25 Essential Thought Leaders in Livestock Globally

Last updated: June 2026

The people shaping global livestock right now are not all on the same panel at the same conference. Some are rebuilding how cattle genetics work in sub-Saharan Africa. Some are designing the physical spaces animals move through before slaughter. Some are telling the world's largest investors where sustainable protein is heading next. Some are building the policy frameworks that will govern what millions of farmers can and cannot do for the next decade. As of June 2026, every one of the 25 people in this directory has been verified in their current role through a primary source dated within the last twelve months.

This is the definitive directory of the most active and influential thought leaders shaping global livestock in 2026. The list spans animal welfare and agtech, feed science and sustainability finance, cattle economics and poultry innovation. Rather than recycling the same familiar names that appear on every agriculture list, this directory surfaces the leaders who genuinely deserve to be far better known, the people whose work anyone serious about the future of livestock should be following right now.

As of June 2026, the livestock and meat market had expanded to approximately USD 604 billion in annual value, feeding a global population whose protein demand continues to rise. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the livestock sector supports the livelihoods of around 1.3 billion people globally and makes up roughly 40 percent of the world's agricultural GDP. Livestock provides approximately one-third of global protein intake through animal-source foods. Those are the stakes. The people on this list are the ones working to make that system more sustainable, more humane, and more productive all at once, and not treating those goals as contradictions.

To bring leadership development, Working Genius facilitation, or an executive offsite to your livestock or agribusiness organisation, contact Jonno White at jonno@consultclarity.org. Jonno is the author of Step Up or Step Out (10,000+ copies sold) and host of The Leadership Conversations Podcast (240+ episodes, 150+ countries).

Why Global Livestock Leadership Matters

Livestock is not a niche industry. It is the infrastructure of global food security, the source of protein for billions of people who have no substitute, and one of the most consequential environmental actors on the planet. Livestock farming accounts for 14 to 15 percent of all man-made greenhouse gas emissions, according to MarketsandMarkets, a figure that demands serious, credible leadership, not PR.

The leaders shaping global livestock are doing something extraordinarily difficult. They are being asked to produce more protein as demand rises, reduce emissions as climate pressure intensifies, improve animal welfare as public scrutiny grows, and do all of it profitably in a sector characterised by tight margins and long biological cycles. The leaders on this list are the people engaging seriously with that complexity in public, sharing their thinking, building their evidence base, and advancing the conversations the industry needs to have.

The precision livestock farming market, which encompasses the sensors, AI systems, and data platforms that help farmers monitor health, optimise feed, and manage herds remotely, is valued at approximately USD 7.94 billion in 2025 and forecast to reach USD 12.12 billion by 2030, according to MarketsandMarkets. That number signals the scale of the technological transformation currently under way.

For a broader view of the agricultural leadership conversation, the companion directory of thought leaders in agriculture across Australia and New Zealand explores the regional voices shaping farming in two of the world's most significant livestock-producing nations.

How This List Was Compiled

Each person on this list was selected on the basis of a documented, fact-checked contribution to the global livestock conversation, from active LinkedIn thought leadership and published work to senior roles at the organisations setting the sector's direction. Every current role has been verified against a primary source dated within the last twelve months. The list was built from more than twenty discovery searches spanning every major livestock sub-sector, all major geographic regions, and all levels of institutional hierarchy, from startup founders to UN agency heads. Rather than leading with the most familiar names, the selection prioritised people whose specific contribution to global livestock thinking is real, current, and worth a practitioner's attention in 2026.

Sector Leadership and Policy

The organisations setting the standards, trade rules, and sustainability frameworks for global livestock shape every decision made further down the value chain.

1. Phil Hadley

International Meat Secretariat

Phil Hadley is Secretary General of the International Meat Secretariat, the global trade association representing the meat industry's interests in international policy forums. From his position at IMS, Hadley convenes the meat sector's engagement with bodies including the FAO and the World Organisation for Animal Health, and leads the industry's contribution to major sustainable livestock dialogues. His participation in the FAO Global Conference on Sustainable Livestock Transformation in October 2025 placed him alongside ministers, researchers, and civil society leaders working on the sector's biggest systemic challenges.

IMS published, as part of the Common Principles and Actions for Sustainable Livestock Production initiative in September 2025, a set of practical commitments on animal health, welfare, and environmental performance that Hadley helped shape across ten international organisations. The principles drew from FAO analysis suggesting that improved animal health alongside innovations in genetics and rumen management could reduce total livestock emissions by as much as 23 percent. That alignment across the value chain, from cooperative farmers to global processors, is the kind of work Hadley does that rarely generates headlines but consistently moves the policy needle.

2. Alexandra de Athayde

International Feed Industry Federation

Alexandra de Athayde is Executive Director of the International Feed Industry Federation, the global trade association representing the animal feed manufacturing industry, which produces the feed that flows through virtually every commercial livestock operation on earth. From her position at IFIF, de Athayde leads the industry's engagement with regulators, research bodies, and sustainability frameworks globally. She participated in the FAO Global Conference on Sustainable Livestock Transformation in October 2025, contributing to the multi-stakeholder dialogue on how feed science, feed safety, and feed innovation connect to the sector's sustainability ambitions.

