Sustainable rangelands: Assessing contributions to food security and ecosystem services

Background/Question/Methods

As the 21^st century progresses, food production from rangelands in the United States will face challenges from changing land use priorities, population growth, loss of open agricultural spaces, and climate change. The latter may include increasing temperature, variable rainfall patterns, frequency of extreme weather, severity of invasive species and pest infestations, and changes in livestock forage quantity and quality. These impacts will not only affect food production, but other ecosystem goods and services from agro-ecosystems including rangelands. Changes in U.S. food production systems may ripple around the world because the U.S. is the world’s primary grain producer and markets for many food products are global. In adapting to climate change, farmers may relocate to follow favorable climatic conditions, potentially displacing ecosystems and impacting biodiversity and other services ecosystems provide. Concerns surrounding future food production in the U.S. also involve sustainable energy use, genetic biodiversity, and environmental impacts. Land managers (e.g. farmers and ranchers) are among the most important stakeholders in managing agro-biodiversity, food security and rangeland sustainability. A key question focuses on quantifying how much food comes from rangelands and how much food production will change over time due to environmental stresses or policy changes. Using an indicator-based system to assess rangelands’ contributions to food security and ecosystem services, Sustainable Rangelands Roundtable participants modeled meat production from cattle and sheep with productivity and potential effects of predicted climatic change, invasive species, fire regimes, and policies, as well as changes in population and income to project supply and demand. 

Results/Conclusions

Preliminary analyses show that beef demand was strong in 2011 following slight declines in 2008, 2009, and 2010. The price of beef has shifted in response to short-term changes in climate, increasing in response to droughts’ negative impacts on cattle numbers. Production data from the Census of Agriculture for both sheep and cattle in Wyoming show a direct relationship with precipitation, increasing in wet years and decreasing in dry years. The current U.S. cattle inventory is the lowest since 1952, driving up prices for beef. Through the economic recession, although overall demand for beef hasn’t declined significantly, people are buying more hamburger and less steak, showing a preference for less expensive cuts of meat. Increased beef prices are benefiting producers, but the relationship between higher beef prices in the near term and resilience of rangelands to other stressors in the longer term, in the context of sustainability, remains to be assessed.