Livestock Reimagined: Four pathways for future-proof animal agriculture, drawn from Europe’s pioneering farms

Animal agriculture sits at the centre of some of the most consequential questions facing Europe’s food system, and the choices Europe makes in the next few years will shape the sector for the next generations.

Looking at both the genuine strengths of animal agriculture and the real concerns it raises, this report examines what is needed for the European livestock sector to be truly future-proof: economically and socially for the farmers, environmentally, and from an animal welfare perspective. Drawing on 30 interviews with farmers and experts across the EU, as well as scientific and policy literature, it maps how the transition is already happening on the ground, and what policy needs to do to scale it.

The report identifies four practical pathways towards a viable, holistic and territorially rooted livestock system, with technology acting as a transversal support tool:

1. Working with grasslands and landscapes

2. Closing nutrient loops

3. Diversifying income streams

4. Recentring care, welfare and husbandry

To turn the pathways into a practical reality, it translates the insights from the farmers into concrete policy recommendations, including investment support and transition packages towards higher-welfare housing and slaughter systems, stronger labelling and transparency frameworks, support for landscape diversity, breeding efforts for efficiency and system fit, action to close research gaps on circular feed, and revision of food waste legislation to help close the nutrient loop, among others.

This publication comes at a time when questions about the future of European livestock are firmly on the agenda. The farmers in this report have already shown what is possible. What is needed now is the political courage to back them, the institutional clarity to scale what works, and the shared ambition to make their reality the rule rather than the exception.