Investigators: Michael Lee (School of Veterinary Sciences), Judith Capper (Livestock Sustainability Consultancy, Harwell, Oxfordshire), David Barrett (School of Veterinary Sciences), Taro Takahashi (School of Veterinary Sciences), Mhairi Gibson (Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, School of Arts)

This project was funded by the Cabot Innovation Fund to the value of £2750

Project descriptor:

We face considerable challenges in supplying the increasing global population with sufficient food to support health and development. Ruminant livestock provide myriad benefits to smallholders in developing regions, improving nutritional status while also providing fertilizer, hides, cultural status and the potential to diversify assets. Initiatives to enhance smallholder sustainability often focus on the provision of cattle, which confer high cultural status, but are not necessarily suited to maintaining production in conditions involving extreme climates and low-quality feedstuffs. By contrast, goats can survive upon poor-quality forages; have both a greater tolerance for climatic variation and a greater milk and meat output per unit of bodyweight than cattle; and are physiologically adept at surviving when water resources are scarce. Recent regulations on cattle slaughter in India emphasise the importance of alternative livestock - this project will evaluate the potential for replacing cattle with goats in developing regions, in terms of shifts in resources needed (feed, housing, veterinary care) and product (food, fuel, fibre, draft, commodity sales) output. This will be achieved by creating a global mathematical model to quantify the impacts of such a change; discussing the results with African scientists involved in the African Goat Improvement Programme via teleconference; and developing a consortium to put forward a significant grant submission to examine the impacts of replacing cattle with goats in specific developing regions regarding food supply, environmental and economic impacts; to investigate the social and cultural barriers to this change; and to extend results to smallholder farmers via outreach programmes.