Livestock Services and the Poor: A global initiative - IFAD

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LIVESTOCK SERVICES AND THE POOR
Lack of access
to fodder and
water is the most
serious problem
concepts of poverty among livestock keepers to determine how
these may constrain the poor from taking advantage of the
opportunities that livestock production offers.
Problems related to livestock
The poor face a variety of constraints to sustainable livestock
production. LID (1999) classifies the problems of the poor into
three basic categories:
herd and infrastructure acquisition;
herd and flock maintenance; and
marketing of livestock products.
Herd and infrastructure acquisition require that households
have access to capital and credit facilities so that they can
purchase the livestock and pay for the infrastructure. Herd
maintenance requires that households maintain the health of
their animals and have access to animal production services. To
market their livestock products, the poor need to have access to
reliable markets for offtake.
These needs are also recognized in Heffernan et al. (2002),
who carried out an open-ended ranking exercise among over
1 700 households in Bolivia, India and Kenya. Figure 1.4
illustrates that the majority of households ranked a lack of access
to fodder and water as their most serious problem in the
maintenance of livestock. Livestock diseases were the most
significant problem for approximately 20% of the producers.
However, aside from these major constraints, the other problems
identified differed widely among the countries and the districts
involved in the study. For example, theft was considered a serious
problem among pastoralist communities in Kenya. Urban
producers in India were concerned about access to sufficient
space to keep livestock and the low production levels, whereas
accidents – mainly involving cattle becoming snared in barbed
wire – ranked quite high in Bolivia. Additionally, a number of
participants believed that their knowledge of animal husbandry
and health was insufficient.