IFIF sits at a unique intersection in the livestock value chain: the quality, safety, and environmental profile of animal feed shapes everything from herd health and production efficiency to carbon emissions and antibiotic use. IFIF's advocacy for science-based feed regulation and innovation policy affects the conditions under which hundreds of millions of animals are raised globally. De Athayde's leadership of that conversation, at a moment when the industry faces growing regulatory scrutiny in Europe and increasing demand for sustainable inputs across all markets, makes her one of the more strategically important voices in the livestock sector's policy landscape.

3. Babafemi Oyewole

Pan African Farmers Organization

Babafemi Oyewole is Chief Executive Officer of the Pan African Farmers Organization, the continent-wide representative body for smallholder and commercial farmers across Africa. Africa hosts approximately one-third of the world's total livestock population, and its rich diversity of indigenous cattle, goat, and poultry breeds represents an extraordinary genetic resource that is simultaneously under-documented, undervalued, and under threat from climate change. Oyewole's leadership of PAFO positions him as one of the most important voices on smallholder livestock development, land rights, and agricultural trade policy on the continent. He participated in the FAO Global Conference on Sustainable Livestock Transformation in October 2025, representing the farm-level perspective in a dialogue largely shaped by science, corporate, and government voices.

PAFO's influence extends through national and regional farmers' unions across the continent, and its advocacy at international forums including the FAO, the World Trade Organization, and the African Union Commission shapes the conditions under which millions of African livestock producers operate. Oyewole's public engagement with questions of fair trade access, smallholder finance, and indigenous breed conservation reflects a determination to keep the interests of African farmers at the centre of global livestock policy conversations that often sideline them.

4. Ruaraidh Petre

Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef

Ruaraidh Petre is Executive Director of the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, the multi-stakeholder initiative focused on advancing continuous improvement in sustainability across the global beef value chain. The GRSB brings together producers, processors, retailers, allied industries, civil society, and national roundtables from 24 countries across five continents to develop practical sustainability standards and frameworks that travel through the supply chain from farm to retailer. In December 2025, Petre announced the 2026 GRSB Board of Directors, a group spanning constituencies from producer organisations and processors to civil society and regional roundtables.

Petre has been a consistent public voice on the beef industry's actual sustainability trajectory, including through published commentary clarifying what the beef value chain has been doing to reduce emissions and how increased global demand for meat can be met without increasing emissions on a per-unit basis. His willingness to engage publicly with contested science around soil carbon, methane measurement, and lifecycle emissions analysis makes him one of the more intellectually credible voices in a space prone to both greenwashing and overclaiming. The GRSB's work on global principles and criteria for sustainable beef directly influences how major retailers and food service companies write their supply chain requirements.

5. Ivan Ivanov

International Finance Corporation

Ivan Ivanov serves as Global Lead for Sustainable Protein Advisory at the International Finance Corporation, the private sector arm of the World Bank Group, where he works on investment frameworks, risk assessment, and sustainability standards for livestock and protein-sector clients across developing and emerging markets. His participation in the FAO Global Conference on Sustainable Livestock Transformation in October 2025 placed him in the multi-stakeholder dialogue on sustainable investment in the livestock sector at a particularly consequential moment: the FAO estimates that only 0.01 to 0.02 percent of climate finance currently reaches livestock health, a gap Ivanov's work at IFC is directly addressing.

IFC's investments in the livestock sector have included dairy processors in East Africa, poultry integrators in India, and pork producers in Ukraine and Latin America, and each investment comes with environmental, social, and governance requirements that set standards for how livestock is raised and processed in markets that would otherwise operate with fewer external constraints. Ivanov's advisory role on sustainable protein means he is shaping the conditions under which institutional capital flows to livestock businesses globally, and the ESG requirements those businesses must meet to access it.

Sustainability and Investment

How money moves through the livestock sector, and on what terms, shapes its environmental and social trajectory as much as any regulation.

6. Lissy Smit

Rabobank

Lissy Smit is Global Head of Sustainability for Rabobank's international franchise, a role she began in June 2025 after leading the EUR 500 million aquaculture impact fund AquaSpark for two years. Rabobank is one of the world's largest cooperative banks and the leading global financier of food and agriculture, which gives Smit's sustainability strategy an unusual degree of leverage: the conditions Rabobank sets for its agricultural lending cascade through hundreds of thousands of client businesses, many of them in livestock. Her career at Rabobank before AquaSpark included leading the leveraged lending business for Hong Kong, Europe, and ultimately the global book, giving her both a deep institutional knowledge of how agricultural finance works and a perspective sharpened by time in impact investing.

On LinkedIn, Smit has written on the critical role that large corporate and institutional players must play in transforming global food systems, a framing that reflects her conviction that scale matters as much as intent. Rabobank's cooperative structure gives it a specific mandate to support rural and agricultural communities, and Smit's sustainability leadership involves translating that mandate into practical standards and investment conditions that push the livestock sector toward environmental and social improvement without removing the economics that keep farmers viable.

