The Role of Livestock

The SFA believes that grazing livestock have a crucial role to play in the transition to sustainable food systems. Grazing livestock could deliver multiple benefits as part of a food system transformation, including positive outcomes for carbon storage and sequestration, biodiversity, human health and food security. Realising these benefits will require a shift away from the consumption of intensive livestock products, towards lower-input, pasture-based farming and diets that feature smaller amounts of high-quality meat and dairy.

There is an increasing need for information about sustainable livestock production, particularly because misconceptions and major factual inaccuracies are leading the media and campaigning organisations to call for a reduction in red meat, without distinguishing between different production methods and the variance in their subsequent influence upon human and environmental health.

Our grant-making activity has included support for the Sustainable Food Trust’s work in this area, encompassing a symposium in Bristol, UK entitled The Role of Grazing Livestock in a World of Climate Change and Diet-Related Disease (2015); a follow-on event in San Francisco entitled Positive Pastures (2015) alongside Animal Welfare Approved; and the publication of keystone reports, including Grazing Livestock: It’s not the cow but the how (2025) and Feeding Britain From the Ground Up (2022).