In many developing countries, livestock value-chains are undergoing rapid transformations. Those changes represent both challenges and opportunities for a transition towards more sustainable food systems. We discuss those challenges and opportunities with reference to various situations taken in developing countries. Following the liberalization of national and regional economies, international trade and long distances transport of raw materials and livestock products have increased, which has had a strong impact on carbon emission. In parallel, major agri-food corporation have invested in livestock genetics, feed industry, milk and meat processing units, or food distribution in developing countries, leading to a growing capital concentration in the agri-food sector, and to the emergence of mega-farms with high environmental and social costs. In the same time, the growing importance of quality standards for sustainable and equitable foods has supported value chains initiatives leading to organic products marketing, food safety certification, geographical indications, or other sustainable labels and trademarks. Public policies focused on local development dynamics have also supported social business-models such as micro-credit schemes, cooperatives, producers’ organizations, or small-scale processing units with interesting returns in terms of shared added value. We conclude by underlying the importance of local territorial governance to promote sustainable trade-offs between positive and negative impacts. Local organizations such as innovation plate-forms, municipal bodies, decentralized public services, etc. can support local entrepreneurs, producers’ organization and services providers to build sustainable value chains initiatives. The challenge of those local organizations is to promote simultaneously economic, social and environmental impacts of value-chains transformation. We illustrate the concept of territorial governance by some example taken in Africa, Southeast Asia and Amazonia.