This paper revisits the tragedy of the commons and examines the conditions under which externalities contribute to livestock cycles. Using a stylized intertemporal model capturing the main characteristics of African livestock producers, we show that externalities magnify livestock cycles triggered by occasional droughts. This is true even when producers are fully rational. Two forces fuel such ...

Key findings The results show that 77.4% of respondents rear an average of 2.97 livestock unit (LSU) per household. More than half of respondents who rear livestock (53.82%) dump livestock carcasses in the open fields. Ethnicity, age, education status, gender, livestock unit and involvement in conservation activities are the most significant predictors for the positive attitudes towards vulture...

This paper addresses the context of decisions about the application of biotechnology in livestock agriculture. It specifically addresses the role of transgenic livestock in agriculture. Key innovations in livestock genetics and reproductive technology in the last century have laid the foundations upon which genetic engineering can be applied to livestock in the post-genomics era. Transgenesis i...

ABOUT LADDER LADDER is a research project funded by the Policy Research Programme of the UK Department for International Development (DFID) that seeks to identify alternative routes by which the rural poor can climb out of poverty. LADDER is working with nearly 40 villages and 1,200 households in Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi and Kenya to discover the blocking and enabling agencies in the institutio...

Burrowing small mammals in grasslands have long been regarded as pests because they compete for forage with livestock and reduce the forage availability for livestock by destroying pastures through their intensive digging activity. In order to investigate forage competition between the Mongolian Pika (Ochotona pallasi) and livestock an exclosure experiment consisting of four different treatment...

Livestock keeping is critical for many livestock development issues related to these linkages. of the poor in the developing world, often contributing These beliefs limit the scope of intervention programs to multiple livelihood objectives and offering pathways to promote livestock and limit their potential contribu­ out of poverty. Livestock keeping also affects an indistion to poverty reducti...

Livestock production contributes up to 80 percent of farmers’ income in Ethiopia and about 20 percent of agricultural GDP. Ethiopia has the largest livestock population of any country in Africa. Nutritional factors are the binding constraint to sustaining livestock production in the country. During the latter part of the dry season, livestock feed is normally in short supply and is also of poor...

Livestock keeping is critical for many of the poor in the developing world, often contributing to multiple livelihood objectives and offering pathways out of poverty. Livestock keeping also affects an indispensable asset of the poor, their human capital, through its impact on their own nutrition and health. This paper outlines the linkages between livestock keeping and the physical well-being o...

Participatory epidemiology methods were employed retrospectively in three pastoralist regions of Ethiopia to estimate the specific causes of excess livestock mortality during drought. The results showed that starvation/dehydration accounted for between 61.5 and 100 per cent of excess livestock mortality during drought, whereas disease-related mortality accounted for between 0 and 28.1 per cent ...

Occupational contact with livestock is an established risk factor for exposure to livestock-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), particularly among industrial swine workers. While S. aureus is known to infect cattle, livestock-associated S. aureus carriage among workers in the beef production chain has received limited attention. Beefpacking workers, who slaughter, but...