7. Lance Zimmerman

Rabobank

Lance Zimmerman is Senior Vice President and Animal Protein Analyst at Rabobank, where he leads market analysis and strategic intelligence on global animal protein markets, covering beef, pork, poultry, and dairy across producing and consuming regions worldwide. At the Animal AgTech Innovation Summit in Fort Worth in April 2026, Zimmerman addressed an audience of 500 senior executives on the market outlook for livestock protein, highlighting premium differentiation and precision health and nutrition data as the fastest-growing strategic opportunities for producers in a tight-supply, high-price environment.

Zimmerman's work at Rabobank sits at the intersection of commodity economics and strategic intelligence. His animal protein outlook publications, produced through Rabobank's RaboResearch division, are among the most closely read market intelligence products in the global livestock sector, cited regularly in trade media and referenced by producers, processors, and investors making capital allocation decisions across multiple market cycles. His commentary at major industry events consistently translates complex global supply and demand dynamics into the practical implications producers need to make sound management decisions.

8. Naomi Wilson

Australian Agricultural Company

Naomi Wilson is Head of Environment and Sustainability at the Australian Agricultural Company, Australia's largest integrated cattle and beef producer, operating more than 6 million hectares of cattle stations across Queensland and the Northern Territory. AACo runs approximately 350,000 head of cattle, making Wilson responsible for the environmental performance of one of the world's largest beef production systems. She participated in the FAO Private Sector Forum at the Global Conference on Sustainable Livestock Transformation in October 2025, representing a working beef producer's perspective on the practical challenges and genuine progress of sustainability transformation at scale.

AACo has been pursuing carbon sequestration initiatives across its rangelands and has made public commitments to sustainability improvement across its value chain. Wilson's role involves not just measuring and reducing AACo's environmental footprint but communicating that work credibly to investors, retailers, and the public. Her presence at the FAO forum alongside executives from Cargill, Danone, and the global cooperative sector placed AACo in a conversation typically dominated by either industrial-scale multinationals or advocacy organisations, demonstrating that Australia's largest beef producer is choosing to engage with the sustainability agenda rather than resist it.

9. Rob Trice

Better Food Ventures

Rob Trice is a Partner at Better Food Ventures, a venture capital firm focused on food and agriculture technology investments. He is one of the most widely quoted voices on investment trends in animal agtech, and his public commentary on the investment landscape for livestock technology is regularly cited in industry media. At the Animal AgTech Innovation Summit in 2025, Trice offered an honest assessment of the funding environment, noting that he expected conditions for animal tech investment to improve as the strong cattle market cycle continued and other livestock and poultry sectors rebounded.

Better Food Ventures invests across the food and agriculture value chain, with a particular focus on technologies that improve the sustainability, efficiency, and animal welfare profile of animal production. Trice's perspective as an investor gives him a vantage point across the innovation landscape that very few individual operators can match, and his public commentary through conference appearances, media interviews, and LinkedIn posts contributes a capital-markets lens to conversations about which livestock technologies are likely to scale and which will remain at proof-of-concept stage.

Animal Welfare and Ethics

The conversation about how livestock are treated is no longer peripheral to the industry's future. It is increasingly central to market access, regulatory compliance, and public trust.

10. Temple Grandin

Colorado State University

Temple Grandin is University Distinguished Professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University, where she has taught livestock handling and animal behaviour since 1990. Her design work has produced the curved chute and race systems used for cattle handling worldwide, and the centre track restrainer system she developed handles nearly half of all cattle in North American processing facilities. Her objective scoring system for assessing the welfare of cattle and pigs at processing plants has been adopted by major food corporations globally, including McDonald's, which engaged Grandin in 1999 to train its food safety auditors. In 2025, she received the AVMA Humane Award, the American Veterinary Medical Association's most prestigious animal welfare recognition, and USA Today named her one of its 2025 Women of the Year.

Grandin's contribution to global livestock is singular: she translated an autistic person's ability to perceive the world through an animal's sensory experience into practical facility design that is now the industry standard for humane livestock handling globally. A CSU documentary, An Open Door, released on streaming platforms in August 2025, gave a new generation of livestock professionals and general audiences access to the full arc of her career. At 78, she continues to teach, speak at US and international conferences on animal welfare and agriculture, and mentor graduate students who carry her frameworks into the next generation of the industry.

11. Peter Stevenson, OBE

Compassion in World Farming

Peter Stevenson, OBE is Chief Policy Advisor at Compassion in World Farming, the UK-based international animal welfare organisation working to end factory farming practices globally. A qualified lawyer with more than three decades of experience in farm animal welfare advocacy, Stevenson played a leading role in securing the European Union bans on veal crates, barren battery cages, and sow stalls, and contributed to establishing a new legal status for animals as sentient beings in EU law. He was awarded an OBE in October 2020 in recognition of his contributions to farm animal welfare. In October 2025, he co-authored a peer-reviewed paper published in Animal Frontiers addressing the sustainability of livestock production and the risks of over-reliance on technological fixes as substitutes for genuine welfare improvement.

Stevenson has written comprehensive legal analyses of EU legislation on farm animals, reports on the economics of livestock production, and studies on the detrimental impacts of industrial farming on the resource systems that food production depends on. He is lead author of a Food and Agriculture Organization study reviewing animal welfare legislation in the beef, pork, and poultry industries. His public thinking consistently makes the case that animal welfare is not an obstacle to a sustainable livestock sector but one of its essential foundations, and that systems which treat animals well tend to use resources more efficiently and carry lower disease risk.

