Sfamare un mondo di nove miliardi di persone: le sfide per una zootecnia sostenibile

A dramatic increase of the demand for products of animal origin is expected to occur due to: i) the exponential growth of world’s population, which should reach 9 billion people in 2050, according to FAO predictions, ii) the process of urbanization which will likely lead to a concentration of 60% of the population in urban areas by the same year, and iii) the increase of income of a large part of the population in emergent countries such as China and India. So far, the increased demand for food has been supplied by agriculture due to improvement of techniques, increase of cultivated land areas and increase of consumption of water and energy. Despite that, unequal food distribution throughout the world has lead to almost 1 billion undernourished or starving people at the first decade of the twenty-one century. In the future, it will be necessary to achieve a sustainable supply of food, especially of animal origin, because land and other production factors are not unlimited resources. This work deals with related problems and possible sustainable solutions for the increasing demand for products of animal origin, by a detailed analysis of the Animal footprint, i.e. the Ecological footprint of animal production.