Chapter 3

Technology and management for livestock development

INTRODUCTION

The many benefits of urban livestock are counter balanced by a series of problems that can be dealt with in a variety of ways. Complex problems do not have fixed solutions because each solution brings its own problems, depending on the perception of the stakeholder and the boundaries of the system involved. Many methods have been developed to address these issues of complexity (Checkland, 1999; Ison and Russell, 1999; FAO, 2000). Most of the methods are based on participatory approaches that take into account the perceptions of the different stakeholders at several levels of the system hierarchy in order to make interpretations, classifications and solutions (coping strategies) acceptable (Photo 24). For example, not only does the local livestock keeper have to agree with the solution, but so also do the administrators (and vice versa).

PHOTO 24

Participatory rural appraisal (PRA; in Western Province, Zambia) uses different tools, such as village maps, ranking and transects, to involve all stakeholders in describing the issues and finding solutions

By involving local stakeholders it is possible that any list of advantages, such as those listed earlier in Table 8, can be set against a list of disadvantages, and the disadvantages can be associated with ways of overcoming them (Table 9).

TABLE 9

Perceived problems in urban livestock systems and possible coping strategies at different levels

of system hierarchy

Perceived problems	Coping strategies
Farm level
Animal health and welfare problems caused by high densities Low output per animal, provides only a small part of the total food requirements	Redesign of housing, awareness building, improved management, ventilation and food Awareness raising at municipal administration level on multiple perceptions of urban livestock systems, e.g. animals as cash generators for poor sections of the population or as efficient recyclers of waste
Community level
Smell, dust and noise Conflict in neighbourhood Damage to ornamental plants	Use of drains, straw, bedding, sheds, tree hedges Make/modify legislation; involve local people, look for solutions rather than for rigid legislation Erect fences and/or tether animals; hang plants out of reach
City level
Public health problems (diseases such as parasites) Pollution (from manure effluent and wastes from slaughterhouses, etc.) Overgrazing of urban grounds Competition for space Stray animals/ traffic problems	Good health service, improved hygiene, improved packaging/treatment and awareness raising Biogas; smaller-scale enterprise; dungcakes; integration with vegetables Importing feed from rural areas and/or reduction or change of local herds Efficient housing; reduction of numbers; introduction of smaller animals Traffic rules, limited speed of cars, animals kept off main roads; reduced number of through roads Do not overpromote large industrial urban livestock systems and/or restrict import of feed out of villages
Extraction of resources and income from villages

Note: Not all the possible coping strategies have been listed; this is just a sample.

Livestock keepers can increase the output of their herds by using various technologies and/or management methods. Local communities can be instrumental in solving their own problems, as long as administrators are willing to be flexible and creative - an approach that is likely to be very useful in overcoming problems and constraints in urban livestock keeping.

This publication addresses technologies and management approaches at the farm level only; the companion publication, Mixed crop-livestock farming, gives examples of action and social organization at the community level. In this publication, the term "technology" is applied to approaches in which a machine, a piece of equipment or an input such as medicine or fertilizer is used. "Management" refers to the way in which the farmer combines the technologies. For example, a medicine can be managed wrongly by administering it at an incorrect dose, and fertilizer use can be mismanaged by applying it at an inappropriate site or at an unsuitable time of year. A strict distinction between technology and management cannot be made, but it should be clear that proper management can save resources. This is important because farmers are concerned with costs as well as outputs. The issue becomes more complicated when different farmers attribute different values to inputs and outputs. For example, a resource-poor farmer (RPF) who is short of cash may want to realize maximum returns on his or her cash and aim at minimizing investments, resulting in low costs but also low benefits. On the other hand, a resource-rich farmer (RRF), who has plenty of cash at hand, might pay for extra labour or opt to use commercial feed or expensive housing, thereby increasing production but also costs. Comparing these two categories, the RRF is likely to have a higher absolute margin (total benefits minus total costs) than the RPF, but the return on cash (benefits related to investments) of the RPF is likely to be better (Table 10).

A high output does not always guarantee a high monetary return. This has already been shown in Table 6, where the highest level of output was achieved at a cost exceeding the investment. Moreover, certain feeds (i.e. resources) may have unexpected qualities at unexpected occasions. A typical example of this is the cost of feed energy from straw and concentrates (Table 11); straw is the cheapest source of nutrients in village conditions, but the most expensive in towns. However, in spite of the high costs, concentrates are fed in villages because animals cannot eat enough straw to support high levels of production, and straw is fed in cities because it provides fibre for rumen function which is critically lacking from concentrate-rich feed rations.

