ASH CLOUD
ASH CLOUD
Animal health as a climate solution with Nick Wheelhouse, Edinburgh Napier Univeristy
Animal Health as a Climate and Food Security Solution
In this episode of the Ash Cloud podcast, we explore an often-overlooked opportunity in the fight against climate change with Dr. Nick Wheelhouse, Professor of Comparative Infectious Disease at Edinburgh Napier University and co-lead of the Global Research Alliance Animal Health and Greenhouse Gas Emissions Intensity Network.
Dr. Wheelhouse brings unique expertise spanning both veterinary research and animal science. After completing his BSc in Agricultural Biochemistry and Nutrition at Newcastle University and PhD in Animal Science at the University of Aberdeen, he worked as a Senior Postdoctoral Scientist at the Moredun Research Institute before joining Edinburgh Napier University. His research focuses on bacterial pathogens affecting reproduction—particularly Chlamydia, Brucella, Coxiella burnetii, and Listeria—in both humans and livestock, with extensive work on disease surveillance across Africa.
The central thesis challenges conventional thinking: while sick animals are universally recognized as unproductive, the climate implications remain surprisingly underexplored. Wheelhouse reveals that approximately 20% of global animal production is lost due to health issues, with higher burdens in the Global South. This represents not just wasted resources and food insecurity, but significant greenhouse gas emissions as animals continue producing emissions while failing to produce food.
The conversation explores specific case studies, including ongoing work with Kenyan dairy farmers where 53% of animals show subclinical mastitis. For farmers earning approximately $70 per cow per year, the $10 treatment cost represents a substantial investment. Yet through basic hygiene and management interventions rather than expensive pharmaceutical solutions, the project aims to demonstrate tangible productivity improvements that make economic sense while delivering environmental co-benefits.
Throughout the discussion, Wheelhouse unpacks the complexity of animal health as a climate solution. The counterintuitive reality is that healthier, more productive animals do produce more emissions, but they generate far more food per unit of emission. The goal is to close the productivity gap caused by disease, thereby reducing the emissions intensity of animal-source foods rather than absolute emissions. In Tanzania, research on abortion in livestock suggested potential emissions reductions of 8% in cattle and 16% in small ruminants, while hundreds of thousands could benefit from the additional food that would otherwise be lost.
Wheelhouse is candid about the challenges: the complexity of measuring disease impacts, lack of robust data collection systems in many regions, and difficulty quantifying climate benefits from health interventions. These have kept animal health as a "slow burner" in climate discussions. However, he notes an encouraging shift following FAO reports that elevated the topic among international partners and potential investors.
The discussion touches on broader implications, including research from Tanzania showing that increased livestock disease correlated with decreased school attendance for girls—demonstrating how animal health impacts cascade through communities beyond immediate productivity losses.
Looking forward, Wheelhouse emphasizes disease prioritization must account for local contexts, since farming systems and solutions vary dramatically across regions. He advocates for starting with achievable interventions that farmers can see working among their peers, rather than waiting for perfect technological solutions. The key is empowering farmers with tools delivering tangible results worthy of their effort and investment.
Ultimately, this conversation makes a compelling case for why animal health
Welcome to the AshCloud. I'm Ash Sweeting. Sick and disease livestock produce little or no food. They produce no income, yet they incur significant costs, consume a disproportionate amount of labour, and have a similar environmental footprint to healthy animals. Today I'm joined by Nick Wheelhouse from Edinburgh Napier University, where he is working on how to decrease the approximately 20% of animal source food that is lost each year to animal health issues. Nick, thank you very much for joining me today. No problem. Thanks actually for inviting me. So animal health as a climate solution. Uh it's you know well known that sick animals are not productive, they don't produce food, they don't produce any money, they have costs, and they also have an environmental footprint. So can we dig into this? What I'd say is a very exciting opportunity to address food production livelihoods and the climate at the same time, with um just with your experience in the space.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so it's been interestingly, this area is a bit of a slow burner in the environmental context, and I don't understand why. Um, so the network that I'm lead co-leading um has been going now for well over a decade, the GRA Animal Health and Greenhouse Gas uh Intensity Network. Um, but it has struggled to gain traction. Um and we're now seeing the importance of it. My my general feeling is animal health, why not? Um I feel it underpins absolutely everything. Um it could be considered a facet of management to a large extent, so I'm not gonna go health management, but I think if you're if you're considering for a start, everyone seems to be you looking for silver bullets for climate. And if we're looking at silver bullets in sick animals, it's not gonna work. We you know, yeah, less productive animals are producing emissions, um, they're utilizing feeds, but they're not feeding people um to the work to the you know to the extent in which they could. Um and I think for me as a scientist, and I'm not a farmer, and I'm not a veteran it just seems logical that you want to address those issues, um, especially in contexts where you can see such endemic problems on farms that could be readily addressed with quite low-tech, low-cost solutions. Um, you know, with with relatively middling investment, I'm not gonna say low, because nothing ever comes without a cost. Um, whether that's time, whether it's money, it's all gonna have a cost. But it seems to me that you know health is such an important it is background's