Focus on... Making more of livestock

Livestock are central to the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people, especially the rural poor. In Africa alone, there are more than 190 million cattle, 340 million sheep and goats and 700 million poultry. In many developing countries, livestock enhance food security, underpin crop-based agriculture and provide productive assets and products that can be sold.

But livestock development is constrained by many factors, including inappropriate policies, scarcity of livestock feeds, widespread diseases, degraded lands and limited water resources, and poor access to markets. In this edition of New Agriculturist, we focus on a selection of technologies that can help small-scale farmers make more of their livestock.

Milking the benefits: Kenya's new camel dairy

The popularity of camel products in Kenya, Somalia, Sudan and Ethiopia has rapidly increased in recent years, with milk not just consumed by pastoralists but being increasingly sold in urban areas. However, camel milk processing has generally been done informally...

Beyond bio-methane

For thousands of years, livestock manure has been used as fuel for fires to provide warmth and a means to cook. But only in the last fifty years has manure's potential as a source of electricity been realised through the use of bio-methane digester systems in Asia, Europe and, increasingly, North America. However the generator systems...

Cleaning up its act: Recycling livestock waste

As the city of Kisumu in the west of Kenya comes to life, a child in a torn yellow shirt searches through waist-deep piles of plastic and animal dung in the morning breeze. He is looking for food, for fuel that his family can use to cook a meal, and for waste that can be recycled. The boy is joined by others from across the city's six slums, to search...

Count your chickens before they hatch: low cost solutions

For small-scale farmers and the rural poor in India, backyard poultry is an important livelihood activity providing valuable potential for improving income and nutrition. However, many backyard small-scale producers face production problems and there has been relatively little research on...

Fodder innovations for the rural and urban poor in India

Hyderabad is one of India's fastest growing cities. The local markets in the central square sprawl onto the road, selling everything from black pearls and embroidered rugs to plastic key rings. Fresh fruit stalls steadied on bicycles cluster by the side of the main road as motorbikes and rickshaws weave their paths through the chaos. Like the markets, the Indian economy is...

Pig feed for small-scale farmers in China
The southwest province of China is a world of contradictions. Amidst brand new cars and tall glass buildings, horse carts slowly wind their way through the bustle and the traffic, carting vegetables for sale. Commuters on bicycles peddle ferociously against...