ABSTRACT
During the past few years, something close to a consensus has emerged amongst scientists and campaigners, that the best way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, make food production more sustainable and benign, and at same time address the increasingly serious problem of diet-related disease, is for all people to eat less meat and dairy products. Critical attention has focused on the problems associated with cattle and sheep, more than on those associated with pigs and poultry. Monogastric animals, such as chickens and pigs, produce little or no methane directly, only small amounts indirectly from manure. They also convert grain, protein feeds and water into meat much faster than cattle and sheep. Drylands are characterised by low, and often unreliable, annual rainfall. Contrary to common perceptions, continuous crop production is not sustainable. It is clear from a wide range of sources that capacities of planetary ecosystems are being exceeded and that agriculture is one of the major causes of this.
