Now we'll talk about mega trends that are affecting the animal industries. This is going to be in a two part series. The topics that we'll cover will be the general agricultural farm model. We'll look at major strategy trends that have occurred, especially in the animal industry's internal animal numbers and yield per animal. If we look at the animal production process, we can think of it as an assembly of resources. So there are fundamental inputs that are needed to have an animal production system. We need land, we need water, capital, infrastructure. We even need people that are skilled in animal management. And of these resources vary greatly around the world in value and in accessibility. Now these resources are exposed to production processes. These production processes vary dramatically, from extensive systems to very intensive systems. They vary in the employment of technologies, and they're under continual evolution. In fact, agriculture is a history of evolution. Many of the great discoveries of mankind have been associated with those in the field of agriculture. And we hope that that will continue in the future, because of course, that brings and expands the capacity of our agricultural systems to feed the world. Now, of course this production system produce various products, and our animal production systems produce a variety of products. Many times we think of the products being the milk, the eggs, the meat on the table. But there are many other products that come out of our animal industries, from the glues that are used in sandpaper, to the pig heart valves that are used in heart surgeries. A variety, in fact there's over 180 parts that are identified from pigs as ultimately forming other products that are useful to mankind. And of course, society puts a value on these products by what we're willing to spend. So indirectly, we're weighing what the alternative use of those fundamental inputs would be. So if we want to pay high prices for milk, the dairy industries will expand. If we curtail those expenditures, the industry will shrink. And so we're always evaluating what's the alternative use of those resources for other productive purposes? And of course, that's where we have free markets and the ability of the marketplace to dictate what the value of a product is. Now of course, society also imposes other constraints on systems. We might be concerned about, what's the environmental impact of a production system? And that impact might not be reflected in the price of the products that they produce. And therefore society exerts pressure, in terms of environmental regulations through government regulations. And so this imposes constraints that are placed on the production system. And ultimately, depending on what those constraints are, they'll be reflected in the cost of production and ultimately affect the price of the product that society then has to face. And of course, we have people that ethically do not want to eat products from the animal production systems and they're entitled to those options. But we see that coming into play in certain areas of the world. The challenge to the veterinary profession, as well as animal scientists, is what's the best use of resources to meet societal demand that's affordable, safe food, safe for the environment, and is animal welfare friendly? Now if we look at the mega trends that are occurring in the animal industries across the world, we see dramatic changes in animal numbers. These we can look at as the national herd sizes. Most countries are increasing. We've seen some decreases, but most are increasing animal numbers. The other mega trend we see is changes in what we call animal yield. This is what's the milk per cow, the meat per pig, or the meat per beef animal, the number of eggs we get per chicken. These yield characteristics are important because, together with a number of animals in the yield, this meets societal demand. So it's important we understand what these trends are, what are the economic underpinnings of them? When we increase animal numbers as a strategy, this puts a lot of environmental stress, because we have a lot more animals to feed and house. All the costs associated on per animal basis go up, our veterinary costs will increase. The other trend we see emerging is changes in animal yield. This includes the amount of milk we harvest per cow per year, the amount of meat per pig, the amount of eggs per chicken that are harvested. These yield characteristics are changing as well, as different agricultural systems adopt different technologies. Increases in yield allow us to have fewer animals to meet a given level of societal demand. They also, more importantly, reduce the animal maintenance cost of the whole system. And this, we'll see, has impacts on the environment. The other phenomena that we see across the world is the emerging larger operations. So farms, to meet the changing economic environment, are finding that they have to get larger and embrace some of the efficiencies that come with larger operations. What we'll look at as a model is what's happened to the dairy industry using, again, the Gapminder tool. And this is using their agricultural lab. So on the y-axis we have the milk yield per animal, in terms of kilograms. In the middle we have each country represented by a circle. The US is represented by the large yellow circle, China is red. We have Brazil in a faint yellow and India in blue, all right? And the size of these circles is the amount of product produced. So in this case, the tons of milk that are produced by the country. On the x-axis, we have the national herd size. And so what we're going to explore is what's been the trend in terms of increasing the number of animals versus the yield per animal for the dairy industry. So here we see the dairy industry emerging. We see that in the US the actual number of cows has decreased over time, and yet, yield has gone up dramatically. Contrasting that with India and with Brazil, we see that the strategy has been to increase animal numbers. Very little yield increases have occurred. China has followed a strategy of both, where they've increased animal numbers and also tried to increase their yield per animal. So these are the fundamental strategies that we see come into play in all the food animal sectors. Do we increase animal numbers or do we try to increase yield per animal, or do we do some variant of both of them? If we look at the global animal numbers in yield, and represent them as a percentage of 1961 values. So here, we're looking at poultry meat, goat meat, pig meat, whole cow milk, buffalo milk. And we're representing them as a percentage of what were their values in 1961? What we see for poultry meat is an explosion in animal numbers. Almost a nine fold change in population size. And we see other increases in numbers of animals in the herds. So the predominant strategy globally to meet increasing suicidal demand has been to increase animal numbers generally. If we look at what's happened on yield, and I put it on a separate graph because of the scales, we see that we've seen a 37% improvement in yield per chicken. We've seen a 34% improvement in meat, as well as about a 33% improvement globally, in terms of whole milk production. So these are due to the embracing of new technologies, better feeding management, better knowledge of the production systems. We see a rather dramatic increase in buffalo fresh milk. And part of that is a little due to numeracy, because the numbers were so small to begin with. In other words, the yield per animal was very, very low, only 900 kilograms per year and going to 1600, versus your whole milk fresh cows are well beyond 2,000 kilograms of milk per year. What's also interesting is the minimal improvement from sheep. So we've seen very minimal improvement, even though those numbers have increased dramatically. And perhaps part of that is due to the fact that most of your sheep are reared by the rural poor, that really don't have the opportunity or knowledge to embrace some of the emerging technologies. So in summary, animal production systems evolve in response to available resources, economic factors, as well as regulations. Globally, animal numbers are increasing as a means to meet societal demand. However, animal yield improvement is increasing, but is variable across the livestock industry. But is an area that really should be pursued as we try to reduce the total burden of animals that we need to provide societal demands for animal proteins.
