Snapshot of Somalia: A country dominated by livestock and livestock peoples

A Somali nomad with his camel on the way to the deep-sea commercial seaport of Berbera, in the Gulf of Aden, in the north, where live sheep, camels and other livestock are exported to the Gulf states (photo on Flickr by Charles Fred).

The information below is from the website of Vétérinaires sans Frontières-Germany.

‘Somalia has been since 1991 in the civil war and has since then no more firm government. The political situation is extremely tangled.

‘International NGOs are operating under a very dangerous security situation in Somalia. The country is driven by the role of clans and by the evolving roles of business, religious and civic groups.

‘Somalia has lacked a functioning central government since 1991, when armed opposition groups’ overthrow of the existing government resulted in turmoil, factional fighting, and anarchy. Somalia’s current transitional government is the result of a national reconciliation process, 1 of 15 such efforts since 1991.

‘In March 2007 an African Union peacekeeping mission was deployed to Somalia, but a shortage of troops has hindered peacekeepers’ ability to achieve their mission. . . .

‘Somalia has been the site of continuous humanitarian operations since 1990. The UN and the World Bank classify Somalia as a least-developed, low-income country and one of the most food-insecure countries in the world. Somalis have suffered from persistent high levels of poverty, and Somalia’s human development indicators are among the lowest in the world. For example, according to the UN’s 2006 Human Development Report, life expectancy at birth is only 46 years and only 29 percent of the population has access to a source of clean water.

‘According to the European Commission Report, the livestock sector in Somalia dominates the economy, creating about 60% of Somali’s job opportunities and generating about 40% of Somalia’s GDP and 80% of foreign currency earnings. Despite insecurity, political instability and bans by some major importing countries over the past 18 years, the number of animal and meat exported has grown. Currently Somalia exports 3 million sheep and goats, 176,000 cattle and 11,000 camels per year. The private sector led export industry has helped to mitigate the impact of state collapse and war on the Somali people.’

Other pages on the Vétérinaires sans Frontières-Germany website describe projects in Somalia to promote:

> internationally competitive meat industry ’Animal husbandry is very important in Somalia. Animal production and marketing are the major sources of food, income and employment for most of the population. The export of meat and livestock is also the most important source of revenue for regional administrations and national institutions. However, meat and livestock from Somalia were subject to an import ban for several years, as both did not meet international requirements. This has its cause in the civil war: The conflict which lasted more than 20 years completely destroyed the infrastructure for the production and marketing of meat. Before the war, Somalia had plenty of expertise and personnel in this area. When the war began, no more personnel was educated, for instance in animal health. Many of the previously educated vets were killed in the war, others left the country for safety reasons. This made regular controls of animal health and meat hygiene impossible and the quality of the products sank accordingly. In order to win back the trust of the importers of Somali meat products and livestock, disease control, meat hygiene and food safety need to be essentially improved. This is not only important for export but also for the Somali population, which consumes the animal products. . . .’

> pastoral dairy development ’In Somalia, milk is one of the most important foods—it is the major source of protein and vitamins for the population. Apart from this, livestock farmers can achieve daily revenues by selling milk, which in turn enables them to pay school fees for their children or buy food. In many Somali regions it is so hot and dry, that only little fruit and vegetables can be grown. This makes the nutrients gained from milk even more important, as people are barely able to cover their daily requirements from other products. Especially for growing children, who need a lot of calcium to build their bones, camel milk is indispensable as a nutrient provider. However, there is no milk industry or modern milk processing in Somalia. The demand for milk is very high, especially in urban areas, but providing milk in good quality and sufficient amounts is a problem. Milk producers, suppliers and women vendors (in Somalia, milk is traditionally sold only by women) often lack knowledge on how to bottle or transport milk in a hygienic way. Thus, milk is often contaminated with bacteria and its consumption bears a considerable risk for diseases. . . .’

> emergency support to vulnerable pastoral communities ’In Mid and South Somalia, a long and harsh drought period has exacerbated the already tense nutritional situation. This has caused a severe crisis in supplying the population with food. Food prices have risen by up to 375%. At the same time, many pastoralists(people subsisting on animal husbandry in rural regions) lost their herds—and thus the basis for their nutrition and income—due to the civil war and the drought. This has driven many of them to refugee camps or urban slums. . . .’

Please visit the website of Vétérinaires sans Frontières-Germany for more information.

 

Breeding strategy to improve Ethiopian Boran cattle for meat and milk production

This working paper by Aynalem Haile, Workneh Ayalew, Noah Kebede, Tadelle Dessie, and Azage Tegegne on Breeding strategy to improve Ethiopian Boran cattle for meat and milk production was released on 3 February, 2011.