originally nutrition, um it's such a uh it's such a massive component of just production, food production generally. And ultimately, you know, we are a species that requires food, and whether there is, you know, we know there is a climate climate um cost with food production, whether that's crops and you know, and livestock, we still need food, and the world's population, I know you've done podcasts on this, is going up. It's it's it's gonna in some certain parts of the world is gonna be doubled by 2050 in Africa in particular. And I believe it's over 200% is estimated to, you know, is the consumption of animal sourced foods, even just within those areas. So we have to address how we're going to get, you know, how we're gonna feed the people in a context of climate change, and probably in the context of areas which are gonna suffer the biggest actual uh burden of that climate change. Um and before we get to the silver bullets, and before we can get really get through to the genetics and the feed additives and make them generally more acceptably used and actually efficiently used and cost efficiently uh available. Animal health seems to be the first thing that you would look to address. Animal health out sorry and nutrition, those kind of things and management would be the areas that you would want to address. And I think those two go hand in hand because you know, if you have poor health, we know it, you don't want to eat, you actually get malabsorption of food. It's it's you know, the those two things go together.
SPEAKER_00:There's there's a lot there, and yeah, sorry, huge amount there, and it it's a fascinating, fascinating the the why the there's obviously the the animal welfare side of things. There's there's no necessary, there's not a downside to improving animal health. But before we dig into any of those too much, would you be able to just give us some background on what are the numbers? How much food is lost due to an animal health, and what is the I guess the impacts of that across those areas um that you mentioned, the climate side of things, the the you know, and then the food security slash livelihood side of things.
SPEAKER_01:So I don't know, I'd be pulling some numbers out of the air. I mean WOA have estimated for years, um, and those figures can be quite contentious. About 20% of animal production is lost through health. Um and those duffers, those numbers are going to be different across the different sectors. So global north, we in the in sort of some of those very um I say here dance, but more industrialized systems, lower, and in much in the global south, um higher burdens of disease. So actually, those so if we're thinking over a fifth of your food is being lost before it's even entering the market, and we know even once things enter the market, if you don't have decent value chains, you get even more loss. Um you know, in the very in the very areas where you actually have the scarcity of resource, that's quite considerable. I think it's hard to gauge really in terms of the greenhouse gas, uh, the emissions uh costs here, because we've seen on the on the whole, we've seen some estimates in some countries. The literature is relatively scarce. Um, if I'm frank, we just put together a review paper on the back of the GGAA. Um, and whilst it's not fully comprehensive, that you know it's it's not a massive sort of resource of literature in this area, and certain countries have done it, have invested far more in this than others. Um, and I would say that's coming from Scotland, Scottish Government's done remarkably in terms of the investment it's put in, and there's been estimates on diseases such as BVD uh mastitis um within that. And I believe the B V D figures, even though they look relatively small, and we're talking single-figure percentages improvement, are still part of the rationale for our eradication schemes here. So they're actually real got in, you know, there's real impact. In Northern Ireland, similarly, it's about one and a half to two percent with BVD eradication, and that's still part of their, you know, the the the policy argument for eradicating BVD in those areas. Um I think for me, you know, the I suppose one good example is a study we've done recently, which was on the back of some work um that was funded through the environmental, well, welcome in the environmental defense fund uh in East Africa. And uh to be honest, we took a syndromic approach because what I would say is that many, much of the arguments about about animal disease and whether we're actually in a position to accurately get estimates is quality of data. And animal health data has been, you know, this has been a big argument for a long time. Uh, unfortunately, we knew of I've been involved with one one project and I knew of another data set that were very high quality, one on calf mortality in Kenya and one on uh abortion that I was involved in Tanzania, and we were able to extract sufficient data from there to get estimates um you know of the emissions um from there. And you know, I think from the Tanzanian data, the abortion data suggested that you may be able to reduce the emissions intensity of cattle production there um with by about eight percent, um and and small ruminant production by about goats, particularly about 16%. So there were actually quite significant potential uh impacts on the emissions intensity. And when you looked at the food that was lost, that was considerable. You know, if you look at it on a national level, you're losing food that could feed hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people, just on an annual basis, looking at a single syndrome. So so actually that was that was that was an interesting study to be part of, uh, because we're looking very much there, A at a syndromic level, B at sort of taking taking not just the approach of let's look at the emissions intensity, but actually how much food is lost. And I think ultimately those two go together hand in hand. But from what we found speaking with farmers, at the moment we've got a project in in Kenya working with farmers and with the ministry. The big sales for this is productivity. Most of the world wants to understand that if we can control disease, we will improve the productivity and the food security of those regions. And that environment is a really important co-benefit. But for an individual farmer, it's that productivity that's going to be important.