12. Emmanuel Marchant

Danone

Emmanuel Marchant is Senior Vice President of Sustainability and Partnerships at Danone, one of the world's largest food companies with significant exposure to dairy and plant-based categories. Danone's sustainability commitments are among the most publicly documented in the food industry, and Marchant's leadership of the sustainability and partnerships function means he is responsible for the credibility and delivery of those commitments across a global supply chain that touches millions of livestock producers. He participated in the FAO Private Sector Forum at the Global Conference on Sustainable Livestock Transformation in October 2025, where Danone's global sustainability work spanning more than 120 countries was cited as part of the private sector's contribution to transforming livestock systems.

Danone's engagement with livestock sustainability includes work on dairy supply chain emissions, regenerative agriculture partnerships with milk suppliers, and the DanoneEcosystem fund, which Marchant helps lead, supporting smallholder farmers and agricultural communities connected to Danone's supply chains. His voice in the global conversation about how large food companies should engage with their agricultural suppliers on sustainability matters reflects a practitioner's understanding of how difficult that transformation is to execute at scale.

Research and Global Knowledge

The science behind sustainable livestock production travels from research institutions into policy, practice, and innovation. These are the people leading that translation.

13. Shirley Tarawali

International Livestock Research Institute

Shirley Tarawali is Assistant Director General and Secretary to the Board of Trustees at the International Livestock Research Institute, the CGIAR centre that develops and delivers research for livestock-dependent communities in low- and middle-income countries across Africa and Asia. Based in Nairobi, Kenya, ILRI works on everything from livestock genetics and animal health to livelihood systems and food safety in informal markets. Tarawali has spent more than three decades at ILRI and currently serves as Chair of the Global Agenda for Sustainable Livestock, the FAO-hosted multi-stakeholder partnership working to advance the sector's sustainability transformation globally.

On LinkedIn in October 2025, Tarawali was part of the ILRI team contributing to a G20 South Africa policy brief calling for livestock to be placed at the centre of climate and food security dialogues, for accessible climate finance to be mobilised, and for robust monitoring systems to be built. Her sustained contribution to the evidence base for sustainable livestock systems in developing country contexts, combined with her roles at both ILRI and GASL, gives her a reach that spans from field-level research design to UN-level policy dialogue.

14. Appolinaire Djikeng

International Livestock Research Institute

Appolinaire Djikeng is Director General of the International Livestock Research Institute, leading an organisation of approximately 1,400 staff and researchers working across more than 50 countries to improve the productivity, sustainability, and safety of livestock systems in the Global South. A molecular biologist originally from Cameroon, Djikeng brought to the ILRI director general role more than 20 years of research and management experience spanning biosciences, genomics, and agricultural research institutions in Africa, Europe, and the United States. He co-founded the African Animal Breeding Network to advance genetic improvement in African livestock systems.

In February 2026, Djikeng oversaw the launch of a landmark publication on African livestock genetic resources and sustainable breeding strategies, co-produced with AABNet, CTLGH, and the African Union's Inter-African Bureau for Animal Resources. He has described Africa's livestock genetic diversity as not just a heritage but a climate and development tool, a framing that captures ILRI's approach: practical, locally grounded, and explicitly connected to the economic and environmental outcomes that matter most in the communities it serves.

15. Graeme Martin

The University of Western Australia

Graeme Martin is a Professor at the UWA Institute of Agriculture and the UWA School of Agriculture and Environment at the University of Western Australia, where he has conducted decades of research into livestock production, reproduction, and sustainability. His January 2024 perspective article in Frontiers in Veterinary Science, titled Science and the Future of Livestock Industries, provided a rigorous and honest assessment of the challenges facing the livestock sector, covering enteric methane emissions, animal welfare expectations, climate change effects on reproduction and productivity, and the debate about animal-source foods in global diets.

Martin's specific contributions include the Clean, Green and Ethical framework for livestock management, a practical set of principles centred on reducing chemical and hormonal interventions, ensuring environmental sustainability, and upholding animal welfare. He has worked to advance these principles through engagement with sheep and cattle producers in Australia and internationally, demonstrating that livestock industries can meet rising public expectations without sacrificing the productivity that makes farms economically viable. His publishing record spans more than four decades, and his willingness to engage public debates about livestock's role in sustainable food systems with evidence rather than advocacy makes him one of the more useful academic voices in this field.

Precision Farming, AgTech, and Innovation

The technology reshaping how livestock are managed, monitored, and fed is moving faster than most of the industry's traditional institutions.

16. Craig Piggott

Halter

Craig Piggott is Founder and CEO of Halter, the New Zealand-based agricultural technology company that has built the world's leading virtual fencing and pasture management platform for dairy farms and beef ranches. Halter's solar-powered smart collars enable farmers to manage cattle remotely through a mobile app, replacing traditional physical fencing with digital boundaries, automating herd shifts across pastures, and monitoring individual animal health in real time. The company raised USD 99 million in a Series D round in June 2025, reaching unicorn status, and had nearly 700,000 collars live on more than 1,000 farms globally as of 2025.

