LIVESTOCK PRODUCTION SYSTEMS AND LIVESTOCK DEVELOPMENT IN TROPICAL

V

FOREWORD

by

DrPBrumby Director General ILCA

Livestock are vital to subsistence and economic development in sub-Saharan Africa They provide a flow of essential food productsthroughout the year are a major source of government revenue and export earnings sustain the employment and income of milshylions of people in rural areas contribute draught energy and mashynure for crop production and are the only food and cash securityavailable to many Africans The sale of livestock and their proshyducts often constitutes the source cash income inonly of rural areas and hence the only way in which subsistence farmers can buy consumer goods and procure the improved seeds fertilizers and pesticides needed to increase crop yields Where livestock developshyment has been successfully pursued a steady increase in the proshyductivity of food grain production and in the growth of service and consumer industries is clearly observable

Many of the traditional livestock production systems of sub-Sahashyran Africa are now in decline Their future survival depends on enhancing their capacity to satisfy the subsistence and income needs of their producers It also depends on their impact on the land resources they use The grasslands and browse in the pastoral areas of Africa are characterised by low levels of productivity and high variability in yields both within and across years As human and therefore livestock populations increase pressure on these unshypredictable resources grows and with it the threat of enironmenshytal degradation leading to further decline There is thus an urgentneed to find ways to accelerate livestock productivity and output so that it not only keeps pace with rising populatio~i but also creates surpluses for market disposal Opportunities for substantial progress exist in the improvement of grazing lands health controlanimal management practices and marketing and institutional inshyfrastructure

Research and development studies in more than a dozen institutes in tropical now several decades TheseAfrica span efforts have resulted in substantial productivity gains in a number of specificsituations However of been manshymost these have achieved under

Previous P knk

VI

agement conditions which are beyond the means of the majority of livestock producers Development efforts have often stressed techshynical innovations without an understanding of the spectrum of conshysequences that can flow from such interventions in pastoral socieshyties and the outcome of past investment in livestock developmentprojects has been generally disappointing The primary cause of failure in most cases has been the lack of adequate understandingof relationships between the biological economic and social comshyponents of each production system

Based on this premise the research efforts of the International Livestock Centre for Africa (ILCA) have focussed on the need for a thorough understanding of these relationships before committingscientists and physical resources to detailed field and componentresearch within a given system Our baseline studies carried out in areas representative of the wid range of ecological and socioshyeconomic environments of sub-Saharan Africa support the hypothshyesis that research on livestock development must consider producshytion systems in their entirety They provide the rationale for ILCAs systems-oriented research strategy Hans Jahnke a staff member of ILCA from its inception in 1975 has been a key figurein the formulation of this strategy and is in a unique position to provide a synthesis of the information accumulated by ILCA and other research and development institutes adding his own careful and pragmatic approach to the interpretation of the usually scantyquantitative data available

The main aim of this book is to improve the planning base for livestock development in Africa The authors first task has been to provide a quantitative assessment of livestock and land reshysources which forms the basis for dividing the continent into ecological zones Livestock production in each zone is assessed bythe products provided the functions performed and the contribushytion of livestock to the national economy This analysis leads to a classification of the predominant production systems in the regionranging from extensive pastoral systems to intensive landless sysshytems The Jlassification is justified by its usefulness in identifyinglivestock development possibilities The viewpoint expressed here is that of an economist change and improvement in different proshyduction systems depend on relative factor endowments technology and pricing structure as well as on the changing nature of proshyducer objectives and managerial skills A central theme of the book is that livestock development cannot be viewed as a parallelexpansion in all existing systems priorities must be set and develshy

VIu

opment choices made on the basis of the relative importance and potential of each system

Like other processes of change livestock development is dynamicand open-ended Systems at different stages on the development path face widely differing constraints on their further improveshyment Dr Jahnkes book is particularly valuable in this context as it formulates specific development hypotheses amenable to empirishycal testing in specific production environments The research task implied by this analysis is therefore one of ILCAs major objecshytives It is our hope that this book which synthesizes much of the material in other ILCA publications will prove a valuable source of information for improving food production and economic develshyopment in sub-Saharan Africa

Addis Abeba Ethiopia January 20 1982