According to FAO, the world’s population will be over 9 billion people and food production will need to be increased by 70% by the year 2050. Latin America (LA) has the potential to be an important player in providing food to fulfill this requirement, having the largest global fresh water reservoir, and one third of the world’s available land for sustainable livestock production. With a wide range of climate zones, LA has diversified agriculture capabilities, ranging from tropical- to temperate-zone products. However, there is a lot of productivity variation among countries and even among different regions within a country. From the ruminant side, LA has suitable production conditions for increased beef, dairy and sheep production. From the monogastric point of view, the swine, poultry and aqua industries are well developed and constantly growing. This capability is exemplified by the fact that Brazil is now the largest beef and chicken meat exporter in the world. The dairy industry has also been experiencing significant growth and development during the last 2 decades. In almost all LA regions, milk (M) and milk-derivatives (MD) are increasing and diversifying into more complex products. In addition, M and MD export have been increasing in some LA countries. In spite of that, within some countries in LA and Caribe the average consumption of milk is below 25% of requirement. This fact shows the need to stimulate production and consumption of milk in some regions. To cope with the demands of food production, LA needs to increase the efficiency of production. To do this it can use technologies to supplement on pasture, increase grazing-tillage integration, and use more intensive livestock systems to shorten the time to slaughter. Use of tools like predicting feed efficiency with in vitro fermentation, development of DNA technology, exploring gene expression (nutrigenomics), genetic improvement and crossbreeding, artificial insemination, embryo transfer and sexed semen, can improve production capabilities too. Improvements in livestock health, product safety and quality, and control global warming gas emissions are also essential. Increased LA livestock production efficiency will result in decreased land degradation, and natural resource conservation.