The ‘Livestock Revolution’: Rhetoric and Reality

The ‘Livestock Revolution’: Rhetoric and Reality

Editor

FAO ;

Descripción

This Research Report presents an explorative cross-country analysis of trends in consumption of animal source food in 88 developing countries over the period 1980-2003. Following the falsifiability criterion proposed by Karl Popper, the Report makes some falsifiable statements about the Livestock Revolution, and then looks for possible conflicting evidence at regional and country level. Both a macro- and a micro-perspective, focusing on country total and per capita consumption of animal source f ood, provides evidence that the Livestock Revolution has been, at least so far, a very circumscribed phenomenon affecting only few countries and some livestock commodities. However, given that a number of highly populated developing countries are fast-growing economies (including China, India, Indonesia and Brazil), a large share of the world’s population lives in countries which are recording remarkable increases in the consumption of animal source food. The question remains, whether the term L ivestock Revolution is appropriate to represent trends which have hitherto involved only a minority of developing countries.