Livestock Development Planning System version 2 (LDPS2) is a personal computer based planning and training tool designed for livestock development planners to assist them in decision making.
The livestock planner has to answer many questions, such as; "What if you should need more XX tons of additional milk (or meat) production?" "What if productivity (for example, fertility rate) of the livestock herd should be improved by XX percent", "What if you should have additional XX hectares (or tons) of grazing (or other) feed resources?",... LDPS2 may give various scenarios to such "What if" questions. It models livestock production, calculating the size, composition, feed requirements and growth of the herd with a given demand for milk or meat production and parameters concerning productivity. The user may explore various scenarios with LDPS2 by changing the demand and other parameters.
This training manual provides an example of policy designing with LDPS2. The user will understand how LDPS2 works and how LDPS2 assists policy designing, using complete data sets of livestock production in Swaziland.
This manual focuses on practical use of LDPS2. The user, therefore, may refer to the user's guide when she/he needs theoretical details.
LDPS2 is an Excel workbook named "ldps2e.xls" (English version) or "ldps2f.xls" (French version). It requires a computer with Windows system and Excel 5.0 or later (see the user's guide at page 2).
1) The user needs to copy the workbook into a folder (directory) of its own on her/his hard disk (for example, C:\LDPS2). 2) LDPS2 can be opened after starting Excel with "FILE_OPEN" menu.
Exercise 1: |
In this training manual, livestock production in Swaziland will be modeled for exercise. Copy and open "ldps2_tr.xls" instead of the original LDPS2. |
The first thing to do with LDPS2 is to model the current livestock herd with the Demand Driven Routine. The routine calculates the size of modeled herd with the following equation;
The number of livestock = Production ÷ Productivity
For example, cow number can be calculated simply as follows, though more parameters are used in the actual calculation (see 3.(1) of this section).;
Milk production ÷ (Milk yield per cow × Fertility rate)
As information are often inaccurate or lacking, provisional parameters are applied to LDPS2 first and are adjusted in a number of iterations, comparing the size and composition of the livestock herd calculated by LDPS2 and those in statistics (Steps 1-3).
