On the issue of Voluntary guidance tool for the sustainable enhancement of small-scale livestock productivity – Need, scope, nature, and development process.
Introduction : Livestock production plays a key role in smallholder farmers' livelihoods who do mixed farming activities where they grow crops and keeps animals at the same time. In Malawi about 60% of the food crops grown in the country come from the smallholder farmers who own less than an acre per household. However, with a changing environment in terms of climate change coupled with issues of greenhouse gases its becoming tough to sustain livestock productivity due to many challenges which include lack of start up capital, lack of proper breeds for improved productivity, improper feeding practices and disease control.
Improvements: As a country we have relied much on importation of exotic breeds to improve small-scale livestock productivity and cross breeding programs where indigenous breeds cross with exotic breeds both in dairy and beef cattle, goats and sheep as well as in poultry. However, these initiatives have not improved smallholder farmers livelihood and animals productivity due to the fact that the exotic breeds are bigger than the indigenous and less adaptive to the local environment which make them not to thrive under small scale livestock production. In the due cause it has been discovered that to help these small scale livestock farmers there is need to use simple tools like selecting within the indigenous breeds economic and productive traits for the males and female animals through community based breeding program (CBBP), use of proper balanced feeds which can be done through capacity building for both livestock farmers and livestock extension workers. To have a proper breeding program there is need to characterise the existing animals, map out the common feed types used by different livestock species then continuously check the changes in the contribution of each feed type like natural pastures, crop residuce, agro-industrial by-products e.tc. In addition need to document reproductive parameters like birth weights, mature weight, milk yields, calving or kidding intervals. All these will help the country like Malawi to develop their own improved breeds which are of high productivity and adapt well to the changing climate.
Process: For all these to work well there is no one size fits all program or process. The low income countries like Malawi can not have the same tools to develop small scale livestock productivity like those so called small scale farmers in developed countries where the use of technologies are high than in third world countries. and also the use of exotic breeds which drain farmers energy and resources in the end getting the same yield like those local breeds.
Ms. MAZGANGA MHONE