Livestock farming: feed and energy costs are exacerbating the crisis in the livestock sector

Environmental campaigns, new diseases, increasingly stringent EU regulations and soaring feed and energy costs are the main factors behind the “forced diet” of the Italian livestock sector. As with agriculture, self-sufficiency rates have fallen below the warning threshold in recent years, and this is one of the reasons why public policies – such as the recent ‘Coltiva Italia’ initiative and, looking ahead, the future CAP – have put the issue of food security back at the top of the list of priorities.

The structural crisis in the sector – excluding the white meat sector – is highlighted in the latest Istat report, published in recent days: over the last twenty years, between 2006 and 2025, the number of animals has fallen across all the main livestock species, with the sole exceptions of buffalo (+92.6 per cent) and goats (+3.4 per cent). The sharpest declines were seen in sheep (-28.1%), pigs (-15.6%) and cattle (-12.2%, from 6.1 million to 5.4 million). The crisis is not solely due to a reduction in meat consumption, but to a gradual restructuring of the sector, in line, the report emphasises, with the decline recorded at European level. Consequently imports of non-EU meat increased by 25 per cent in volume and 38 per cent in value last year alone in Italia, and by 4 per cent and 23 per cent in Europe (Eurostat data).

Offsetting this is the strong growth in milk production (+27.2 per cent to 138,000 tonnes, mainly due to increased productivity) and cheese production (+17.7 per cent). The report also highlights how the sharp decline in maize cultivation (with the area under cultivation more than halved and production down by 43 per cent due to higher yields) represents ‘one of the most significant developments in recent Italian agriculture’. In contrast, other crops geared towards livestock farming and protein production, such as soya (up 69 per cent in terms of area and 94 per cent in terms of output) driven by growing demand for plant-based proteins for animal feed and European strategies to reduce dependence on imports, as well as fodder for animal feed, which has also doubled, confirming “the growing integration between arable farming and livestock farming”.

The collapse of the maize supply chain is leading to the Italian livestock sector becoming increasingly dependent on international feed markets. This comes as the European industry faces its worst crisis in recent years, with Fefac, the European feed industry federation, calling on Brussels to introduce extraordinary measures to support the sector during the 2026–27 marketing year during which the EU (following crop shortfalls caused by drought) will need additional imports of over 7 million tonnes, with total foreign demand forecast at over 26 million tonnes, mainly from Ukraine, the United States and Brazil.

The feed crisis also risks widening the EU’s protein deficit, increasing demand for soya – almost all of which is imported despite the aforementioned rise in production (35 million tonnes in 2025) – with the added concern of rising costs due to the European regulation on deforestation (which requires the traceability of supplies), estimated to exceed one billion as early as 2027. However, there are many ‘restrictions’ imposed by Europe that drive up costs and investment, ranging from regulations on animal welfare to those on transport, right through to the directive emissions (which, to achieve climate neutrality by 2050, calls for a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared with 1990 levels of 55 per cent by 2030 and 90 per cent by 2040) extended to large-scale livestock farms (with cattle being spared at the last minute).