This study examines the impact of multiple shocks on assets by employing two waves of a panel data set of 360 rural households in three agro-ecological zones in Kenya. To control for unobserved heterogeneity, a ‘within’ household fixed effects model was employed. One major finding is that climatic shocks negatively affect households’ livestock holdings -apart from small ruminant and non-ruminan...

In this report, we present a series of empirical techniques to examine linkage between livestock and livelihood, using data from Senegal, a West African economy with high levels of smallholder poverty and livestock dependence. Our results for this country show that livestock dependent populations are more likely to be poor and the severity of their poverty is greater, yet the same reliance on l...

Artificial insemination (AI) and embryo transfer (ET) are not just reproductive techniques, but indispensable tools for genetic improvement. In this sense, they play an effective part in propagating improved breeds. Analysis of the development of insemination of French cattle breeds since 1960 shows how breeders can alter their genetic choices to meet economic needs. AI and ET also have their p...

Livestock fodder needs in nearly all developing countries now exceed the sustainable yield of rangelands and other forage resources. In Africa, overgrazing has reduced range productivity virtually everywhere. It is important to provide animals with adequate nutrition to ensure the high productive and reproductive performance. Meanwhile, it is necessary to avoid the deterioration of the pasturel...

In contrast with the more arid savannah areas of West Africa, the central Guinea savannah (or V-Baoulé) of Côte d’Ivoire does not suffer from important forage shortage during the dry season. Since the 1970s the Ivorian government has made considerable efforts to increase local cattle-breeding activities in the area, which is suitable for trypanotolerant livestock production. Trypanosomosis cont...

Because of an increasing demand for animal-source foods, an increasing desire to reduce poverty and an increasing need to reduce the environmental impact of livestock production, tropical farming systems with livestock must increase their productivity. An important share of the global human and livestock populations are found within smallholder mixed-crop-livestock systems, which should, theref...

this study develops a long run optimal pattern for nomadic ranchers of fars province under climate uncertainty by simulating dynamic process of livestock and forage productivity as well as employing dynamic stochastic programming. results indicate that the nomadic representatives do not perform, optimally. despite their attachments to livestock as an asset, and their life dependency on livestoc...

This paper describes the institutional background against which invasiveness is considered with regard to livestock genetic diversity. The human-made nature and extensive spread of a few domesticated animal species for global food production is a feature of agricultural diversity that complicates the simple, negative view of invasive species. The different impacts of livestock species on natura...