Piggott grew up on a dairy farm in New Zealand's Waikato district, studied mechanical engineering at the University of Auckland, and spent time as an early engineer at Rocket Lab before founding Halter. That background in precision engineering applied to complex operational environments is evident in Halter's product philosophy: deeply useful at the farm level, built for the realities of large-scale pastoral agriculture, and designed to replace labour with data rather than simply digitising existing processes.

17. Mark Lyons

Alltech

Mark Lyons is President and CEO of Alltech, the global animal nutrition and biosciences company with operations in more than 120 countries and approximately 6,000 employees. Lyons grew up in the Alltech business and has led teams across Brazil, Serbia, China, and the United States before assuming the CEO role. His leadership of Alltech is grounded in the company's Working Together for a Planet of Plenty purpose, a framework that positions agriculture, and specifically the feed and livestock sectors, as the most powerful force available for building a more sustainable world. In 2025, Lyons established Planet of Plenty LLC to extend the reach of the company's World Without Cows documentary, a three-year investigation into the essential role of cattle in sustaining both people and the planet.

On LinkedIn, Lyons writes regularly about leadership, curiosity, and the strategic questions facing the global feed and livestock industries. Alltech's annual ONE Conference, returning to Kentucky for 2027, is one of the livestock sector's major global gatherings, convening producers, researchers, and innovators to explore the intersection of nutrition science, animal welfare, and sustainable production. Lyons is fluent in four languages and has a working knowledge of Mandarin, giving him an unusual ability to engage directly with livestock markets across Latin America, Europe, and Asia.

18. Scott Day

Fall Line Capital

Scott Day is Director and Chief Agronomist at Fall Line Capital, an investment firm focused on high-quality farmland and sustainable agriculture. Day brings more than two decades of agricultural expertise to his role assessing farmland investments and advising on production practices. At the Animal AgTech Innovation Summit in 2025, Day offered an investor's perspective on the outlook for animal technology, noting that as the strong cattle market cycle continued and other livestock sectors rebounded, the environment for animal agtech investment would improve.

Fall Line Capital's focus on high-integrity farmland investment connects directly to some of the most consequential questions in livestock sustainability: how land is managed, what regenerative or conservation practices look like in practice, and what the financial case for sustainable production systems is at scale. Day's commentary at industry forums and on LinkedIn reflects a practitioner who thinks carefully about the gap between sustainability aspirations and farm-level economics, and who is willing to be honest when those two things do not yet align.

Market Economics

The people who understand where livestock markets are heading provide the intelligence the industry needs to make sound decisions across the cattle cycle.

19. Derrell Peel

Oklahoma State University

Derrell Peel is Extension Livestock Marketing Specialist at Oklahoma State University, a position he has held for more than 35 years. He is widely regarded as the most credible and most-cited voice on US cattle market economics, producing weekly market commentary, conducting regular media interviews, and appearing frequently on farm radio networks, television, and podcasts. In June 2026, Peel was analysing the June cattle-on-feed report, explaining to producers why feedlot inventories were rising despite falling placements, and why heavier carcass weights were moderating but not fully offsetting declining slaughter volumes.

Peel's ability to translate complex supply-demand dynamics into the practical implications producers need to make marketing and management decisions is extraordinary and essentially unmatched in the US cattle industry. His OSU research and extension work spans the entire cattle complex, from cow-calf enterprise economics through feeder cattle markets and feedlot operations to the beef processing and retail sectors. His 2025 analysis of the US cattle cycle attracted significant industry attention, and his peer-reviewed research and popular extension publications coexist in a way that is rare in applied agricultural economics.

20. Angus Gidley-Baird

Rabobank

Angus Gidley-Baird is a Senior Animal Proteins Analyst at Rabobank's RaboResearch division, where he produces market intelligence and strategic analysis on the global animal protein sector with particular expertise in Australian and Asia-Pacific livestock markets. His Global Animal Protein Outlook for 2026, published in January 2026 and widely covered in trade media, provided a detailed assessment of production, pricing, and trade dynamics across beef, sheepmeat, pork, poultry, and dairy in Australia, New Zealand, and key export markets.

Gidley-Baird's analytical focus on the interface between Australian and global livestock markets gives him a vantage point that is especially valuable for producers and processors navigating the complex dynamics of international trade. His regular public commentary through Rabobank's research publications, trade media appearances, and the Beef Central platform reaches a substantial audience of livestock industry decision-makers across the Asia-Pacific region and globally.

Feed, Nutrition, and Animal Health

What animals eat and how their health is managed shapes their productivity, welfare, and environmental footprint more than almost any other factor.

21. Adriano Macron

Cargill

Adriano Macron is President of Cargill Animal Nutrition and Health, the business unit of one of the world's largest privately held companies that produces the feed ingredients and nutrition solutions flowing through hundreds of millions of livestock animals globally. Cargill's animal nutrition business spans more than 30 countries and produces feed for poultry, swine, cattle, aquaculture, and other animals, with a specific strategic focus on improving the sustainability and efficiency of livestock production through science-based nutrition. Macron participated in the FAO Private Sector Forum at the Global Conference on Sustainable Livestock Transformation in October 2025, representing Cargill's position on how the private sector can accelerate the transition toward bio-circular production systems.

