Livestock production
An important use of livestock production systems maps is to provide a stratification within which appropriate rates for livestock production can be applied to livestock occurring in different areas and under different conditions. We expect very different milk yields per cow from local cattle reared in pastoral areas compared, say, to those from dairy cattle kept in highly productive temperate areas.
By choosing different herd growth and off-take parameters for livestock within different production systems, and applying these rates to the gridded livestock data, we can estimate production. This was originally done for Africa, using the LDPS-2 herd model, stratifying by agro-ecological zone (Otte and Chilonda 2002), and has been revised as presented here (FAO 2007), using the ILRI livestock production systems maps (Thornton et al. 2002).
| LIVESTOCK PRODUCTS (Metadata) | ||
|---|---|---|
| per capita | per kmq | |
| African beef offtake |  |
|
| African milk offtake | |
|