The Role of Livestock in Eco-Functional Intensification of Organic Agriculture.

Integration of animals into farming systems presents a sustainable development option and a potential driver for future organic agricultural and food systems. In this context, eco-functional intensification of agricultural systems is understood as optimal utilization of all resources present in the agro-ecological farming system, through integrating the different components of the farming system. Integration is thereby understood as interaction between different components within the system in such a way that they mutually benefit each other, and this makes ‘integration’ different from ‘co-existence’ or ‘mixed’. The increased industrialization of livestock production in conventional as well as in organic agriculture has in many ways led to a separation between animals and humans as well as between animals and other activities on the farm, and the role of livestock has subsequently been reduced to the production of human food (and other products, such as skin) under conditions where the reliance on external inputs (feed, antibiotics and fossil fuels) often is big, and resources such as manure is regarded as ‘waste’. A high level of complexity as well as system resilience exist in eco-functionally intensified and integrated systems, which enables the systems to meet many climatic, social, ecological and economic challenges. To strengthen and develop such complex farming systems further, complex knowledge has to be continuously developed. Animals are living sentient beings, and complex well-integrated systems, in which the animals are contributing to the balance of the system, should at the same time support the health of the animals and allow them to be the animals that they are, and to let them meet their natural needs. In this context, animal health is understood as resilience, which means that the animals have a high ability to withstand shocks and other influences from their surroundings. This emphasizes the importance of locally adapted animal species and breeds. Health is understood as much more than disease freedom, and supporting the resilience of the animals through breeding and management will also lead to less disease and hence low or no medicine use. The context and conditions of livestock farming, and possibilities to integrate animals while intensifying agro-ecological farming systems, vary highly between different environments, due to climatic, social, cultural, geographical and other factors. This paper will discuss the roles of livestock in eco-functionally intensified organic farming systems using different examples from the global north and south, as well as urban and rural settings.