Small Ruminants

Small Holder Poultry ll Small Ruminants ll Common Property Resources - "Livestock" ll Other Livestock

Good Practices related to Small Ruminants

In South Asia, small ruminants contribute enormously towards promotion of livelihoods security and as an insurance cover to cope with crop failures particularly for rural landless, small and marginal fe/male farmers (Pasha 2000, Misra 2005). Goat farming is also increasingly being taken up by peri-urban poor population due to easy market access and as a source of nutritional security for the household (Pollot and Wilson 2009). The small ruminants are favored because of low investments, easy to raise and manage, low feed requirement compared to cattle, ability to thrive on different flora, high disease resistance, and superior market potential. (See Table below)

Sheep rearing is a livelihood activity of shepherds rearing herds on nomadic pastoral systems fully or partially in the semi arid, arid and mountainous regions. Shepherds maintain their stock by grazing on community lands by employing family labour with negligible economic inputs and marginal outputs (Chauhan and Moorti, 1999). Moreover it is common among lower caste families to rear 1-3 sheep or goats whereby making use of tethering systems, for instance while going out as a farm laborer the small ruminants are taken along.

While 60% of the world’s goat population resides in Asia (FAO 2003), India accounts for 20% of this with the annual growth rate of 1.6% in spite of 38% annual slaughter rate and approximately 15% mortality (Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying 2005). Overall India has 9.8% (182 million) of the total small ruminants of the world, comprising of 61 million sheep and 121 million of goat population.

Goat population in Bhutan is 31,328 heads (Statistics Bulletin, Department of Livestock, 2007) and is traditionally reared in Southern Dzongkhags (Districts). Although farmers are keen to rear goats because of its high prolificacy and faster economic returns, present Govt policy restricts rearing of goats to four heads per household. Lack of research on its economics and subsequently its potential to boost rural income to reduce poverty is neither understood nor appreciated. BRAC-QPA

In Bangladesh, Small ruminant population is around 38,094 with 4.9% annual growth which is highest among all livestock. Annually 33.5% Goats and 53.1% sheep are slaughtered to provide 0.14 million metric tones of mutton (FAOSTAT 2005). Although reared by marginal and landless farmers to provide food security and sustain livelihoods, small ruminants are not adequately paid attention under National Livestock Development Policy of Bangladesh.

In Indian context, the contribution of agriculture sector to national GDP is 25% (during 1990s) and the share of livestock in agricultural GDP is 23%, of which small ruminants contribute about 10% to the total value of livestock sector, which is around Rs 24,000 million annually (Birthal et al 2003). Although small ruminants account for 14% of the meat, 4% of the milk output and 15% of hides and skin production in the country, it receives only about 2.5% of the public expenditure on livestock sector, which is much less than the contributions made by small ruminants to the total value of output of the livestock sector.

Small ruminants are major contributors of animal proteins for human consumption in India. Per capita consumption of meat here is only 5.4 kg/year, as compared to 33kg/year in the developed countries. (Delgado, 1999) Current availability of animal proteins (10.8gms/day/capita) is just half of the daily requirement of (20 gms/day /capita and it is targeted to achieve this by the year 2020. Meat production (including fish and poultry) will have to grow by 5.8% per year to fulfill this requirement (Jha and Chand 1999). The Small Ruminants sector will therefore, play a significant role in the coming decade in impacting on the livelihoods of small and marginal farmers rearing them.

Some of the limitations and challenges in small ruminant production system that needs to be addressed are inadequate feed and water resources, low productivity and limited availability of health services, limited hygienic facilities for marketing safe and fresh meat and other value added products and poor management practices. However the scope of developing the small ruminant sector clearly exists if organized efforts are undertaken to improve the preventive and curative animal health services, and the access and quality of common property resources, which forms a major source of feed and fodder and lastly improvement of the germ-plasm. Diseases like PPR, enterotoxaemia, sheep pox can be prevented by timely vaccinations and losses to fe/male farmers be minimized. However delivery of animal health services to shepherds and marginal fe/male farmers leaves much to be desired. Poor infrastructural facilities and inadequate health services leads to heavy economic losses for farmers due to high mortality (Bal Krishna and Kalia 1979, BAIF, 2008).

Lack of awareness of markets, pricing structure, unorganized marketing facilities coupled with distress sale are the major reasons for not receiving fair price for their animals by the farmers (BAIF 2008, Porwal, 2006). Mostly the animals are sold to traders, middle men or butchers at farm gate (due to inadequate transportation and time constraints) or nearby village weekly markets where no rules or regulations are effective. Study conducted by Shalender Kumar in Rajasthan reveals that 58% of farmers’ perceived lack of transparency in trading in weekly markets.