SPEAKER_00:I I think there's there's a a danger whenever you look at anything through too fine a lens in that you're only looking at one attribute and and having farmers that have higher productivity, um, better livelihoods, better food security, more income, then they're they have resources to invest in doing things differently. They also have um and they have the ability to to manage things potentially with um with greater resolution to address some of the climate issues that come from that as well. And one thing that you I think you mentioned in your presentation in Nairobi at the GGAA was the the study from Tanzania, where you had the fact that when animal disease went up in some of those um cattle populations from memory, the participation of girls in school went down because when when families have less income, they send fewer kids to school, and then frequently it's the girls who are the first ones to to not go to school or be taken out of school. And then this is not just a matter of of a single generational issue because the the best way of having a smarter next generation is to have smarter and better educated mothers, and the only way you're gonna get better educated mothers is by going to school, plus there's all the data on um girls going to school and how that affects um pregnancy and childbearing rates going forward. It's it's there's not a single attribute to any of these discussions. So I think tying productivity, um, food security and the environmental impact is is absolutely vital if we are to make progress.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and uh and particularly those are in the areas where you know they are most at risk. Um, you know, and in a lot of our c conversations, it's not really as much mitigation, but adaptation is the real real uh interest for a lot of the policy makers down uh you know in in the sort of East Africa region because they feel that you know animals who are more resilient, you know, better better health will be more resilient to those impacts of drought, those impacts of flooding, that they're seeing more and more, you know, and I think so so we've really been focused on mitigation for a long time, but actually what some people in some parts of the world are saying are you know, we're also see this as a key adaptation uh mechanism, and we will, you know, we we we're looking to put this into policy, um, and that's really important, I think, in terms of the arguments. Um, yeah, but I think equally what we're finding is that you know, I think it's so important to actually look, you know, I think people want to have simple solutions and they want to have global solutions. Um and and we've and actually, you know, we know farming systems are complex and they're very, very different. As some of our, you know, uh we we recently have visitors who who looked in the you know, who came to visit some of the Kenyan dairy farms that we're working with. Um and and they imagined a much more intensive system um than they actually than they saw and went, ah yes, we can understand now some of these issues. We don't, you know, we didn't appreciate uh these issues. But also I think you know that for me, I'm a disease specialist. I'm not a veter. I you know, I I work here as a microbiologist, but I'm very much uh you know interested in the infectious disease side of things. And actually it's not a one size fits all. And what we're finding, you know, I think it's pretty logical that across the world there are some things that are very similar, some diseases. You know, we can you if you're looking at abortion, that's my area of expertise. You know, you go to East Africa and it's B V D and Neospora are similar to sort of the levels that we you know, well, the higher levels, but they're similar challenges to what farmers would face in the global north, but you also have the increased risk of of diseases such as Rift Valley fever. Uh again, that comes back to the resilient, you know, the adaptation um of the farming systems and seeing a lot more um of those kind of vector-borne diseases. And so it's it's not all, you know, so so every region, every country is gonna have its own priorities in terms of animal health. And I thought I suppose the challenge is when you're trying to present this in an international scale, it's actually how do you do that with an incredibly diverse, you know, when people have these diverse different priorities. And and also that you know, climate may not be the number one priority for prioritizing disease, that economies export um are often, you know, if you ask governments which diseases should you prioritize for, you know, would you want to prioritize?
SPEAKER_00:You know, a balance of different attributes and climate and environment being one of them, but food security, productivity, and other things also fit into those decision um because matrices, for want of a better word.
