FEFAC encourages scientists to adopt and develop the "One Nutrition" concept in research on circular economy.

The ATF and EAAP held on 30 August 2021 in Davos, a session on “Mixed crop / livestock systems – do they deliver more resilient food systems?”. The purpose of the session was to look closely at interactions between crop and livestock production and in particular to reflect on feed circularity and how to minimise feed and food competition and to also identify the new metrics which are going to be used in feeding the animals, taking circular agriculture into account. Ruud Tijssens shared the FEFAC perspective and called in particular scientists to further integrate into their approach on the concept of “One nutrition”, i.e. looking at nutrition of all living organisms not only in terms of competition but the synergies & complementarity contributing to an optimise nutrient allocation.

Tijssens shared ((EAAP21_17_Tijssens) the FEFAC key priority objectives presented last year in its Sustainability Charter 2030 and in particular the critical question of the competition for resources between humans and animals. The basic challenge for the feed industry is to contribute to feeding the world responsibly, and that is undoubtedly the case if the feed industry is creating more human digestible protein than they are using. Speakers from FAO and INRA presented their own approach and innovative metrics, e.g. ‘kg edible protein used as feed / kg animal protein”, showing that for all livestock species, it is possible to achieve a “kg edible protein / kg animal protein’ ratio below 1.0. Teagasc introduced also the Land Use Ratio (LUR) as a way to compare production systems and optimising land use, including the critical question of the use of land for permanent pastures vs. crops. All these metrics depend largely on the approach followed for the characterisation of the different types of feed materials and the extent to which they are a factor of competition between food and feed, in particular edible vs. non-edible crops, destination and economic value of co-products, etc.  It is clear that additional reflection and research are suitable to further refine these methodological aspects and FEFAC calls on scientists to further coordinate on this. The next opportunity will be the ATF seminar on 18 November 2021