Since sheep and goats are left to browse on common lands, post harvested cropped areas, road side and limited forest areas with minimal or no supplementary feeding on an average a carcass of sheep and goat weighs 12kgs and 10 kgs respectively (GoI). With the introduction of interventions like stall feeding and basic knowledge of primary health care (such as de-worming) can raise the body weight substantially and benefit the SR Production

farmers.

Unavailability of sufficient feed and fodder resources due to environmental degradation compels the farmers to migrate to neighboring areas or states (Porwal, 2006). Annual sheep migration is driven by feed, fodder, and water scarcity rather than a voluntary option (Singh et al, 2003). Since landless, small and marginal farmers are dependent on common property resources often they get negatively impacted by policies of forest department and watershed programs that deny access to these resources are thereby believed to be anti–poor (Conroy and Lobo, 2002). Field trials and programs implemented with the active participation of communities in eco-restoration of commons and its associated impacts on livestock rearing reveals the strength of the strategy of forming producer groups and networks in improving the productivity of small ruminants.

There is also a growing concern regarding climate change taking place insidiously. Natural resource based livelihoods will be affected first and most and therefore promotion of sustainable agriculture and livestock rearing will be vital to ensure that the impact of climate change is minimized on the communities. This will involve rearing of animals which are more sturdy, heat tolerant, disease resistant, and relatively adaptable to the adverse conditions. In such a situation some of the indigenous breeds will be able to cope much better than the cross breds as crosses containing higher exotic inheritance do show problems of survival when compared to indigenous breeds. Although blamed for negatively impacting environment, small ruminants can improve soil and vegetation cover as well as plant and animal biodiversity, for example by consuming biomass, which otherwise might provide the fuel for bush fires, by controlling shrub growth and by dispersing seeds through their hooves and manure, which can improve plant species composition. In addition, trampling can stimulate grass tilling; improve seed germination and break-up hard soil crusts (Steinfeld et al, 2006).

It is in this background that SA PPLPP is focusing to document Good Practices in Small Ruminant Sector across South Asia so that lessons learnt can be shared with all stakeholders with the idea of initiating a dialogue for effecting pro poor policy changes in order to benefit fe/male farmers, livestock rearers and shepherds. The lessons learnt would be used to influence livestock related policies, influence institutional change and also built up pro- poor livestock development capacities.

References

BAIF Publication 2008
Bal Krishna and Kalia, 1979., Lambing management and lambing care to weaning.
Birthal P S and Taneja V K "Livestock food security and rural poverty.", Economic and Political Weekly, 2003
Chauhan,S.K. and Moorthi T. V. ,1999. Income and employment pattern, in Economics of sheep farming, Mittal Publication, New Delhi.
Conroy C, 2004 Livestock Sector Growth and Poverty, with particular reference to India. Natural Resource Institute
Conroy, C and Lobo, V. (2002) Silvipasture development and Management on common Lands in Semi Arid Rajasthan. Pune
Department Animal Husbandry and Dairying (2005), Ministry of Agriculture Government of India, Ministry of Agriculture, New Delhi.
Delgado, 1999 Livestock to 2020-The Next Food Revolution ILRI Nairobi
FAO 2003 FAO Rome
FAOSTAT 2005 FAO Rome available at http://faostat.external.fao.org/default.jsp
Jha D and Chand R.1999. Sustainable Food Production, income generation and consumer protection in India. Agrochemical news in Brief Special Issue, November 1999.
Misra A. K. 2005, Contingency planning for feeding and management of livestock during drought. In: K D Sharma and K S Ramasastri (Editors) Drought Management. Allied Publishers Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi.
Pasha S M 2000 Economy and ecological dimensions of livestock economy. Commonwealth publishers, New Delhi
Pollot G. and Wilson R.T., 2009, Sheep and Goats for diverse products and profits (FAO Rome)
Porwal K., Karim S.A, Sisodia S.L.and Singh V. K.; 2006, Socio economic Survey of sheep farmers in Western Rajasthan, Indian Journal of Small Ruminants, Awikanagar, Rajashtan.
Shalender Kumar, 2007, Commercialization of Goat farming and marketing of goats in India, Central Institute for Research in Goat, Makhdoom, Farah 281122, Mathura.
Singh V. K., Bhagwan P.S.K., Arora A. L. and Karim, S. A. 2003. Annual Report Jaivigyan Project on Improvement in Migratory sheep production programme for tribals farmers of Northwest, CSWRI, Avikanager, Rajasthan.
Statistics Bulletin, Department of Livestock, Bhutan 2007
Steinfeld, H, Gerber, P., Wassenaar, T., Castel, V., Rosales, M. & de Haan, C. (2006) Livestock’s long shadow. Environmental issues and options. FAO/LEAD, Rome.

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