SPEAKER_01:Well, yeah, I I think some of one of the things we're working on uh quite extensively at the moment is trying to develop a bit of a framework to try and take into account these different measures because it's taking a little bit longer than we we expected because it is so complicated um the decision-making processes. Um, you know, especially especially when you have potentially competing um you know ministries, etc. You know, with the One Health context and food secure, you know, and foodborne pathogens, et cetera, which can be very, very different prioritization to maximizing productivity. There's not many, you know, Ministry of Health who are that bothered about helmets, they've got helmets in you know, in in animals, but brucellosis, for instance, is a disease that gets a lot of you know a lot of headlines. Um and actually, you know, in some of our experiences in some areas where we think it's endemic, we've not seen, you know, we we may pick up one case in our one, you know, one or two cases in our abortions. Um, and actually the clinical uh impact is is much more minimal than you may expect. So so it it it's um it's a complicated issue. And I I think that's one of the reasons why people have shied away from it. That and the fact and really, if you look at it, healthier, more productive animals produce more emissions. You know, it's it's an argument, you know, it's quite a hard sell to actually get people's heads around that what you're trying to do is reduce the emissions footprint of the product that those animals are producing, and healthier, productive animals produce much more product. And what you're trying to do is increase that productivity to outstrip that increase in emissions that those animals produce. And it's quite as I said, it's quite a hard sell. Um and quite and can be quite complicated to actually get over. And I'm not sure how effectively I am getting that over at the moment.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I think I think on that note, if if roughly 20% of you know, and if if we're five percent out um in that, if it's somewhere between 25 and 15 percent, that's still a lot of food that's being lost and a lot of potential income that's being lost. And this is kind of my thoughts on on this, but you know, it's it's relatively easy to to picture a A animal production system or farm in Africa or in the global south, South America or parts of Asia, where the animals are skinny, there's few animals, there's not a huge food abundance of animal feed, and you sort of you think, okay, those animals, you know, there's there's some fairly low-hanging fruit in terms of the animal health improvements that could be made there. But then when you start to look at the the much more sophisticated animal production systems in the global north, you have you know soaring rates of of liver abscess, um, which you know are dealt with with antibiotics, but they're not without their implications. The issues of mastitis and breakdown in dairy cows, where you've got you know one cow only doing two and a half or so lactations, so close to 50% of that animal's life is pre-production compared to what's post-production, and that has you know costs in terms of rearing those replacement heifers and feeding them, but there's also all the emissions that they produce while that's being done. And you know, I've I've been on farms um in Australia where where you look at the state of the animals and they don't look that dissimilar from um some of the farms you see in in the global south. So, you know, I think there's there's the structure and the government structures and the policy structures and the delivery of solution structures are gonna be very different. Um, but I think I I think there's more to this than seeing it as purely a a global south challenge rather than it's a challenge that has opportunities across both the global north and the global south. They just, as you said, it's complicated, and you're gonna pick up one that you've developed for Kenya and then roll that out in Switzerland.
SPEAKER_01:Um Yeah, and I think it's it's that incremental thing. I I mean where I say it is there will be benefit. You know, there is definitely going to be production benefit of reducing disease in the global north. It's just we might be looking at smaller increments because often some of that low-hanging fruit has already been addressed, you know, and and the availability and the veterinary care that some of those animals would, you know, would have, well, the farms have at the disposal is not at the disposal of farmers in much of the global south. You know, and I think I think there there is, there has been over the last probably decade, a significant increase in the number of veterinary schools, um, that you know, in Africa in particular, um, to try and bring through more vets, but there still is significant problems in terms of, you know, I mean, it's still getting vets into the areas that they're needed, still get, you know, cold chains to actually get the products that we currently have to the areas that they're needed. Um, you know, and I think and and those products being affordable for the farmers that are ultimately the consumers of those products, because it is inherently private sector. Um, and actually that's quite important as well, because I I think you know, yeah, you have to, if it's not private sector, you have to get over farmers often natural natural um I suppose not concerns, but they're slight um thing about government interference in their system. And and I think that that that's quite an important issue as well. So it's not just the fact that you know I I think we we sort of we're on a project that's been run primarily by Ailery uh at the moment, working on mastitis, subclinical mosquitis in Ken, you know, in in uh Kenyan dairy farms.