Cargill's scale means that decisions Macron makes about which nutrition technologies to invest in and which sustainability commitments to make have a measurable impact on the carbon footprint and welfare profile of livestock production globally. The company's UpLook digital environmental monitoring platform has enrolled more than 1 million dairy cows and more than 2 million feedyard cattle, making it one of the largest datasets on farm-level livestock emissions reductions in the world. Cargill's 2025 Protein Profile cited a 7 percent increase in meat consumption in the United States from 2018 to 2023, data that continues to shape how Macron and his team think about the sector's long-term trajectory.

Innovation Finance and AgTech Access

The people connecting capital with innovation determine which technologies reach farmers and at what speed.

22. Kyle Welborn

The Yield Lab

Kyle Welborn is Managing Director of The Yield Lab, one of the leading agri-food-focused venture capital firms, with a portfolio spanning precision agriculture, food technology, and animal agtech. The Yield Lab manages funds with investments across the United States, Europe, and Latin America. At the Animal AgTech Innovation Summit in Fort Worth in April 2026, Welborn served as a judge for the Start-Up Showcase, evaluating pitches from the next generation of livestock technology innovators.

The Yield Lab's investment thesis centres on sustainable food and agriculture systems, and Welborn's work at the intersection of livestock technology and venture capital gives an informed view of what is actually viable at commercial scale across the innovation landscape. Public engagement through conference participation, industry panels, and LinkedIn connects the investment community's perspective to the practitioner conversations happening across the livestock sector.

23. Mikayla Mooney

Ag Startup Engine

Mikayla Mooney is a Partner at Ag Startup Engine, an accelerator and venture platform focused on early-stage agriculture and food technology companies. Mooney co-judged the Start-Up Showcase at the Animal AgTech Innovation Summit in Fort Worth in April 2026, evaluating pitches from startups addressing challenges across beef production, methane reduction, precision livestock monitoring, and animal health. The work at Ag Startup Engine sits at the pipeline stage of the innovation cycle, working with founders before they reach the Series A stage that attracts larger venture funds.

Ag Startup Engine's focus on early-stage agricultural innovation means Mooney is seeing the earliest signals of where the next wave of livestock technology is coming from. Participation in major industry forums connects founders with strategic partners, investors, and customers across the livestock sector, accelerating the commercialisation of innovations that can take years to reach producers through conventional research channels.

Regulatory and State Leadership

24. Karen Ross

California Department of Food and Agriculture

Karen Ross is Secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture, the state agency responsible for agricultural regulation, promotion, and development in the world's fifth-largest economy by GDP and one of its most consequential agricultural jurisdictions. First appointed by Governor Jerry Brown in 2011 and reappointed by Governor Gavin Newsom in 2019, Ross has led CDFA through one of the most transformative periods in California agriculture, including the implementation of mandatory methane reduction requirements for dairies and livestock operations and the investment of approximately USD 1 billion in grants promoting soil health, water use efficiency, and methane reduction. She spoke at the FAO Global Conference on Sustainable Livestock Transformation in October 2025, highlighting California's progress on dairy sustainability as an example of how state-level policy can drive sector-wide transformation.

Ross has managed California's livestock sector through sustained drought pressure on rangeland and water availability, highly pathogenic avian influenza outbreaks, and the complex regulatory environment that continues to push California's producers toward the cutting edge of environmental practice. Her experience navigating those transitions over more than a decade, and her willingness to engage publicly with the global policy conversation about livestock sustainability, makes her one of the most experienced state-level agricultural administrators in the world. She participated in the 2026 Agri-Pulse Food and Ag Issues Summit in Sacramento in June 2026, discussing the future of California's agricultural water supply and the challenges farmers are currently navigating.

Poultry Sector Leadership

25. Nicolò Cinotti

International Poultry Council

Nicolò Cinotti is Secretary General of the International Poultry Council, the global representative body for the poultry industry, spanning broiler meat, turkey, duck, and egg production and processing across all major producing and consuming regions. Poultry is the world's most consumed meat protein, and its trajectory in terms of production efficiency, environmental footprint, and animal welfare is consequential for global food security and sustainability in ways that often receive less attention than beef or dairy. Cinotti participated in the FAO Global Conference on Sustainable Livestock Transformation in October 2025, representing the poultry sector's perspective in a conversation often dominated by ruminant systems.

The IPC coordinates positions across national poultry associations from the world's largest producing nations, including Brazil, the United States, the European Union, Thailand, and China, and advocates for market access, trade policy, and science-based regulatory approaches in international forums including the WTO, Codex Alimentarius, and the World Organisation for Animal Health. Cinotti's role at the intersection of industry representation and global policy gives him influence over the conditions under which poultry is produced and traded globally.

Notable Voices We Almost Included

The global livestock sector's intellectual ecosystem extends far beyond any single list. Among the people who came very close to the final 25: the team at dsm-firmenich leading the commercial development and global rollout of Bovaer, the methane-reducing feed supplement, represents some of the most consequential applied animal nutrition science of the decade. Several researchers working on antimicrobial resistance in livestock systems, particularly in South and Southeast Asian contexts where the problem is most acute, narrowly missed the list because their public profiles remain smaller than their scientific contributions. Fiona Simson, former President of Australia's National Farmers' Federation and Chair of the Future Food Systems Cooperative Research Centre, is one of the most accomplished agricultural advocates Australia has produced and remains an important regional voice.

