Best Practice Note 9: Livestock Projects Now Available!

This ECHO Best Practice Note distills insights from farmers and other specialists who collaborated in promoting livestock as a means to improve rural livelihoods. The author’s experience affirms that livestock are indeed a beneficial part of most agricultural systems, contrary to some modern theories of their obsolescence. I am not referring here to  factory-farming but rather to animal raising by smallholder farmers and small-herd pastoralism. Livestock keeping by smallholder farmers and pastoralists, though very different, generally can add value, nutrition, and income diversification to low-income homesteads as well as bolster a viable rural credit program. Passing female offspring on to other resource-limited families, with good local supervision in the selection and preparation of the recipients, has proven successful and creates a local livestock production system. 

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Excerpt: 

Livestock projects are an impetus for introducing environmentally sound farming practices like agroforestry, zero-grazing, proper soil and water conservation, and adoption of animal-friendly practices like provision of feed and water, regular veterinary services, improved breeding initiatives like artificial insemination, and local vaccination programs. East Coast Fever vaccination in cattle and Newcastle disease control in chickens are vital to thriving livestock programs. In the case of Newcastle disease control, developing a sustainable vaccination service by farmers themselves is important because services are too cumbersome for the government to provide countrywide.