SPEAKER_00:And we've started off with hygiene, you know, and and management uh and basic, you know, and and and sort of basic management rather than you know to try and reduce just to provide some context on that and tell me my the numbers that I remember from uh from discussions I've had on this are that the average dairy farmer in that part of the world in Kenya will make around$70 odd dollars of income per cow per lactation or per year, and the cost of the subclinical or the the treatment for the subclinical mastitis is around ten dollars per treatment. Um correct those numbers if you think they're incredible. Basically, you're looking at you know what's that 12-15% of your income on a subclinical disease. And sitting here in the global north, you think$10 isn't a hell of a lot. But when you when you think of that's what the income from that animal is for the entire lactation, then you know that's a that's a very expensive treatment. So um having that value proposition where where they're making getting the gains out of that when it's needed, but not um not having to do it when it's not needed, you know, there there's a clear differential in in that value proposition, or there needs to be a way of of creating that value um for the farmer to implement a solution when the cost is such a high percentage of their their income.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean uh I take to go to the economics, but what we what we know is our far, you know, the farmers are of uh are producing about you know the cows are producing about four and a half to five litres per day. That's the levels of production. Uh so not a lot uh of production. Um and they may have three or four animals in there. Um I mean we I'm not saying anything out outlandish, we haven't published yet, but we we we've we've put it out there many times and in presentations. I know uh Claudia Arnt in particular has presented the work. We've got about 53% subclinical mastitis in those in those animals. And actually, some of the work that is being done at IlRI at the moment has sort of quite nicely seems to be demonstrating through some of the earlier work in this ongoing project that though those severity of those subclinical maskitis, those scores, you know, just using California milk testing, do seem to correlate with milk yield. There's an inverse correlation between the severity of the you know, those CMT scores and the milk yield of those animals. So farmers are losing income because of that subclinical mastitis. And I think that's the sort of that's the best demonstration you can give to a to a farmer that actually, you know, A, hopefully prevention is better than cure, um, and purchasing antibiotics, which they often are. You were saying there, the treatment of the subclinical, they're purchasing antibiotics without diagnostics. So, you know, a lot of those antibiotics, A, are potentially going into the human food chain, but B are not going to be particularly effective after quite considerable, you know, with the AMR profiles of a lot of the bacteria that are uh are present after after having broad spectrum antimicrobial use. Um and I think that's always been the reason why you need to do quite large-scale field trials, is you need to demonstrate to people and put a bit of money in at the start that actually what you can do is you can make more money, you can increase your productivity. Um, and by the way, this is gonna have an environmental impact of you know, your your resource use isn't gonna go up particularly, but it you're actually gonna reduce your footprint. But for a farmer's point of view, it's yeah, is what they're doing going to increase the productivity and the sustainability of their farms. Um and yeah, it's it's small amounts of money, but relatively speaking, it does seem to have the potential for those quite simple management rather than pharmacological treatments to actually have an economic impact for them, a positive economic impact. And we're not even taking into account the quality of the milk and the potential that they will get more money for higher quality milk, because they're certainly getting less money for milk that is of a lower quality. Um, it's being rejected by cooperatives.
SPEAKER_00:Um that feeds back into the the cooperative's um balance sheet as well, because if their suppliers are producing or sending them lower quality product, they're products that they're selling um and they're gonna be lower. But one of the sorry, go on.
SPEAKER_01:So we're not saying actually a lot of that milk will enter the food chain, it will enter via informal markets, so it's not gonna be through it's not gonna be thrown away, it's not like much, you know, in the in the global north where rejected milk is gonna go down a drain. Um, but at the same token, income-wise, it's gonna have a quite a significant um issue for the for farmers and those cooperatives, as you say.
SPEAKER_00:When one of the first things I noted um in when we first started talking was the fact that you you asked why animal health as a as a climate solution uh isn't isn't gaining more traction. I think the complexity is possibly the first thing that I'd I'd like to raise on that. Um, but also you know, back to what you said, if it's 20 odd percent of the food being lost, there is a huge opportunity. So I'd like to dig into the reasons more about why we think that that animal health is not uh is not getting more more traction in in that space. And the other side of this is that with all these complexities, it's something that's gonna need resources to to address, be that capacity building education campaigns between farmers and cooperatives, be that development of the appropriate products or development of the coal chains to get them there. It it's gonna it's going to take resources, but it also if it is something that has a a net benefit or a productivity and profitability benefit for the value chain, there's also you know, there's a private sector mechanism to enact that. So I guess my my thinking's more about you know, is there opportunities to to sort of try and catalyse or use climate financing to catalyse some of these to then you know try and create some momentum and grow it from there? But that's that's my thinking, and um, I really appreciate your thoughts on this.
