Expanding capacity for livestock production and marketing can be a potent catalyst for rural poverty alleviation in developing countries. Livestock have a variety of characteristics that make them important contributors to sustainable rural development. They produce marketable products from scalable household and community production systems such as meat, milk and eggs, which are generally less vulnerable to critical harvest timing than many crops. By providing agricultural products with relatively high income elasticity, livestock are particularly attractive as a means for rural households to benefit from trends in urban economic growth. Livestock are also productive assets, contributing directly to output through animal traction and indirectly as a store of wealth for future investment. Finally, they can contribute to soil fertility and recycling of agricultural waste.

However, despite significant growth in demand for livestock products the poverty reduction potential of livestock is far from being realized. There remains much scope for the promotion of livestock farming, especially among poor rural communities, by national and international policy makers.

In order to provide policy makers in national, regional, and international organizations and institutes with relevant information on which to base decisions impacting on rural development pathways, under the ‘Role of Livestock’ theme, PPLPI carries out research towards:

	developing a detailed understanding of the cash and other contributions that livestock make to the economies of different types of rural and urban households;
	understanding the contribution of agriculture and livestock to the sub-national and national economies of selected countries including intra- and inter-sectoral linkages; and
	identifying livestock policy interventions and reforms that are most likely to have a substantial impact on poverty reduction in specific settings and tracing their effects on different household types.