The tension between global GHG emissions of animal source foods, sustainability, and food security in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Author(s):  
Constanza Gutiérrez-Gómez

Abstract The livestock sector faces an important challenge in the medium and long term since it must satisfy an increasing demand for animal products as a result of the increase in population and the world economy but safeguarding natural resources and at the same time minimizing the environmental contamination, especially the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions attributed to livestock husbandry. For Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), this becomes more relevant given the importance of the sector for the food security of rural communities, particularly for small-scale producers. In this manuscript, we address the main challenges of LAC in this context, from a global perspective that includes the demographic, economic, cultural, and environmental effects. The biggest global challenge for the LAC livestock sector for the coming decades is how to satisfy the growing human demand for animal protein in a sustainable way maintaining the food security of their communities. The efforts to achieve these goals require focusing on improving the efficiency of both animal husbandry and production systems. Therefore, it is necessary to implement technologies of sustainable intensification and it is urgent that those who make political decisions become aware of these issues.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kun Li

To quantify the growth in GHG emissions related to international trade, we build an extensive database for export-related production and transportation GHG emissions covering 189 countries and 10 sectors from 1990 to 2014. We employ this database to quantify the contribution of production and international transportation to total export-related GHG emissions from Latin America and the Caribbean and decompose growth in these to contributions of the increase in the regions trade flows, shifts in the composition of trade partners, changes in the traded product basket, and technological progress.


Author(s):  
Ronald Kroeze ◽  
Pol Dalmau ◽  
Frédéric Monier

AbstractScandal, corruption, exploitation and abuse of power have been linked to the history of modern empire-building. Colonial territories often became promised lands where individuals sought to make quick fortunes, sometimes in collaboration with the local population but more often at the expense of them. On some occasions, these shady dealings resulted in scandals that reached back to the metropolis, questioning civilising discourses in parliaments and the press, and leading to reforms in colonial administrations. This book is a first attempt to discuss the topic of corruption, empire and colonialism in a systematic manner and from a global comparative perspective. It does so through a set of original studies that examines the multi-layered nature of corruption in four different empires (Great Britain, Spain, the Netherlands and France) and their possessions in Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America and Africa.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alejandro Nin Pratt ◽  
Héctor Valdés Conroy

The convergence of a favorable macroeconomic environment and high prices of primary commodities between 2000 and 2011 contributed to the best performance of agriculture in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) since the 1980s, with steady growth of total factor productivity (TFP) and output per worker and a reduction in the use of input per worker. The end of the upward phase of the commodity cycle in 2011 together with less favorable external markets and a deterioration of the policy environment in several countries, motivates us to revisit the situation of agriculture in LAC in recent years to analyze how these changes have affected its performance. This study applies a framework that uses index numbers together with data envelopment analysis (DEA) to estimate levels of productivity and efficiency, incorporating technical change together with technical (TE) and environmental efficiency (EE) into the decomposition of TFP. The EE index adjusts the TFP measure for pollution, treating GHG emissions as a by-product of the desired crop or livestock outputs. TFP and efficiency of crop and livestock sub-sectors was calculated for 24 LAC countries from 2000 to 2016. Our results show that the period of fast agricultural growth in LAC, driven by technical change and resource reallocation, transformed agriculture in the region leaving it in a better position to cope with the more unfavorable regional macroeconomic environment and the less dynamic global markets observed after 2011.


Food Security ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 1461-1475
Author(s):  
Rebecka Milestad ◽  
Annika Carlsson-Kanyama ◽  
Christina Schaffer

AbstractWhile urban indoor farming is a fairly new phenomenon, there is a growing interest from producers, authorities and consumers alike. However, many assumptions are made, and expectations held, about urban indoor farming from a sustainability, food production and food provisioning point of view. These assumptions and expectations need to be tested and assessed. This study assessed greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and a number of social aspects of a newly established indoor urban farm in Stockholm. The farm was the result of a project created by commercial, civil society and municipal actors with the aim to make use of unused urban space, create jobs and produce food. While lettuce grown on the indoor farm emitted more GHG than lettuce cultivated outdoors in Sweden, it was more climate friendly than imported lettuce in our comparison. Furthermore, the indoor farm created value for the actors involved and for the city district, albeit on a small scale. Many of the positive environmental and social features owed to the small scale of the indoor farm and the context in which it developed. Thus, when evaluating production systems like this one, we need to be cautious and refrain from extrapolating the results.


2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ricardo González-Quintero ◽  
María Solange Sánchez-Pinzón ◽  
Diana María Bolívar-Vergara ◽  
Ngonidzashe Chirinda ◽  
Jacobo Arango ◽  
...  

In Colombia, cattle-fattening farms account for 20.7% of the Colombian cattle herd and play an important role in terms of economic and social benefits for rural communities. However, few characterization studies have been conducted on these production systems, which limit our understanding of their production dynamics and environmental impacts. This study aimed to characterize very small, small, medium, and large cattle-fattening farms from technical and environmental perspectives. The data analyzed were obtained from the Ganadería Colombiana Sostenible and the LivestockPlus projects, which gathered information from a total of 2618 farms, classified according to their cattle production orientation. From those, 275 cattle-fattening farms were classified as being either very small (1–30 bovines), small (31–50 bovines), medium (51–250 bovines), or large farms (more than 251 bovines). Numerical and categorical variables were distributed into five components: (1) general farm information, (2) composition and management of the herd, (3) pasture management, (4) production information, and (5) environmental information. Each component was analyzed using the factorial analysis of mixed data (FAMD) method. According to FAMD, for the components general farm information, herd composition and management, pasture management, and production information, distribution of variables led to a spatial separation of the centroid from each category of producers. For the component environmental information, there was no separation of the centroid. Better infrastructure, machinery and equipment, better pasture management, and better productive parameters and practices were observed in larger farms. This suggests that those public policies aimed at improving productive and environmental performance of the livestock sector should give priority to small- and medium-sized livestock producers considering their farm characteristics.


2014 ◽  
Vol 60 (No. 4) ◽  
pp. 159-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Janda ◽  
P. Zetek

Agricultural output in developing countries still represents a substantial part of the GDP. This ratio has actually increased in some areas such as the Latin America. As such, there is an increasing importance of microfinance institutions (MFIs) focusing on the activities associated with agriculture and encouraging entrepreneurship in agriculture and in the rural communities in general. The contribution of microfinance institutions consists mainly in providing special-purpose loans, usually without collateral. However, questions exist as to the magnitude and the adequate level of risk of providing micro-credit loans in relation to the interest rates being charged. We review two main approaches to setting interest rates in the MFIs. One approach takes the view that interest rates should be set at a high level due to the excessive risk that these institutions undertake. The second approach is to convince the public of the possibility of reducing these rates through cost savings, increased efficiency, and sharing best practice, etc. Subsequently we econometrically analyse the impact of macroeconomic factors on the microfinance interest rates in Latin America and the Caribbean. We show that these results depend on the chosen indicator of interest rate.    


2007 ◽  
Vol 87 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvia Salas ◽  
Ratana Chuenpagdee ◽  
Juan Carlos Seijo ◽  
Anthony Charles

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