SPEAKER_01:Um yeah, I think there was a um a policy brief out a couple of years ago that's got my name on it that um tries to to push the climate finance uh case for animal health as part of that, and and and about increased productivity. I see that there needs to be some significant investment in this. Agricultural investment, livestock investment from the climate is is a tiny proportion of you know of the climate investment, and we need food. Ultimately, you know, we we do need other materials, but fundamentally, you know, humans need food. Um and there is a requirement for level of investment, and whether that is public-private finance, large-scale climate investment, um coming through, especially I suppose more global north sectors that you know, through these value chains from retailers right the way through, we need they need financing. Um I think the c the problem is is quantifying the impact of a cli of a animal health intervention on the emissions. And that's what's quite complicated, I think. You know, if you have diseases such as B VD that are multi, you know, they're multifactory, you know, they can cause uh multiple syndromes, they can be, you know, either direct something like abortion or respiratory disease, but or you know, just their general presence can uh cause some form of you know immunosuppression that allows another disease to come in. How would you quantify the impact of that? Um I think that's hard. So actually, it's going to be a requirement really for those you know to have robust uh measurements, you know, verifiable measurements um that are available for those climate financiers to even consider investing in these areas.
SPEAKER_00:Um that's a very complex step because if you think of a farm in in that has B V D like those farms in East Africa we were we were discussing, and there's an abortion. You know, I I imagine the vast majority of the time there's not even a an actual diagnosis. The cow just aborts, and then you have to wait X number of months to re-inseminate or rejoin the cow, and there's no veterinarian call, there's no clinical diagnosis, there's no record of what happened. So, but that cow just keeps on going on and producing emissions and not producing food and not producing income for X number of months. So, you know, the the challenge in you know the collect the cost of of collecting that data in the first place could could surpass the cost of actually putting the program together.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, um, I agree. Um I've been part of one of those programs. Trying to set up one of those platforms. Um and it yeah, the the investment is quite considerable. I think you have to look at the production angle, and and I would very much be of the opinion, whether rightly or wrongly, that we applying interventions and looking at the increased levels of productivity or reduced levels of losses in those systems. Um I quite like at the moment, for a lot of these areas, I think syndromic um, not surveillance per se, but looking at things within a syndromic context, the abortions, mortality, etc., mastitis, lameness, you know, these are syndromes and respiratory disease. Um, I think is is a much is a much more straightforward way of looking at things. Um I do think record keeping you know is going to be almost impossible in certain parts of the world. But that's where we're gonna have to see is what is the productivity increase? Have we closed that productivity gap by applying an intervention? Um and you know, and I think if we can show it on a reasonably large scale in the field at a practical scale, then at least there is some evidence. What we don't have are large-scale interventions with verifiable measurements. Um that's that's the big thing. It comes back to data. You know, we really do not have a good handle on a lot of diseases on what they actually do productivity-wise. You know, we that I think that's that's the big thing. Um uh and I think it's I I come to it very much. My original background was um as an animal scientist, and then I started working in veterin disease. And very and bacterial diseases, and very little did we really consider. I I felt we didn't consider the overall issues of productivity when we were doing that. I thought parasitologists actually probably do more than anybody else, but but that was a big gap. Um, and I think that's something that we need to address. What do diseases do to productivity? If you can do if you can if you can measure productivity, uh productivity losses, you can go quite far in terms of measuring what the emissions costs of those diseases are, frankly. Um but we need that data, or we need measure ways of actually extracting that data from existing uh data sets.
SPEAKER_00:So on on that note, where do you see where do you see the opportunities and what can be done, I guess, you know, short term and then more medium term?
