Livestock Production Articles
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Livestock markets and their role in developing the livestock sector: is there a need for livestock auction markets in Sudan?
Livestock plays an important role in the Sudanese economy and shares almost 50% of the total agricultural exports. Although livestock trade is a prevalent and important economic activity in Sudan, still little attention is given to develop its markets and almost negligible caution is given for increasing livestock number and productivity. Livestock marketing system depends on direct sales and ...
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Rising Meat Consumption Takes Big Bite out of Grain Harvest
http://www.earth-policy.org/data_highlights/2011/highlights22 World consumption of animal protein is everywhere on the rise. Meat consumption increased from 44 million tons in 1950 to 284 million tons in 2009, more than doubling annual consumption per person to over 90 pounds. The rise in consumption of milk and eggs is equally dramatic. Wherever incomes rise, so does meat consumption. As the ...
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How can we create jobs, reduce food prices and boost economies?
The fate of heads of state across the globe is tied in large part to their ability to ensure employment, economic growth, and access to cheap food and clean water. Rising food prices have helped topple dictators across the Middle East. Europe, the United States, Japan and other major economies are spending trillions of dollars to restore growth and jobs. Too often, efforts to address ...
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Managing waste from confined animal feeding operations in the United States: the need for sanitary reform
Confined food-animal operations in the United States produce more than 40 times the amount of waste than human biosolids generated from US wastewater treatment plants. Unlike biosolids, which must meet regulatory standards for pathogen levels, vector attraction reduction and metal content, no treatment is required of waste from animal agriculture. This omission is of concern based on dramatic ...
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Supplementation strategies effects on performance of beef heifers grazing stockpiled pastures
The increased cost of inputs has led livestock producers in the southeastern United States to use alternative management practices to supplement beef cattle (Bos spp.) on pastures. The objective of this study was to evaluate the performance of beef heifers grazing stockpiled limpograss [Hemarthria altissima (Poir.) Stapf & C.E. Hubb.] pastures supplemented with cottonseed meal (CSM, Gossypium ...
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Conserving and enhancing maize genetic resources as global public goods–a perspective from CIMMYT
The growing demands for food, feed, and bioenergy worldwide will require a 2% per annum increase in global maize (Zea mays L.) production. Maize is one of the most important staple food crops across the developing world as well as being an important feed crop for global livestock production and the emerging biofuel industry. Maize genotypes can range from 0.5 to 5 m standing height at flowering, ...
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The localization of agriculture
In the United States, there has been a surge of interest in eating fresh local foods, corresponding with mounting concerns about the climate effects of consuming food from distant places and about the obesity and other health problems associated with junk food diets. This is reflected in the rise in urban gardening, school gardening, and farmers’ markets. With the fast-growing local foods ...
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Current and potential development of perennial grasses in rainfed mediterranean farming systems
Past and recent development of perennial grasses in the rainfed Euro-Mediterranean region is reviewed concerning climatic constraints and main types of farming systems. The few Mediterranean cultivars that are registered and available are used for livestock production and cover crops only in subtemperate areas. These cultivars are adapted where annual rainfall exceeds 500 mm and accumulated water ...
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Weed biomass and species composition as affected by an integrated crop–livestock system
Crop and livestock production are rarely integrated together in modern farming systems. Reintegrating crops with livestock production has been shown to produce many agronomic and environmental benefits. The objective of this study was to evaluate how an integrated crop–livestock system would influence weed biomass and weed species composition compared with a conventional, continuous corn (Zea ...
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Could food shortages bring down civilization?
One of the toughest things for people to do is to anticipate sudden change. Typically we project the future by extrapolating from trends in the past. Much of the time this approach works well. But sometimes it fails spectacularly, and people are simply blindsided by events such as today’s economic crisis. For most of us, the idea that civilization itself could disintegrate probably seems ...
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When population growth and resource availability collide
As land and water become scarce, competition for these vital resources intensifies within societies, particularly between the wealthy and those who are poor and dispossessed. The shrinkage of life-supporting resources per person that comes with population growth is threatening to drop the living standards of millions of people below the survival level, leading to potentially unmanageable social ...
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Pilot scale facility to determine gaseous emissions from livestock slurry during storage
Livestock production is a growing source of air pollution, locally and to the wider environment. Improved livestock manure management has the potential to reduce environmental impacts, but there is a need for methodologies to precisely quantify emissions. This paper describes and evaluates a novel storage facility for livestock slurry consisting of eight 6.5-m3 cylindrical units. The stores may ...
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Forage pasture production, risk analysis, and the buffering capacity of triticale
Many livestock producers minimize input costs by relying solely on naturalized, mixed-species pasture, but expose themselves to risks associated with forage yields that fluctuate in response to variable environmental conditions. This study was undertaken to assess winter triticale (xTriticosecale spp.) as a potential component of forage systems from the perspective of reducing forage yield risk. ...
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Livestock development and poverty alleviation: revolution or evolution for upland livelihoods in Lao PDR?
Livestock play a key role in the lives of poor, rural people in developing countries, providing a major proportion of their cash income, capital assets, draught power, fuel and fertilizer. Rapid growth in demand for meat and dairy products in Asia presents both opportunities and challenges for livestock development and poverty alleviation. This paper explores the potential of livestock ...
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Using path analysis to study factors involved in entrepreneurs' success in rural areas of Iran
The present study aims to identify successful rural entrepreneurs in Isfahan Province and to investigate the factors affecting their success. AHP and multi-index analyses were used. The results show that support by relatives and fellows to secure financial resources, availability of business models to follow, unmediated supply markets, and raw materials locally obtained from livestock and farm ...
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Common pool resources and communal control: empirical evidence from Himachal Pradesh, India
The Sirmour district, Himachal Pradesh, India, lies in the western Himalayan range. Mixed-farming is the main occupation in the mid-hills and basically consists of agriculture, livestock and forest produces. Hence, communal forests (mushtarka), common grazing lands (ghasnies) and gravity-flow irrigation systems (kuhl) were found to be the three major common pool resources in the villages of ...
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Cold Turkey? Dealing with agricultural trade liberalisation
Turkey has a particular interest in the WTO agricultural negotiations in view of its significant agricultural sector. This paper undertakes a quantitative analysis of trade liberalisation and its impact on Turkish agriculture. We use UNCTAD's Agricultural Trade Policy Simulation Model (ATPSM). A likely scenario suggests that Turkey may face higher import bills as world prices for cereals are ...
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Using a Choice Experiment to Estimate Farmers’ Valuation of Agrobiodiversity on Hungarian Small Farms
Agrobiodiversity is a crucial environmental resource. Much of the agrobiodiversity remaining in situ today is found on the semi-subsistence farms of poorer countries and the small-scale farms or home gardens of more industrialised nations. The traditional farms of Hungary are an example. Labelled “home gardens” as a reflection of their institutional identity during the collectivisation period, ...
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Assessing the cost, effectiveness and acceptability of best management farming practices: a pluri-disciplinary approach
The AgriBMPWater project has been imagined and built in a pluri-disciplinary approach and framework, with the study of the object 'BMPs' using several disciplines at the same time (hydrology, economy, sociology, geography and agronomy). The knowledge of the object in each discipline is deepened by a fertile multi-field contribution: borders of disciplines have been broken down, allowing ...
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Agricultural research policy framework for improved livelihoods security in crop-livestock production systems
Concerns for sustainable development and poverty alleviation are forcing public agricultural research systems to focus on improving livelihoods security. Crop-livestock production systems are central to the livelihood security of the rural poor in India and some other countries of the tropics. With increasing population, urbanisation and incomes, massive increases are foreseen in demands for ...
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