Last but not least, a farmer may be overfeeding the animal, making it overweight and leading to fertility problems or other health complications; a rabbit owner may build a hutch that is too protective (no fresh air) or too expansive; a family may make large investments in a biogas pit that turns out to be useless because the liquid flow is not well maintained.

Technology needs to be well managed and proper management needs the right technology. Not every technology is useful, and it is important to select the best technology for each individual case. To make matters more complicated, any technology and/or management method is associated with several costs and several benefits, some of which are difficult to measure, and some of which are measured quite differently by, for instance, farmers and policy-makers. Some costs and benefits become visible only after some time. For example, the apparent advantages of agrochemicals turn out, in time, to have negative trade-offs such as reduced disease resistance and increased toxic residues. The emphasis on high input levels in urban industrial livestock systems has led to the decline of those systems. Large surpluses of dung and depressed prices have been among the factors leading to this demise.

TABLE 10

Profitability of different systems for keeping chickens

Source: Dessie (1996).

TABLE 11

Average costs of nutrients in two different farming systems (US$ per 100 kg of dry matter [DM] and total digestible nutrients [TDN])

Source: Based on Schiere and Nell (1993).

With regard to differences among types of livestock producers in urban areas, backyard subsistence and semi-commercial farmers can be distinguished, on the one hand, and large-scale intensive on the other, as reflected in Table 10. This publication focuses mainly on the former category as the latter can benefit from the experiences of its commercial counterparts in more "advanced" economies, to which it has relatively easy access. Farmers and/or animal keepers in the subsistence and semi-commercial sector work on a small scale, quite often with a high labour input and in close contact with immediate neighbours and consumers. They purchase few inputs and use kitchen or market leftovers. Basically, these farmers adjust their products to the available resources. Large-scale farmers adapt the resource flow to their own industrial targets, and large (infrastructural) investments make them rather rigid. Their advantages are that they generally have more political influence and access to external information. In the long term, the future of large-scale farms gives more cause for concern than that of smaller-scale ones.

A CLASSIFICATION OF TECHNOLOGIES

As with farmers, there are many different types of technologies. This section makes distinctions among different technologies related to urban livestock systems in general. More specific technologies oriented to different livestock types (focusing mainly on backyard animals), disciplines (feeding, reproduction and animal health) and sectors (processing, waste management) are dealt with in Chapters 4, 5 and 6.

Input- and management-based technologies

Input- and mechanization-oriented technologies increase the output of a particular animal or farm by adding more inputs (in the city, these are feed, medicine, etc.) or by using a machine to save labour or time. Management-based technologies imply that a farmer solves problems, not by using more inputs, but by being very careful as to where and how existing inputs are applied. For example, when it first stands up in the morning, a cow takes some time to stretch, urinate and defecate. The farmer therefore waits for 15 minutes before letting the cow out, so that the dung and urine can be collected from the animal shed, which saves on fertilizer use. Proper management can also help to improve heat detection and reduce disease because farmers watch their animals more carefully. Mana ge ment can lead to decisions to change the number of animals or the herd composition in order to make better use of existing resource flows.

Accelerating and defusing technologies

Accelerating technologies tend to treat symptoms with readily available, "linear" solutions. Instead of solving the problem, this can lead to an aggravation of the problem. In contrast, defusing technologies look, in the first place, for the underlying causes of the perceived problem and come up with alternative ways of dealing with it.

The following are examples of accelerating versus defusing technologies in urban livestock keeping:

• Using medicines to force a cow to conceive when its condition does not allow conception may result in the collapse of the cow. On the other hand, if the cow is dried for a few weeks it has more chance to build up the reserves necessary for the next gestation and lactation. Another option would be to return the cow to a village where she is able to recuperate and can conceive again.
• The banning of cows from the city of Delhi in India was the result of decision-makers not understanding the important role that these animals play in reducing municipal waste by eating most of the vegetable household residues, converting waste to dung for use as a fuel and contributing substantially to their owners' income by producing milk. Banning cows (rather than changing the way in which they are managed) causes problems in the system.
• Although from a technical point of view the optimal slaughter weight of hybrid pigs is 120 kg, a weight of 70 kg or less might be better-suited to the prevalent economic and environmental conditions. Pursuance of production objectives that originate in one country can be counterproductive and accelerate resource depletion in another country (or city/neighbourhood).
• Destroying cattle suspected of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) may serve political or economic ("consumer concern") purposes, but the real causes of the disease lie in the industrial way in which animals are kept (including the almost unrestricted movement of pathogens in resources such as bonemeal for animal feed).
• The dipping of animals and the use of hermetically closed buildings may prevent salmonella infections in poultry or pigs, but such measures also decrease the animals' resistance and are costly. Simpler housing and hygienic measures that allow for a certain rate of infection demand lower investments and make the animals less susceptible to disease, as well as helping more people to stay in business. The salmonella risk can be overcome by teaching vulnerable groups how to cook their food safely.
• Digging wells to increase water availability instead of decreasing water requirements by adjusting herd size often leads in the long term to a complete, irreversible depletion of water resources.
• Legislation that promotes large-scale enterprises by providing subsidies can be less productive than giving support to community-based activities that can sustain themselves in the long term.

Indigenous and exogenous technology

The distinction between indigenous and exogenous technology is again not clearly defined, but there are significant differences between the solutions that are found by farmers themselves and those that are introduced from elsewhere. Some solutions from outside are very useful, such as vaccines against disease, new ways of conserving feed or new designs for biogas pits. Other exogenous technologies, however, are not adapted to the local conditions and it may be cheaper and more practical to use locally developed solutions. For instance, there is much that official veterinarians can learn from local medical wisdom, methods of feeding the animals, etc. The use of indigenous veterinary medicine (see also the section on Animal health, food safety and animal welfare, in Chapter 5) does not provide a solution to all problems, but it is cheap and accessible, particularly for the resource-poor farmer.

"Scientific" chemical analysis in feed laboratories has sometimes helped to increase the efficiency of livestock production, but has also created communication difficulties between the research and extension community and farmers who have other measures of feed quality such as cost, palatability and dustiness. Farmers judge feed quality, for example, on "leafiness" and toughness of the stem, rather than by referring to levels of crude protein or crude fibre (Photos 25 and 26). Proper communication and participation helps identify common approaches in seemingly divergent traditions.

PHOTO 25

Sophisticated equipment for measuring crude fibre content of feed (Indonesia)

PHOTO 26

Farmers know by indigenous methods that these fodders (straw, green maize) at the feedmarket in Bangalore (India) have different qualities and are therefore to be fed to different animal species and types; prices vary accordingly

ON-THE-SHELF TECHNOLOGIES AND MANAGEMENT OPTIONS

Urban livestock systems are microcosms of systems that occur elsewhere. For example, goats, intensive poultry and high productivity dairy cows are commonly kept in both urban and rural settings in several places in the world. "On-the-shelf" technologies are therefore reflected in farmers' practices, fields and minds as well as in research stations. The following examples of such technologies are ready for niche application in urban conditions:

• breeding methods;
• housing systems;
• matching of feed resources for more efficient production;
• heat detection methods;
• veterinary methods for diagnosis and curative action;
• small- and/or large-scale processing of food and waste.

Many of these technologies, however, have only limited application unless they are suited to local economic and social conditions. In general, on-the-shelf technologies need to be refined through local participation rather than with laboratory work that does not represent real-life conditions and that may not even be used to report problems during the trial or adaptation period (Figure 4, Table 12).

TABLE 12

A matrix characterizing technologies and management practices for low and high external input urban livestock systems

	Backyard subsistence/semi-commercial system		Large-scale intensive system
	Rabbits	Dairy cows	Poultry	Dairy cows
Medicine
- Exogenous	Unlikely	Likely	Yes	Yes
- Indigenous	Likely	Yes	Unlikely	Unlikely
Housing
- Scrap materials	Yes	Likely	No	Possible
- New constructions	No	Possible	Yes	Possible
Feeding
- Kitchen waste	Yes	Perhaps	No	No
- Straw	No	Perhaps	No	Yes
- Fodder	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
- Agro-industrial waste	Unlikely	Possible	Yes	Yes
- Concentrates	No	Possible	Yes	Yes
Breeding
- On-farm	Yes	Possible	No	Unlikely
- In the region	No	Likely	No	Likely
- International	No	No	Yes	Possible
Processing
- On-farm	Yes	Yes	No	Possible
- Industrial	No	Possible	Yes	Yes
Waste management
- Environmentally friendly	Likely	Possible	Unlikely	Possible
- Polluting	Unlikely	Unlikely	Likely	Likely
Biogas
	No	Possible	No	Quite possible