Opinion: Models Help Us See The Big Picture of Sustainable Agriculture

As human population and per-capita income increase, demand for meat has also increased. At the same time, millions of people worldwide are food insecure, and with the environmental impacts of existing food production systems already under public and regulatory pressure, the big challenges for today’s animal scientists are how do we make sure people have access to affordable, nutritious food now while minimizing the environmental impacts, both now and in the future? How do we calculate the impacts of what farmers are already doing, and see how different management strategies affect economics and the environment? These are the questions my work, and that of my colleagues in modeling of sustainable agriculture, are trying to answer.