Speaker Details

Prof Norman Casey

Biography

Norman Casey attained the BSc (Agric) and MSc (Agric) degrees at the University of Natal and the DSc (Agric) at the University of Pretoria. In 1979, he accepted an academic appointment at the University of Pretoria in animal production physiology. As professor, he was the departmental head: Department of Animal and Wildlife Sciences, from 1992 to 2005. He is chairperson the Ethics Committee, Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences and sits on the Senate Committee on Research Ethics and Integrity. He is Honorary President and former President of the South African Society of Animal Science and is a Ministerial appointee on the Council for Natural Scientific Professions. He is President of Congress of the World Association of Animal Production, was Vice-president of the International Goat Association (2000 to 2004) and chaired the 8th International Conference on Goats (2004) and 9th International Symposium on Ruminant Physiology (1999). He has received awards for research and academic excellence and for services to the Animal Science profession. He serves on the editorial boards of Livestock Science, Small Ruminant Research and the SA Journal of Animal Science. He has sixty-nine scientific peer reviewed publications, eighty conference proceedings and presentations, twenty-two books and reference manuals, thirty-eight contracted scientific reports and has supervised forty-five MSc and seventeen PhD candidates and promoted two Honoris Causa candidates.

Abstract

Global Convergence in Food Supply: Rapporteur’s Analysis

The rapporteur will present an analysis of the salient and supportive philosophical and factual interpretations by the respective speakers addressing the topic of Global Convergence in Food Supply in their papers on The Livestock Revolution (LR), Food and Fuel, and Climate Change and Food in DECs. These three papers are fundamental to taking a futuristic look at key drivers of livestock production. The LR was brought to the for in the late 1990s when analyses showed that the improving wellbeing of growing populations in the DECs was having a profound effect on the magnitude of the shift of animal production towards intensively raised monogastric livestock, underpinned by relatively cheap and accessible grain-based diets. Recognition of the LR and both the resources it depended on and the concentrated waste it generated, raised questions on its sustainability, if not morality, in the long run. Almost a decade later, this relationship has not eased. However, it has come head-on into contact with two other determinants: the increasing demand for liquid fuel has accelerated a move towards using highly fermentable plant material used for both human and animal food for ethanol production, and the increasing likelihood of a change in global climate that could impact negatively on agriculture. If the consequences of the interactions of these three forces, LR, Food-for-Fuel and Climate Change, are not considered carefully, the entire world faces unimaginable societal implications.