The Role of Smallstock
in Development and Poverty Reduction

An increasing demand for livestock products poses both challenges and opportunities for the reduction of poverty among poor households that have some potential for livestock production. The poor can decrease their vulnerability through livestock production. For the poorest households in particular, smallstock present valuable opportunities for development and poverty reduction. However, global trends and urbanization are fuelling an intensification process that favours intensive livestock production, rather than the more traditional rural mixed farming.

Smallstock are Important Underlying Causes of Poverty Changing Demands for Livestock Products The Role for Smallstock in Poverty Reduction References and Further Reading   See also: The Sustainable Livelihoods Approach

Strategies to reduce poverty require sets of enabling policies that are both inter-connected and wide-ranging, but that also have an impact at the point of intervention which addresses the root causes of poverty - and thereby enhances the development of pro-poor livestock services.

Smallstock are Important

The development of the sustainable livelihoods approach has resulted in increased interest and awareness of the role and impact of livestock in the livelihoods of the poor. Following the sustainable livelihoods approach, livestock are viewed as a form of financial, social and natural capital. Livestock can also enhance human capital and smallstock in particular play an important role in reducing malnutrition though the supply of meat, milk and eggs.

Livestock are primarily seen as financial capital. For many poor households livestock are the main form of savings. As an investment few other resources have the same potential for "capital growth". Sale of livestock may allow a household to generate cash quickly at times of need. Livestock may also be a regular and important source of income, through sales of products - including manure.

Smallstock are particularly important as a means of support for poorer households. They tend to be the first livestock that a household aspires to. A typical progression would start with poultry, typically chickens and/or ducks, and then a few goats or sheep and goats are kept for milk and/or for fattening and slaughter. The cash from sales of smallstock products is used to buy household needs including food, and to improve food security at household level. In the longer term, poor households may aspire to owning larger livestock, for example a milking cow. However, for many this may not be an appropriate or even a viable option and smallstock must remain as the mainstay of the household economy.

Livestock and livestock rearing are also risky. Poor households have limited disposable incomes and therefore a limited ability to purchase inputs, for example animal health services or supplementary feeding, and as a result are less able to control mortality of stock than are the richer or non-poor farmers operating on a larger scale. Livestock markets may also have seasonal peaks that are not suited to the capabilities of the poor, putting poor livestock keepers at a further disadvantage - especially since they still have year-round needs for inputs and require income for food and basic needs.

Underlying Causes of Poverty

Poverty is diverse and comes in many forms. However, there are many common factors, and these mostly tend to be related to limited access to to land, assets, and services. In general the poor have:

• No voice in policies or in the delivery of livestock services
• Limited access to education, resulting in reduced literacy rates
• Limited access to health services
• Limited access to land and water, or insecure rights of access to these resources
• Poor access to credit facilities, extension services and agricultural services
• Limited or difficult access to markets
• and Low household incomes, related to generally high levels of unemployment or under-employment.

The consumption of livestock products is growing at a faster rate than the increase in world population. Increasing availability of disposable income, particularly in the developing countries, means that more people can afford the high-value protein that livestock products offer and which are traditionally seen by society as desirable food items. Increasingly these people are living in towns and cities and over 80% of the world's population growth occurs in the cities of the developing countries. In general, urban populations consume more animal products than those based in rural areas.

Human population growth, increasing urbanization and rising incomes are predicted to double the demand for, and production of, livestock and livestock products in the developing countries over the next 20 years. Livestock production is growing faster than any other agricultural sub-sector and it is predicted that by 2020, livestock will produce more than half of the total global agricultural output in value terms. This process has been referred to as the livestock revolution (Delgado et al., 1999). These trends include:

• An increase in consumption of livestock products in developing countries;.
• A geographic shift of livestock production from temperate and dry areas to warmer, more humid but more disease-prone environments;
• Changed production practices from local multi-purpose activities to market-oriented and vertically-integrated business;
• Increasing pressure on, and competition for, common property grazing and water resources;
• Industrial livestock production units located close to urban centres -potentially causing severe environmental damage and posing public health risks;
• Decreasing importance of ruminant vis-à-vis monogastric livestock species
• An increase in the use of cereal-based feed, the livestock economy therefore depending increasingly on cereals.

Increasing the supply of animal products is being achieved by combining an increase in the number of animals with the improvement of productivity, and processing/marketing efficiency. Land availability limits the expansion of livestock numbers in extensive production systems in most regions and the bulk of the increase in livestock production will come from increased productivity through intensification and a wider adoption of existing and new production and marketing technologies.

Whilst partly driven by demand resulting from population growth, income growth and rising urbanization, there are also changes on the supply side. The spread of technology in the intensive livestock sub-sector has resulted in efficiency gains, and prices for livestock products have generally declined more than prices for food or feed grains.

Small animals have several advantages over larger cattle, buffaloes or camels and llamas. They are less costly to acquire and maintain, they are more convenient for consumption within the household while accidental death of a single animal is less damaging, they grow and breed faster and can often thrive on harsher terrain.

In many cases they survive solely on scavenging, possibly being fed some kitchen scraps in addition. Very little attention is given to health care or management and little or no labour is devoted to their husbandry. Hence the costs of production are often negligible. All the production from the livestock is then pure gain.

However, productivity and yields from small livestock, kept under low cost, scavenging systems, are very low. Improvements are possible. Provision of housing will reduce losses due to predators, accidents and theft. Effort devoted to supplementary feeding, management and health care will generally raise productivity sufficiently to justify the extra costs. Approaches to raising productivity are discussed elsewhere, in this toolbox.

Small livestock can contribute to household subsistence needs in many ways. When slaughtered they provide meat for home consumption, while sheep and goats may yield milk and poultry produce eggs during their lifetimes. In addition animal or poultry manure may be used as an organic fertilizer, to both improve soil fertility and raise crop yields. Other possible non-food products include hides and skins, and wool, which may be used to make clothing or shelter. Livestock also serve as a form of saving or reserve against emergencies when they may be slaughtered or sold to provide essential food or cash. In many societies livestock have ceremonial uses, for example rams slaughtered at the Id al-Fitr festival and ownership enhances the status of a household.