The people shaping global livestock leadership are also shaping the future of food systems more broadly. The companion directory of leading voices in veterinary medicine globally covers many of the professionals whose work intersects directly with the livestock sector on animal health, zoonotic disease, and One Health.

Common Mistakes in Livestock Leadership

Livestock leadership is one of the most demanding categories of management in the world. The biological timelines are long, the market cycles are brutal, the environmental pressures are mounting, and the public scrutiny is growing. Here are the mistakes that cost livestock leaders the most.

Treating sustainability and productivity as opposites is the most expensive mistake in the sector right now. The science on this has moved significantly in the last five years. The leaders on this list, from Temple Grandin on animal welfare to Shirley Tarawali on integrated livestock systems in low- and middle-income countries, are working from evidence that shows higher-welfare, better-managed, more sustainable systems often produce more efficiently per unit of output. The producers and executives who are still treating these as binary trade-offs are making decisions based on a framework that the best researchers in the field have already moved beyond.

Confusing noise with signal on technology is a second common mistake. The precision livestock farming market is growing rapidly, and the industry is awash in products promising to solve every problem through sensors, AI, and connectivity. The leaders who benefit most from these technologies are the ones who start with a specific management problem and evaluate whether the technology actually solves it, rather than buying innovation because it sounds credible at a conference. Craig Piggott at Halter built a product around a specific pain point, and the commercial adoption numbers reflect that specificity.

Misreading the investment cycle in agtech is a third mistake. Rob Trice and Scott Day both speak publicly about the reality that agtech investment is cyclical and tied to broader commodity cycles, and that the most important thing for livestock technology companies to demonstrate is genuine commercial traction, not just promising proof-of-concept results. The companies that survive market corrections are the ones that already have paying customers making real production decisions based on their products.

Failing to engage with sustainability policy before it becomes regulation is a fourth mistake that cost numerous livestock producers and processors significant money in the European Union, California, and increasingly across the Asia-Pacific. Karen Ross and Peter Stevenson represent two different sides of the same reality: the regulatory direction on animal welfare and environmental performance is moving in one direction, and the leaders who engage with it early, shape it where they can, and adapt their operations in advance are in a fundamentally better position than those who respond only when compliance is mandatory.

Neglecting the genetics and feed quality foundations is a fifth mistake. The cattle industry's current supply crunch, as Derrell Peel explains in his weekly OSU commentary, is at root a genetics and herd management problem that accumulated over years, and the cost of the resulting tight supply and high prices is being borne across the entire supply chain. The leaders who invest consistently in genetic improvement and feed quality compound advantages that are invisible month to month but decisive across a cattle cycle.

Implementation Guide: Following and Learning from Global Livestock Thought Leaders

The most practical way to build a working knowledge of global livestock leadership thinking is to follow the right people on LinkedIn, read their publications, and attend the events where they present.

Start with LinkedIn. Most of the 25 people in this directory are active on the platform, and following them is free and immediate. Lance Zimmerman and Lissy Smit write analytically about market conditions and sustainability finance respectively. Mark Lyons writes on leadership, curiosity, and Alltech's broader agricultural mission. Ruaraidh Petre engages with contested scientific questions about beef's environmental footprint. Following all of them in combination gives you a cross-sectoral view of where the industry is heading that no single publication can match.

Read the primary sources behind the LinkedIn posts. When someone posts about a new Rabobank outlook, a new FAO report, or a peer-reviewed paper, get the original document and read it. The FAO Global Conference on Sustainable Livestock Transformation proceedings from October 2025 are publicly available and contain detailed presentations from Shirley Tarawali, Phil Hadley, Babafemi Oyewole, and many of the other leaders on this list. The Common Principles and Actions for Sustainable Livestock Production document, published September 2025 and endorsed by ten global industry organisations, is essential reading for anyone working on livestock sustainability strategy.

Attend the major events. The Animal AgTech Innovation Summit, held annually in the United States and Europe, is the best single forum for the intersection of livestock production and technology innovation. The FAO Global Conference on Sustainable Livestock Transformation, held periodically in Rome, is the most important policy-level livestock gathering in the world. The Angus Convention, the GRSB Global Conference, and the International Livestock Congress all provide specific sub-sector depth.

Build a reading practice around the sector's key publications. Animal Frontiers publishes peer-reviewed perspective articles written for a practitioner audience. Frontiers in Veterinary Science publishes open-access research including work by Graeme Martin and Peter Stevenson. Beef Central in Australia, BEEF Magazine and Drovers in the United States, and the International Meat Secretariat's publications provide trade media coverage that translates research and policy into operational implications.

For organisations in the livestock sector that want help building stronger leadership teams, improving executive alignment, and having the difficult conversations that drive genuine performance improvement, bring Jonno White in to facilitate. Jonno is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator, author of Step Up or Step Out (10,000+ copies sold), and host of The Leadership Conversations Podcast (240+ episodes, 150+ countries). Many organisations find that international travel is far more affordable than expected. Whether virtual or face to face, email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who are the most influential people in the global livestock industry?

