One Welfare: an innovative approach to resilient livestock farming

Contribute to the resilience of livestock systems, with a focus on "One Welfare", by implementing good practices for cattle and sheep based on animal welfare principles.

Context of the story

Sustainable livestock growth is a key challenge in Latin America and the Caribbean, given the increased demand for quality products, animal welfare, and sustainability. Argentina, Chile, and Colombia, major suppliers of meat, milk, and wool, face the impacts of climate change, which particularly affect small and medium-sized producers. This initiative promotes a comprehensive approach to “One Welfare”—animal, human, and environmental—integrating technical and traditional knowledge. Through Good Livestock Practices adapted to each region, it seeks to strengthen farm resilience, reduce losses, improve productivity, and move toward more sustainable and innovative livestock farming.

Strengthening the co-participatory capacity of livestock-raising communities to implement the GLP-AW and disseminate the results of their adoption.

The Implemented Initiative

The consolidated regional co-innovation platform now covers six ecoregions: from the highlands and eastern plains of Colombia, through the of northeastern Argentina and Patagonia, to the valleys of central and southern Chile. Through co-participatory workshops, technicians, producers, Mapuche communities, cooperatives, universities, and institutions identified and prioritized Good Livestock Practices with a focus on Animal Welfare to adapt them to each reality. The goal is to weave local networks that generate sustainable solutions with territorial identity, cultural respect, and shared commitment.

Development and validation of processing technologies through a regional co-innovation platform, which promotes the adoption of Good Livestock Practices with a “One Welfare” approach to improve the resilience of livestock farms.

The technological solution

The project is developing a regional methodology for implementing, monitoring and evaluating Good Livestock Practices with an Animal Welfare focus (GLPs-AW), based on the One Welfare conceptual framework. The methodology brings together animal welfare indicators, socioeconomic variables and environmental criteria in a participatory way, and combines territorial co-innovation tools, harmonized evaluation protocols, digital data collection forms and a set of regionally prioritized and validated indicators for cattle and sheep systems. It also includes training and technical support to help producers and implementation teams adopt the practices. It was designed for use across different production contexts in Latin America, allowing results to be compared between ecoregions and evidence to be generated for decision-making. It is currently under construction and will be validated at pilot sites in Argentina, Chile and Colombia.

"Capacity development is essential for improving animal welfare in practice, enabling farmers and communities to enhance productivity, reduce stress and disease, and improve livelihoods."

— Food and agriculture organization of the united nations (FAO, 2009)

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Type of project

Agronomic Practices

Strategy 1. Resilient farms

Applied

Technological

Cattle raising

Productive systems

Results

The project consolidated a regional co-innovation platform bringing together producers, technicians, researchers and institutions from Argentina, Chile and Colombia. Within it, ten Good Livestock Practices with an Animal Welfare focus were identified and prioritized for six ecoregions, a common monitoring methodology was developed under the One Welfare approach, and indicators were harmonized to assess productive, environmental and socioeconomic dimensions. More than 700 stakeholders strengthened their capacities through regional workshops, courses and seminars, forming a network of implementers in the field. A network of 24 demonstration and experimental units was also established, 12 in Argentina, 8 in Colombia and 4 in Chile, for participatory validation of the prioritized practices, and comprehensive diagnostics began, providing baselines and adapting the tools to each ecoregion.

Relevant data