This working paper  is prepared to develop breeding plans for the Ethiopian Boran cattle and is based on: 1) secondary data sources that include literature review from earlier works on Ethiopian Boran cattle; 2) results of data collected and analysed from dairy herds at Debre Zeit research Station of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the Holetta Agricultural Research Center of the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR); 3) detailed desk work to design the improvement program; and 4) suitability analysis for Boran cattle using GIS. Ethiopian Boran, although a beef breed in many tropical countries, has been used as a dairy animal in many development and experimental activities in Ethiopia.

The breed has been found to be fast growing, fertile and good milk producer compared to other indigenous cattle breeds in Ethiopia. The growth, reproduction and milk production performance of Boran has been improved in different parts of the world including Kenya, South Africa, Australia and USA. This indicates the huge potential of the breed that could be tapped if appropriate breeding strategy supported by proper management could be designed and fully implemented. In this report, selection scheme based on open nucleus breeding program is suggested to improve the beef and dairy attributes of the Ethiopian Boran cattle. Where crossbreeding is an option to improve dairy performance, a detail operational scheme is also suggested. Suitability of Ethiopian Boran cattle to different locations in Ethiopia is also mapped using GIS.

Download the paper

More on ILRI, IPMS

 

Is eating meat actually good for the planet?

A young girl carries a slab of beef amongst traders in Goro town, Ethiopia, on market day. (Photo credit: ILRI/Mann)

‘The modest proposal may sound heretical to many eco-conscious eaters, but eating meat may actually be good for the planet after all.  In his new book, Meat: A Benign Extravagance, Simon Fairlie aims to debunk the increasingly popular theory that a omnivorous diet is environmentally unsound.  The British farmer and former editor of the Ecologist magazine even goes so far as to suggest that consuming meat in moderation is greener than eating a vegan diet. . . . His book has already convinced one writer to recant his previous conclusion that veganism is the only ethical choice.

‘Fairlie argues that all agricultural systems, including plant-based ones, create an excess of waste that’s difficult to dispose of, and that surplus biomass is best used to feed livestock, particularly pigs. Redirecting kitchen and restaurant waste to the trough could also potentially cut down on the massive amounts of methane gas created when food rots in landfills. Critics of meat-eating also point to reports that indicate the ratio of edible plants needed to produce meat is somewhere between 10:1 and 5:1. But if cattle are allowed to eat primarily grass — food people can’t eat — the ratio shrinks to around 1.4 to 1, according to Fairlie.

‘Fairlie’s book also targets a number of oft-quoted statistics when considering the impact of meat production on the planet. One of the biggies he addresses is the recent report from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) that suggests livestock create about 18 percent of the globe’s greenhouse gas emissions. According to Fairlie, a large portion of the emissions actually come from logging and development, rather than ranching. Of course, the adjusted number is still roughly 10 percent, which clearly still needs to be brought down, an issue Fairlie acknowledges.

‘While I have yet to read Fairlie’s book (currently available only in the U.K.), I’m encouraged by his efforts to challenge preconceived notions about meat eating and advocate for sustainable solutions. Taken on the surface, Fairlie’s book is sure to deeply irk vegan advocates and equally thrill meat supporters, but ultimately his contribution is an important part of an ongoing dialogue. Just as the debate over eating locally is becoming more nuanced, the sustainable answers to the growing trend of meat consumption is going to require the input of many different perspectives.’

Read the whole article on the Change.org blog: Is eating meat actually goof for the planet? 14 October 2010.

 

It’s not the livestock–it’s the farming model–that needs changing

A cow in India eats the wastes of crop production after the grain has been harvested (photo by ILRI / Mann).

In a new book, Meat: A Benign Extravagance, Simon Fairlie shows we should not be arguing against all meat eating, but against the current farming model. Fairlie, says Guardian writer George Monbiot,  ’demonstrates that we’ve been using the wrong comparison to judge the efficiency of meat production. Instead of citing a simple conversion rate of feed into meat, we should be comparing the amount of land required to grow meat with the land needed to grow plant products of the same nutritional value to humans. The results are radically different.

‘If pigs are fed on residues and waste, and cattle on straw, stovers and grass from fallows and rangelands – food for which humans don’t compete – meat becomes a very efficient means of food production. Even though it is tilted by the profligate use of grain in rich countries, the global average conversion ratio of useful plant food to useful meat is not the 5:1 or 10:1 cited by almost everyone, but less than 2:1. If we stopped feeding edible grain to animals, we could still produce around half the current global meat supply with no loss to human nutrition: in fact it’s a significant net gain.