SPEAKER_01:I think uh I've said before that animal I've said and I'm not gonna contradict myself that said that the space has has been it's been a slow burner since I've been I I didn't join the network at the beginning, I joined when it was a year or two in, and that's been over a decade. Um, but the conversations are starting, and the conversations you know with major players are starting, and I think I mean you were at the GGA conference um as well as me. I was quite shocked actually that animal health has become um a bigger topic. I think it's but it's quite quickly, very quickly, in probably the last two or three years. I think the the FAO report that was co-authored by my sorry, lead author was my the co-leader of my network, Shady Roshkhan, um a few years ago really did probably I don't don't don't want to say for the first time, but but really really did put the animal health and climate on the map. Um that was the animal health and climate commitments uh you know, FA report. Um and since then getting partners, international partners on board who are lobbying and pushing, sorry, not in a bad way, but actually promoting this area has been absolutely essential. Um and I see that actually in the near future it's really, really positive. The landscape is looking very positive in terms of in potential investment in this area to actually get some of this data and actually get you know and and be able to upskill um uh you know countries to be able to be able to do some of these estimates and disease prioritizations. Um I see that really happening and I'm quite excited about it. Um not now, but in the near future, I see that happening.
SPEAKER_00:What you see as the you know, I guess we discussed this slightly earlier about there's very different uh solutions depending on the disease and the context and the the production system, the geography, even the culture of the country. Um is there any way uh I guess of of summarising the the needs in terms of what what's needed to get solutions? Solutions out there into farmers' hands or to actually realize this potential. Sorry, that's a bit of a wobbly one, but no, no, no, no.
SPEAKER_01:I think it's it's something that you consider, isn't it? I mean I think the first stage is prioritizing what the diseases are that are important on the ground. Um because it's only then that you actually can actually understand what solutions are required within that ecosystem. Um you know, we've I've you know I'm doing an doing uh got projects in Kenya at the moment. I looked through the literature and did a disease prioritization of literature. We spoke to the government and then we spoke to the farmers and came up with completely different diseases and challenges. So it's actually so I think those areas, you know, doing something theoretical, you actually need to get some boots on the ground and find out what is actually the real challenges within that area. And actually then picking something that you can do something about in the first instance, the lowest hanging fruit. It might not be the one with the biggest emissions um impact or the biggest productivity impact, but something you can do something about today within the you know the confines of uh and and and the limitations of your system. I think that is the first thing that you want to do. And then we can start talking about the technological challenges of designing new vaccines or sustainable anti-helmetic treatment that doesn't, you know, or tick treatment that doesn't rely on uh antiparasites that have got ecological problems and resistance and things like that. I think that's what you do. You do something that we can do today, um, and that you can give people the tools and empower them to actually be able to do something about it and make a tangible. I'm not saying the silver bullet, I'm not I'm not talking 50% drops here. I'm talking about a tangible, measurable drop in their emissions, which is the result, emissions intensity, which is the result of seeing some increase in productivity and give them something back for the effort that they're gonna naturally have to put in to employ, you know, to do something about it.
SPEAKER_00:So something would would it be too simplistic to say something that would you know excite the farmers who are implementing that and they'd be thrilled about it and want to do more and and and likewise with the the local governments?
SPEAKER_01:I think, yeah, I mean I think it's uh exciting is always an interesting term. I think if if farmers can see, you know, if people can see benefits of what they're doing, and that's why I'm saying something that will make a tangible difference to them that is worth the effort of having to, you know, of having to employ that technology, rounding up those animals from God knows where where they are, if uh you know, even if it's a hill sheep in Scotland or or whatever. Um, you know, it's something that makes it worthwhile for them, that they can see that they are making a difference. I think unless there is some kind of, you know, I mean it's got to be the I think that's the carrot that farmers have because I can't see that many governments being in a position to, you know, with the carrot. And I don't see um I think we've seen recently with certain countries forcing implementation of certain things that stick doesn't always give positive responses. So I see carrots being the being the main supplement here. Um yeah, the hypothetical of carrot.
SPEAKER_00:One of my I know I mentioned this before, but one of my my favorite um agricultural technology adoption stories or examples is is actually the installation of solar-powered um irrigation pumps in southern Afghanistan. And this is where farmers who 90 plus percent of them have not spent a single day at school, so completely illiterate. Most of them don't have electricity and haven't grown up in houses or villages with electricity. Um, plus they have had to no shit negotiate, you know, importing these devices through tribal regions across conflict zones, all that sort of stuff, to implement a new technology to pump water onto their opium poppy crops. And these went from, um, this would have been probably 10 years ago, from you know, the odd one here and there across Helmand, Kandahar, etc., to tens of thousands within two or three years. So they came over all those barriers overcame those barriers of of never experiencing their technology, um, illiteracy, um, so they couldn't read about it or research it, and just the logistics and cost of getting it there because there was the value to them. And I think that really shows that farmers will will overcome a whole bunch of barriers if the benefits are there. And it's a matter of how do you try and provide those benefits so so that they they want to adopt the better practices.