The most influential people in global livestock in 2026 span a wide range of roles. Temple Grandin at Colorado State University remains the most globally recognised figure in livestock animal welfare. Shirley Tarawali and Appolinaire Djikeng at the International Livestock Research Institute lead the most important research institution in the sector. Mark Lyons at Alltech leads the largest global animal nutrition company. Ruaraidh Petre at the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef coordinates the multi-stakeholder sustainability conversation. Lance Zimmerman at Rabobank produces the market intelligence that drives investment decisions across the global protein supply chain.

What is precision livestock farming and who is leading it?

Precision livestock farming uses sensors, AI, data analytics, and automation to monitor animal health, manage feeding, and optimise herd productivity in real time. The precision livestock farming market was valued at approximately USD 7.94 billion in 2025 and is forecast to reach USD 12.12 billion by 2030. Craig Piggott at Halter is one of the most innovative practitioners, having built a virtual fencing platform with nearly 700,000 collars live globally as of 2025. Rob Trice at Better Food Ventures and Kyle Welborn at The Yield Lab are among the investors funding the next generation of precision livestock technologies.

How is livestock sustainability being addressed globally?

Livestock sustainability is being addressed through a combination of industry-led initiatives, policy frameworks, technology investment, and research. The FAO Global Conference on Sustainable Livestock Transformation in October 2025 brought together government, industry, civil society, and research communities around a shared agenda. The Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef under Ruaraidh Petre coordinates multi-stakeholder commitments on beef sustainability. Lissy Smit at Rabobank and Ivan Ivanov at the IFC are working on the financing conditions that determine whether sustainable practices are economically viable for farmers and processors.

What are the biggest challenges facing global livestock in 2026?

The biggest challenges include reducing greenhouse gas emissions, primarily enteric methane from ruminants, without sacrificing the productivity and livelihoods the sector supports. Livestock farming accounts for 14 to 15 percent of man-made greenhouse gas emissions, with significant opportunities for reduction through improved genetics, feed innovation, and better land management. Animal welfare expectations are rising in major markets. Climate change is affecting livestock productivity through heat stress, drought, and shifting pasture zones. And the US cattle cycle is at its tightest inventory in decades, creating supply and pricing dynamics that will take years to normalise.

How can I build a stronger livestock organisation?

Building a stronger livestock organisation requires leaders at every level who can have difficult conversations, hold each other accountable, and make decisions under uncertainty. The technical knowledge in this sector is deep and widely distributed, but the leadership capacity to harness it is often the binding constraint. Jonno White at Clarity Group Global works with livestock, agribusiness, and food sector organisations on executive team alignment, facilitated offsites, Working Genius workshops, and leadership development. Email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Final Thoughts

The 25 people in this directory are shaping global livestock from every direction at once. Graeme Martin in Perth is writing the scientific evidence base. Shirley Tarawali in Nairobi is translating it into development programmes that reach smallholder farmers in Africa and Asia. Craig Piggott in Auckland is building the technology that lets a single farmer manage a large herd across hundreds of hectares from a smartphone. Ruaraidh Petre in the United States is building the multi-stakeholder consensus that makes sustainability commitments actually travel through supply chains. Temple Grandin in Fort Collins is still teaching, still speaking, still improving the welfare of animals who cannot advocate for themselves.

The livestock sector is one of the most consequential industries on earth, and the quality of thinking, leadership, and innovation that goes into it matters enormously. This list is a starting point. The real work of following these people, reading their publications, attending their events, and engaging seriously with the conversations they are leading is the work you do from here.

If you lead an organisation in the livestock, agribusiness, or food sector and want external support on team alignment, leadership development, or executive facilitation, email jonno@consultclarity.org. Jonno White is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator, author of Step Up or Step Out (10,000+ copies sold), and host of The Leadership Conversations Podcast (240+ episodes, 150+ countries). Organisations consistently find that international travel for facilitation is far more affordable than expected.

About the Author

Jonno White is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator, author of Step Up or Step Out, and leadership consultant who has worked with schools, corporates, and nonprofits around the world. His book Step Up or Step Out has sold over 10,000 copies globally, and his podcast The Leadership Conversations has featured 240+ episodes reaching listeners in 150+ countries. Jonno founded The 7 Questions Movement with 6,000+ participating leaders and achieved a 93.75% satisfaction rating for his Working Genius masterclass at the ASBA 2025 National Conference. Based in Brisbane, Australia, Jonno works globally and regularly travels for speaking and facilitation engagements. Organisations consistently find that international travel is far more affordable than expected. To book Jonno for your next keynote, workshop, or facilitation session, email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Sources

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Global Conference on Sustainable Livestock Transformation, Rome, September-October 2025.

MarketsandMarkets. Precision Livestock Farming Market Report 2025-2030. September 2025.

Research and Markets. Livestock and Meat Market: Global Forecast 2026-2032.

Next Read

For a broader view of agricultural leadership, explore the companion directory on thought leaders in agriculture across Australia and New Zealand. Keep reading: https://www.consultclarity.org/post/thought-leaders-au-nz-agriculture