An underlying assumption, and one that is recognized by the LPP, is that:

within poor households, access to and exchange of information
represents a significant livelihood constraint.

The overall purpose of dissemination is therefore to improve the availability of information to poor farmers, and for it to become knowledge which the farmer employs to help make appropriate decisions. This includes researcher-derived information as well as more general information that supports and enhances livestock production.

The demand for information on livestock production is growing, both from the perspective of livestock keepers themselves, and more generally as a result of the growing potential for increased production as a result of improved information. Three important factors include:

In many areas, especially in Africa, livestock production by sedentary farmers is increasing, whilst the traditional distinctions between farmers and pastoralists are breaking down. Population pressure and new markets created by increasing urbanization have resulted in increased areas of cultivated land, usually at the expense of grazing land. In some cases the use of draft animal power or animal traction has allowed greater unit areas to be cultivated by individual farmers. This has increased the requirements for fodder and grazing.

Farmers have also increased their livestock holdings as insurance against drought, and as a form of investment for the proceeds of cash cropping. Pastoralists have increasingly settled and started to cultivate, either as a result of impoverishment, or from a desire to establish use-rights to land before others do.

While these processes are complex, the implications for extension are clear:

• In Africa, significant numbers of livestock are now kept by people who do not have a traditional background in livestock production, and/or
• Livestock are now used for non-traditional purposes within rapidly changing production systems.

This argument applies less to South and Southeast Asia, where well-integrated mixed farming systems are more widespread, and where these dramatic changes in livestock ownership and distribution are not occurring. The changes in Asian livestock production that necessitate new information come largely from the new opportunities for dairy production and for fodder cultivation presented by irrigation and green revolution technologies.

In many developing countries, urban and peri-urban livestock raising is becoming increasingly important, as urban demand for animal products rises. In India, government and donor support has enormously stimulated dairy production, and marketing through cooperatives. The liberalization of dairy marketing in Kenya has contributed to a similar trend. In the Sahel the devaluation of the CFA franc and the ending of subsidized EU beef exports have stimulated a rapid expansion of urban fattening activities. Peri-urban production in all its forms will create demands for information, as it involves people new to livestock production, as well as new techniques and also because it involves a more systematic approach to processing and marketing. In particular, the use of purchased fodder and concentrates is of much greater importance.

Statistics in the literature on increased numbers of urban and peri-urban livestock demonstrate the growing importance of this sector, and it plays an important role in the life of various sectors of the population. Such roles include:

• Employment and income to unemployed or low income urban families
  
• Supplementary income to the employed, poorly paid, middle class urban dwellers
  
• Contributions to food security of urban households that cannot afford to purchase all of their food needs
  
• On a more global basis, the sector reduces the gap between food demand in the city and supply from rural areas where production is declining, and where marketing and distribution are inefficient because of inadequate infrastructure
  
• A source of commercial and economic activity for those who can invest in intensive urban or peri-urban based meat (especially poultry) and milk production to cater to the specialized demands of the city dwellers. 

The concentration of government extension services on livestock health has been justified by the immediacy of animal diseases, and by the potential for far-reaching consequences when livestock diseases are not adequately controlled. However, the control of serious diseases such as rinderpest and Newcastle disease is now more effective, and treatment for many other conditions more accessible.

As farmers gain confidence that diseases are under control, they are prepared to invest more in animal production. New constraints, particularly in nutrition and general techniques of livestock husbandry, are now becoming limiting. There is therefore a need for provision and dissemination of information on these topics.

The provision of agricultural extension services normally comes under one of three main categories:

• Services funded and provided by the private sector;
• Services funded by the public sector; and
• Information and advice - both formal and informal - operating on a farmer-to-farmer basis, sometimes with the support of NGOs.

The first of these has predominantly been linked to commercial crops grown in well integrated areas and so is not likely to be of direct relevance to low-income producers (though it may benefit the poor as consumers or labourers); the second has generally been characterized by top-down delivery modes of operation, often linked with subsidy schemes of various kinds, and increasingly faces shortages of funds and problems in retaining government staff in difficult locations. It also tends to be characterized by emphasis on returns per unit of land to the neglect of the labour economy, advocating technologies which are generally too high-risk to be taken up widely by the poor. The final approach, though often relevant to low-income producers, tends to be both limited in scope and difficult to expand in the absence of local support organizations such as NGOs.

If agricultural extension services are to be relevant to the needs of poor livestock keepers, it will need to have two objectives:

• pro-poor growth; and
• vulnerability reduction.

The emphasis and mix of one or other of these objectives will vary according to the opportunities and constraints facing the poor in different areas. An emphasis on pro-poor growth will be most effective in the relatively well integrated, commercial areas. On the other hand, vulnerability reduction is in many cases a priority objective for marginal areas, but even in these there is likely to be some potential for pro-poor growth.

Despite its growing importance, livestock production extension is a field neglected both by policy-makers and by researchers. The importance of livestock to household welfare, fertility maintenance and production is still under-recognized in many developing countries. But livestock production extension faces the additional institutional problem of being marginal to both agricultural extension and animal health services.

Agricultural extension services have developed around crop production, and remain tied largely to the seasonal nature of cropping. Such a system is less useful for livestock production, with a longer time-scale and a lack of synchronization of different animals and herds.

Livestock services and the ministries or departments that are responsible for them, are mainly run by vets, and focus on animal health issues: curative treatment of individual animals, preventive health, and health screening of animal products.

While many special projects, area-based or sub-sectoral, concentrate on livestock production issues and are run by animal productionists, few countries can afford a separate livestock production extension service. Livestock production has often held a marginal status in official circles, between two well-defined sectors with associated interest groups, sometimes neglected by both, sometimes shuffled between them.

In the present climate of retrenchment, governments are unlikely to start creating new institutions, or funding new services, to deliver extension on livestock production, so this growing need must be met by reforms of existing institutions and services. In much of Africa this will mean the national crop-based extension systems. But in all settings, participatory assessment of producers' information needs is essential before institutional forms are decided upon.

There is a continuing role for the state in providing extension, especially to poorer producers, and in areas where there are significant positive externalities such as those linked with soil fertility maintenance and resource conservation. Cost-recovery from poorer crop-livestock producers will be difficult to implement, but recovering costs from relatively wealthy producers (such as peri-urban fatteners or dairy farmers) may free public resources for extension to poorer producers.

Morton, J. and Mathewman, R. (1996). Improving livestock production through extension: information needs, institutions and opportunities. Natural Resource Perspectives, Number 12, 1996. ODI.

Farrington, J., Christoplos, I., Kidd, A., Beckman, M. and Cromwell, E. (2002). Creating a policy environment for pro-poor agricultural extension: the who? what? and how? Natural Resource Perspectives, Number 80, 2002. ODI.

Smith, O.B. and Olaloku, E.A. (1998). Peri-Urban Livestock Production Systems. CFP Report 24, International Development Research Centre (IDRC)