Redesigning animal agriculture : a systemic review

Faced with a plethora of ever-increasing demands from citizens and producers alike for the design of more responsible and sustainable livestock production practices, animal scientists are becoming increasingly interested in exploring 'systems orientations' to their research and development work. However, two interrelated factors are proving to be especially significant impediments to the successful adoption of what might be termed 'systemic animal science': (i) the widespread confusion about what actually constitutes such research; and (ii) a lack of appreciation of the cognitive demands that the adoption of a 'systemic worldview' on research and development dictates. Unfortunately - and ironically - the word 'system' itself is used in such a wide variety of contexts within animal science, as indeed it is in virtually every domain of human activity, that confusion reigns about what a systems-oriented research programme actually looks like and what systems- oriented animal scientists actually do. A range of intellectual and practical differences exist, for instance, between work in expert systems, in decision-support systems, in viable systems, in farming systems, in livestock production systems, in agro-ecological systems, in soft systems, and in critical systems, which are all being employed currently within the livestock sciences. In this present chapter, shape is given to the systems movement in the livestock sciences with the articulation of a typology that allows discriminations to be made between first, second and third order systemics, as well as between these three and what is referred to as 'proto-systemics' (which are more systematic than systemic). This framework is also used to illustrate and explore the contention that the most significant systemic focus within livestock sciences - and yet one that apparently receives very little attention - is the nature and development of the cognitive systems that are fundamental to any systemic comprehension. The fundamental argument here is that acts of systemic development in the material and social world of livestock 'systems' are functions of the systemic intellectual and moral development of those who ought to be involved in those acts - including, and especially, scientists themselves. And while the logic of this submission is clear, the practical challenge is no less daunting.