SPEAKER_01:And so that's why I mean I I I see it's absolutely vital that you know feel based, you know, people being able to see their peers, you know, have profound increases in their productivity, their profitabilities, and being able to, I think that's so important. You know, we can come in theoretically and say, oh, you give this, you'll you know, reduce your abortion rate by five percent or whatever, but we're still coming in from the outside. And uh I think it's really important that on the ground there is some demonstrable, potential demonstrable change that farmers can see. Um, and and that's really important. I think the other thing that you raised there that it's really important is that often, you know, farmers themselves don't see themselves as as leaders, but actually technologically, farmers are remarkable and farms are remarkable. Probably, you know, the their adoption of technology um is you know, they they are very quick to adopt technology anywhere in the world that's available to them within their space. And so, you know, sometimes I think we we we underestimate the ability of of farmers to take on board new ideas. Whereas, you know, I I think when it comes down to it, a lot of the critiques we have of our agricultural system are actually things we've asked farmers to do. And whenever we've asked them, you know, and challenged them, we need to increase the food system, we need to increase it by this much, they've done it. You know, they've done it and they've achieved it. And I think that's something that you know people have a pop at farmers, and or they they you know, or farmers feel that that people critique them, but actually they've pretty much done what society has been asking of them and done it really well and far quicker than anybody could have expected. So, so I I think that's something that and that's why I've got quite confidence in the future. And as I said, I don't think we're not suddenly going to by improving and increasing animal health, even if we got rid of every disease, you know, the emissions are going to go up, but what they would do is they go up a lot slower than if we have to provide 20% more animals to produce the same amount of food, you know, than we would do without getting rid of these diseases. I think that's ultimately where we're coming from here, is we're we want to close that loss envelope. And by closing that loss envelope, we will reduce the emissions footprint of animal source foods. Um yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I I think that's you know summed up beautifully and and and also it shows, I guess, the the the simple, the more simple equation in that it's that that huge loss, and those animals, whilst they're they're not producing food, they're not producing income, they've got a whole bunch of costs associated with them, there's animal welfare concerns, they you know, they tie up a huge amount of extra labor dealing with a sick animal is a lot more time consuming and labor intensive than dealing with a with a health animal, healthy animal, but it it's not this in some ways what you're alluding to is is our I mean ours in the the broader humanities um simplistic view of seeing things as as as these linear connections and wanting simple solutions uh to complex problems.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, and I think that's that's you know, it's not a case of an Hades, you know, it's putting something in to the system and just magically drawing out the the emissions from that system, it's not going to happen with health. And again, coming back to that the first uh little bit that I was uh probably wittering on at the beginning, it's that's I think the the complexity of how health interacts with emissions is the hard part of getting across that yes, you know, productive animals are going to produce more emissions, but they're going to produce hopefully even more food. And they're gonna produce more food than you would have otherwise than if you just keep on stacking the system with more and more and more animals, you know, which is gonna have not just emissions, it'll be biodiversity, it'll be water use, you know, there'll be a whole raft of other issues associated with that, and so that's why I think health. Why wouldn't it be the one of the first things that you want to do? Why would it be the last consideration when you talk about the environment? I I don't know. I don't understand that I'm coming from it from this perspective, but you know, it it does it's it seems to it seems to be logical.
SPEAKER_00:Nick, thank you so very much. And before we go, is there anything you'd like to add that we haven't already discussed?
SPEAKER_01:No, I'm just gonna thank you for for inviting me. Um as I said, as I said, I think I've said it already, that I think this is a space that is growing. It's a space where I think the financiers are starting to see that there is gonna be potential benefits, and climate finance might, you know, might enter this space, and animal health can really move forward as a climate solution. Um and I think I'm really excited for the next 10 years. Um, as I've been sort of working, dabbling in the space for the previous 10 years, but I'm really excited about the next 10. Um and yeah, all I can say is that you know I'm grateful for all the advocacy that is being done in this space by the international community, um, including yourself, uh, by inviting me on this podcast. Uh so thank you ever so much. And just thank everybody who who is working here incredibly hard. There's a lot of people um who maybe don't get quite the credit. Nick, thank you very much.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you. Thank you for listening to the AshCloud. Please subscribe to AshCloud if you've enjoyed this podcast, where I will continue to discuss food sustainability with guests who bring a deep understanding of the environmental, political, and cultural challenges facing our society and creative ideas on how to address them.