VAE 511: Livestock Entrepreneurship (1+0)

INTERVENTIONS FOR SUSTAINABLE LIVESTOCK PRODUCTION

• Policy instruments fall into three main groups: (a) price policies, (b) institutional policies, and(c) policies promoting technological change. Price policies are the responsibility of national governments, although they may be influenced by international agencies, such as customs unions,the World Bank or the WTO. However, national and local governments, private individuals or associations, development agencies and Non-Government Organizations introduce institutional and technological changes.

• Price policies can be categorized into (i) trade policy, (ii) exchange rate policy, (iii) tax and subsidy policy, and (iv) direct interventions such as floor and fixed prices. Trade policy, from a developing country’s perspective, should include continued pressure, through international fore such as the WTO, on developed countries to reduce tariffs and other barriers aimed at supporting their own producers. However, greater benefits might be achieved by reducing levels of protection for industrial s ectors within the developing countries, as such protection raises input costs and effectively taxes agricultural producers. Taxes, subsidies and governments’ direct market interventions have usually failed to bring lasting benefits. There remains a case for limited use of subsidies for disaster relief and to promote the use of new inputs, such as vaccines or drugs. Alternatively moderate taxes on livestock producers might be used to recover costs of providing public goods such as disease control or eradication programmes.
• Policies for the promotion of appropriate institutions have a major impact on livestock development. The authors of a review of about 800 livestock development projects found that most had failed to bring about significant sustainable improvements in livelihoods of the poor.
• Institutional development is also needed for the provision of credit, animal health services and genetic material. The introduction of new technology must be accompanied by the strengthening of the institutional framework required for its implementation. The other key area, where institutional
  change is essential for the success of livestock development, is that of marketing, including transport, processing and selling. As marketing activities exhibit economies of scale, large commercial operations are most likely to be cost-effective. Unfortunately, in negotiating contracts with such companies, small-scale producers are in a weak position, lacking market power and information on patterns of supply, demand and prices. Thus in promoting institutional development, there is a need for dissemination of market information, and encouragement of co-operative group action and participation by small-scale producers to strengthen their bargaining position.
• Technological change may be promoted by supporting research and development and the dissemination of information to farmers. Public funding for agricultural research, and particularly for livestock research, has declined over recent decades. Since much research output provides public goods it is unlikely to receive adequate funding from the private sector. The decline in public sector funding should therefore be reversed.
• An appropriate institutional framework must be developed to integrate a farmer participatory systems approach with science-based adaptive and applied research, depending on collaboration between producers, and natural and social scientists. The national research organizations must take responsibility for research prioritization, ensuring that it is appropriate for relative resource availability, taking into account the needs of the poor, and coordinating donor assistance. To improve food security in a sustainable manner, developing countries will often require an investment in their agricultural research system at a level of 1 percent of the value of agricultural output over the short term and 2 percent in the long term.
• Areas of research deserving attention include animal and veterinary public health measures, improvements in forage crops and utilization of crop by-products, and improvements in husbandry and management of production systems. Local breed improvement is a slow process and crossbreeding with, or adopting, exotic breeds generally more easily achieve increases in production. Technical research has to be complemented by socio-economic research into the institutional framework for the allocation of natural resources, credit, and labor hire, the delivery of inputs and the processing and marketing of livestock products. Research is needed to describe and analyze the strengths and weaknesses of existing institutions and to propose and test alternatives for improvement. In addition, socio-economists are needed to contribute to the research prioritization process, by assessing likely costs and benefits of proposed research projects.

Conclusions

• Human progress depends on the judicious utilization of animals and nature’s resources in a balanced way.
• In sheer self-interest, proper animal care is a must.
• Massive and intensive campaigns are required to create awareness among farmers that better animal care would lead to tangible economic benefits to them by way of increased income.
• This can only be achieved through better technology inputs and management.
• The enormous economic benefits, arising from improvement in productivity, would adequately justify the investment required for modernizing the existing system.
• Thus modernization and management of the livestock sector will pave the way for sustainable development and protection of the Environment.