Sustainable Livestock

Agriculture production that is sustainable in the long-term relies on diverse crop rotations, increased use of perennial species, and the integration of livestock in pasture-based systems.

The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) has consistently worked to include provisions in the farm bill’s research and conservation programs and in the rules and requests for proposals that follow that support systems used by sustainable livestock and poultry farmers, including rotational grazing and other systems that integrate crop and forage production with animal production on the same farm.

One example of this work was during implementation of the Conservation Stewardship Program after the last farm bill, when NSAC successfully increased the payment rate for cropland that had been converted to grass-based livestock production.  While the environmental benefits of such conversions were clear, USDA nonetheless originally decided to make much higher payments for cropping the land than for keeping it in permanent grass cover, perversely incentivizing cropping and discriminating against pasture-based sustainable livestock producers.  NSAC’s intervention successfully overturned this decision.

More recently, in the 2008 Farm Bill, NSAC successfully won:

NSAC will continue to advocate for increased discretionary funding or protect mandatory farm bill funding for programs that particularly benefit sustainable livestock and poultry producers:

Additional Resources:

In 2005, NSAC and its members completed a position paper on sustainable livestock called Reinvigorating Public Plant and Animal Breeding for a Sustainable Future