Cultivating sustainable changes in livestock feed production and feeding practices (Feed&Feeding)

The project will evaluate various strategies for feed production and feeding practices to enhance the sustainability of Norway's food system and support national agricultural policy goals. These strategies include adjusting livestock diets, improving breeding and animal health, and introducing new protein sources for feed. The project will assess environmental impacts, such as land use changes, greenhouse gas emissions, soil carbon levels, nutrient balances, and biodiversity, as well as socioeconomic impacts, including food security, economic and social sustainability, and the viability of rural communities. To provide a comprehensive sustainability assessment, we will use a Multi-Criteria Analysis (MCA) framework to evaluate the sustainability of the strategies, considering potential conflicts and win-win opportunities. The project will integrate methods from various disciplines, including data compilation, livestock diet optimization, farm sector modelling, surveys, interviews, and workshops, to generate scores for the MCA. Next, we will use the results of the sustainability analysis to explore how sustainable strategies can be implemented effectively. This will start with interviews and surveys of key actors in existing value chains to understand how social, cultural, and economic factors influence feed production and feeding practices. We will also investigate how creating efficient value chains for alternative protein sources could help address challenges in the livestock sector and how policy changes can promote sustainable practices. The policy analysis will be based on linear programming results, indicating how policy measures can be applied, and insights from the surveys and interviews with value chain actors.

The project will assess how different strategies for feed production and feeding practices can improve the sustainability of the Norwegian food system and how they affect the fulfilment of national agricultural policy goals. These strategies include changes in livestock diet composition and level, improvements in breeding and animal health as well as changes in protein feed sources. We will assess environmental impacts (land use change, GHG-emission intensities, soil carbon change, nutrient balances, and biodiversity) as well as socioeconomic impacts (food security, economic and social sustainability as well as rural viability) to perform a comprehensive sustainability assessment. A Multi Criteria Analysis (MCA) will be used as a framework to assess the sustainability of the strategies, including possible dilemmas and win-win situations. A variety of methods from different disciplines will be integrated and used for producing the scores for the MCA, including compilation of data sources, livestock diet optimization, farm sector modelling, surveys, interviews, and workshops. We will then use the results of the sustainability analysis to examine how strategies leading to improved sustainability can be facilitated. We will start by performing interviews and surveys with different actors in the established value chains to explore how social, cultural, and economic conditions affect feed production and feeding practices. Then we will investigate how the development of well-functioning value chains for alternative protein ingredients can contribute to solving the current challenges faced by the livestock sector and how changes in policy instruments can facilitate sustainable change. The policy analysis will be based on outputs from linear programming for how policy measures can be used and inputs from the interviews with the actors in the value chains.