Modelling Of Extensive Livestock Production Systems

ILCA's policy towards modelling in the framework of livestock systems research; models and the analysis of productivity in extensive livestock systems in Israel; prediction of actual primary production under nitrogen limitation; behavioural aspects of intake at pasture in ruminats; prediction of feed intake in ruminats; relationships between chemical composition and voluntary intake of feeds by sheep and cattle; the effect of breeding season duration on production and feed consumption in grazing beef cattle in the south of Israel; adaptation of the Kahan model for a mixed farming system in southeastern Asia; appraisal of the ILCA cattle herd dynamics model using data from pastoral systems in mali and kenya; moddeling pastoral livestock production: problems and prospect; analysis of management impact in semi-arid agropastoral systems; modelling economic outcomes of livestock production systems; selection of sheep husbandy techologies under single and multiple goal constraints; types, purposes and users of models; problems related do intake.

A seminar in the Community Programme for the Coordination of Agricultural Research, held in Brussels, Belgium, April 7-9, 1987

Economic analysis of beef cattle production has been limited by the inability to fully describe the underlying production process. Except for confined feeding of cattle, beef cattle production is the process of growing cattle who consume forages. The animal and the forage possess attributes of both factors and products of production. The production of forage constitutes one production process, animal growth is another production process, and reproduction by female animals is a third production process. Cattle production involves all three processes in such a manner that each influences the outcome of the other. Each process is itself complex and analysis is further complicated when all three are considered simultaneously.

Informed livestock sector policy development and priority setting is heavily dependent on a good understanding of livestock production systems. In a collaborative effort between the Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Livestock Research Institute, stock has been taken of where we have come from in agricultural systems classification and mapping; the current state of the art; and the directions in which research and data collection efforts need to take in the future. The book also addresses issues relating to the intensity and scale of production, moving from what is done to how it is done. The intensification of production is an area of particular importance, for it is in the intensive systems that changes are occurring most rapidly and where most information is needed on the implications that intensification of production may have for livelihoods, poverty alleviation, animal diseases, public health and environmental outcomes. A series of case studies is provided, linking livestock production systems to rural livelihoods and poverty and examples of the application of livestock production system maps are drawn from livestock production, now and in the future; livestock's impact on the global environment; animal and public health; and livestock and livelihoods. This book provides a formal reference to Version 5 of the global livestock production systems map, and to revised estimates of the numbers of rural poor livestock keepers, by country and livestock production system.