish a strategic role in the future of the dairy industry, predominantly under harsh climatic conditions as well as in tropical, subtropical, dry-arid and Mediterranean contexts (Silanikove and Koluman, 2015).

While the intertropical area of Asia and Africa has the largest human population, it possesses the lowest bovine inventory while concentrating around 80% of the world’s goat population, suggesting that, globally, more people consume milk or milk products derived from goats than other ruminants (Silanikove et al., 2010). In the Americas, Mexico ranks third in goat milk production, generating 162,323 tons, almost 25% of the continent’s total production continent, just below Brazil and, unexpectedly, Jamaica (FAO, 2019). In Mexico, goat production is mainly associated with the low-income rural stratum, with more than 80% of the national census managed by the social sector (i.e. low-income smallholders, peasants who own neither the croplands nor the rangelands) (Isidro-Requejo et al., 2019). In Mexico, the Comarca Lagunera (CL) agro-ecological region in the semi-arid north has one of the largest goat populations in the Americas and ranks first in goat milk production, generating income for more than 2,800 families under a production scheme mainly oriented to organic goat milk production, favoring the economic, social and biotic environment of goat keepers, under a clean, green and ethical production scheme (Isidro-Requejo et al., 2019). In 2018, the CL had a goat inventory of 240,462, with a production herd close to 50% which generated 55.34 million liters of milk and 2,460 tons of meat, equivalent to 36% and 6% of national production, respectively, representing an economic value of M€ 24.08 (MUSD 31.11) (SIAP, 2019). Recent studies by our group demonstrated a significant EI by the dairy (Navarrete-Molina et al., 2019a) and the beef (Navarrete-Molina et al., 2019b) cattle industry in the CL. Consequently, based on the aforementioned attributes of goats, we hypothesized that the EI, considering the economic value (EV) of both the carbon (CF) and the blue water (BWF) footprints generated by the goat production system (GPS) in the CL, would be less than the EV generated by goat production in this region.