The global agrifood system faces significant challenges to its sustainability and its contribution to climate change is widely recognized. Notably, emissions from livestock represent the largest portion of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions within the global agrifood system. Nevertheless, the growing need for energy – both for power generation and food for humans – provided by coal and livestock, respectively, has never been greater. It is therefore critical to diversify both economies without worsening their social, environmental and economic impacts.

Colombia is among the top five largest coal exporters in the world and, within the country, the region of Cesar is the largest coal producer. Until recently, Cesar’s economic growth has relied heavily on this sector: coal mining accounted about 40% of Cesar’s GDP in 2023, and approximately 35% of Cesar’s fiscal revenues come from mining royalties. Given such dependence on coal mining, Cesar’s government . While planning documents do not explicitly call for livestock to replace coal as the main economic driver, the livestock sector became central to Cesar’s efforts to diversify its economy away from coal.

However, is Cesar replacing one high-emissions sector with another? And what can be done to ensure a more just transition – one that restores environmental injustices and avoids future ones? In Colombia, livestock has played a strategic role in the economy, employment generation and food security, among others. Nationally, while representing about 1.4% of the GDP, the livestock sector makes up 21.8% of Colombia’s agribusiness GDP and generates about 1.1 million rural jobs, which represent 19% of national agribusiness employment. Although beef consumption in Colombia has decreased 12.8% between 2015 and 2023 (from 20.3 to 17.7 kg per capita), Colombian beef exports have gained importance. Indeed, the Colombian Cattle Ranchers Federation (FEDEGAN) aims to make Colombia one of the top 10 producers of meat worldwide by 2032, compared to where it stands now: number 20 in production and among the 20 largest exporters.

Within Colombia, Cesar has one of the largest cattle inventories. Livestock production represents as much as 60% of the jobs in the sector and 8% of the department GDP together with agriculture and fisheries, to which livestock contributes 70%. However, most of those jobs are informal, and the property rights of as much as 58% of rural land property in Cesar are unclear, making livestock producers highly vulnerable to dispossession and economic instability. Land grabbing is also a key challenge, as it involves the illegal acquisition of land, often by powerful actors such as agribusinesses, mining companies or armed groups, through coercion, fraud or violence, leading to social, economic and environmental consequences. Difficulties in accessing land forces small producers to work on leased land, increasing production costs and undermining economic stability.

The livestock sector is a key priority in Cesar’s competitiveness and innovation goals, which call for incorporating new technologies that improve productivity, adapting to climate change (which may affect up to half of Cesar’s livestock productivity), and investing in both national and international competitiveness.

While expanding the livestock sector offers economic opportunities, it also comes with significant risks. Although globally the energy sector remains the biggest contributor of GHG emissions, in Colombia as much as 60% of all human-caused GHG emissions come from land-use change and the agricultural sector. Deforestation is associated with the expansion of the agricultural frontier and clearing for pastures, including in the Amazon rainforest. The rise in beef exports has only exacerbated these issues, leading to deforestation in several national parks and forest reserves.

Until recently, beef represented nearly 25% of meat consumption in Colombia, while poultry comprised nearly 50%. Beef in particular has a high water and carbon footprint. Given that beef imports in Colombia account only for a very small part of national consumption, it can be assumed that environmental impacts of the country’s beef consumption are mainly locally produced. In Cesar, the livestock sector is the top GHG emitter (31%) and a major user of land, with almost 80% of Cesar’s agricultural expansion frontier dedicated to livestock production. This does not create the conditions for a productive transformation compared to the high incomes of the coal extractivist model. Moreover, about half of Cesar’s wetland areas show evidence of being transformed into pasture zones for livestock and agriculture.

These impacts, among others, have led to local environmental degradation, including soil erosion and water pollution, but also threaten biodiversity and worsen social and economic disparities, with Indigenous communities often bearing the brunt of the consequences.

Colombia’s government refers to the need for a more sustainable growth of Cesar’s livestock sector mainly through promoting silvopastoral systems. These systems are, in essence, agroforestry arrangements that combine fodder plants such as grasses and leguminous herbs with shrubs or trees for animal feeding and complementary uses. Reported benefits of these systems compared to conventional livestock are diverse and include:

The feasibility of implementing silvopastoral systems at scale in practice remains an open question. Profitability in the mid- and long-term can be higher compared to traditional livestock systems, but the high upfront costs of implementing silvopastoral systems represent a burden to the great majority of livestock producers in Cesar. FEDEGAN has called for policy interventions that provide finance and subsidies to producers to promote these systems.

Moreover, although it is important how livestock is raised, government plans also ignore the potential benefits of promoting a transition to sustainable plant-based production and consumption. Colombia’s government-issued dietary recommendations recommend higher levels of meat consumption compared to, for example, the planetary health diet.  

Yet making more sustainable food production and consumption choices carries significant potential for freeing up land, cutting GHG emissions, capturing more carbon, and providing health benefits to consumers. It may also bring new economic opportunities: In Latin America, a shift towards plant-based foods can create up to an estimated 19 million jobs 2030 compared to a high-emissions scenario, while sticking with animal-based agriculture will potentially lose 4 million jobs.

Effectively addressing the climate crisis requires major transformations in all key sectors. For economies like that of Cesar, it is imperative to consider which choices have the greatest potential to be sustainable and resilient in the long term without merely replacing one GHG-intensive sector with another.