The ‘livestock efficiency paradigm’ needs to be revised post-Corona

Raika pastoralist in Rajasthan (India) setting out with his camel herd to harvest biodiversity and convert it into health enhancing camel milk.

We need to improve livestock efficiency to enhance sustainability has been the mantra promoted by most experts. However, this approach has not considered that animals (and people) are ‘holobionts’ and come together with billions of micro-organisms. (Wikipedia: A holobiont is an assemblage of a host and the many other species living in or around it, which together form a discrete ecological unit.) Efficiency applied to biological organisms breeds pandemics, so we need to diversify, disperse and decentralize livestock keeping, if we want to prevent a repeat of the current crisis. For this we need to take guidance from the pastoralist playbook, suggests LPP’s Ilse Köhler-Rollefson in this article: medium.com/@ilse.koehlerroll/prescription-for-a-healthy-and-resilient-post-corona-livestock-sector-ad495c182f96