‘It’s the second half – the stuffing of animals with grain to boost meat and milk consumption, mostly in the rich world – which reduces the total food supply. Cut this portion out and you would create an increase in available food which could support 1.3 billion people. Fairlie argues we could afford to use a small amount of grain for feeding livestock, allowing animals to mop up grain surpluses in good years and slaughtering them in lean ones. This would allow us to consume a bit more than half the world’s current volume of animal products, which means a good deal less than in the average western diet.

‘He goes on to butcher a herd of sacred cows. Like many greens I have thoughtlessly repeated the claim that it requires 100,000 litres of water to produce every kilogram of beef. Fairlie shows that this figure is wrong by around three orders of magnitude. It arose from the absurd assumption that every drop of water that falls on a pasture disappears into the animals that graze it, never to re-emerge. . . .

‘Similarly daft assumptions underlie the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s famous claim that livestock are responsible for 18% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, a higher proportion than transport. Fairlie shows that it made a number of basic mistakes. It attributes all deforestation that culminates in cattle ranching in the Amazon to cattle: in reality it is mostly driven by land speculation and logging. It muddles up one-off emissions from deforestation with ongoing pollution. It makes similar boobs in its nitrous oxide and methane accounts, confusing gross and net production. (Conversely, the organisation greatly underestimates fossil fuel consumption by intensive farming: its report seems to have been informed by a powerful bias against extensive livestock keeping.)

‘Overall, Fairlie estimates that farmed animals produce about 10% of the world’s emissions: still too much, but a good deal less than transport. . . .

‘The meat-producing system Fairlie advocates differs sharply from the one now practised in the rich world: low energy, low waste, just, diverse, small-scale. But if we were to adopt it, we could eat meat, milk and eggs (albeit much less) with a clean conscience. . . .’

Read the whole article in The Guardian: Let them eat meat, but farm it properly, 6 September 2010.

 

Tropical farming the climate-friendly way

Changing tropical farming methods could cut emissions of methane and carbon dioxide by up to 417 Mt of carbon dioxide-equivalent by 2030, around 12% of livestock-related worldwide emissions of the greenhouse gases. That’s according to a team from Copenhagen and Kenya, who believe that the most likely levels of emissions cuts could be worth $1.3 bn a year.

“We should aim for fewer, better-fed, animals,” Philip Thornton of the Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Kenya, told environmentalresearchweb. “Apart from strategies to sequester greater amounts of carbon, all strategies for mitigating greenhouse gases appear to require the intensification of animal diets and a reduction in animal numbers to produce the same volume of meat and milk.”

Read more . . . (environmentalresearchweb)

 

NFU helping the under privileged

Food security in Western Kenya has been given a massive boost following fundraising from the NFU and the rest of the agriculture industry.

The £200,000 raised from the Africa 100 Appeal is now supporting a new project which is benefitting over 12,000 people.

The cash is helping farmers to grow stronger, disease-free crops of cassava, the staple food crop which is consumed every day in 64% of households across the region.

The project was started by charity FARM-Africa when the crop was hit badly by a new form of mosaic virus which left many people dependent on food aid.

The Cassava Project, which has been designed to be sustainable, has since set up 107 farmer-marketing groups which promotes the planting of higher yielding, mosaic virus-resistant varieties of cassava to improve farmers’ agronomy of the vegetable.

Read more … (Meat Trade News Daily)

 

Artificial meat? Food for thought by 2050

Leading scientists say meat grown in vats may be necessary to feed 9 billion people expected to be alive by middle of century

 

John Beddington, the UK government chief scientist, calls in his paper for urgent action to deliver new technologies. Photograph: Adrian Sherratt/Rex Features

Artificial meat grown in vats may be needed if the 9 billion people expected to be alive in 2050 are to be adequately fed without destroying the earth, some of the world’s leading scientists report today.

But a major academic assessment of future global food supplies, led by John Beddington, the UK government chief scientist, suggests that even with new technologies such as genetic modification and nanotechnology, hundreds of millions of people may still go hungry owing to a combination of climate change, water shortages and increasing food consumption.

In a set of 21 papers published by the Royal Society, the scientists from many disciplines and countries say that little more land is available for food production, but add that the challenge of increasing global food supplies by as much as 70% in the next 40 years is not insurmountable.

Read more … (Guardian – UK)

The special issue includes an open access article by ILRI scientist Phil Thornton entitled ‘Livestock production: recent trends, future prospects‘

 

Large-scale American livestock farmers and animal rights activists agree to compromise

‘Concessions by farmers in this state [Ohio] to sharply restrict the close confinement of hens, hogs and veal calves are the latest sign that so-called factory farming — a staple of modern agriculture that is seen by critics as inhumane and a threat to the environment and health — is on the verge of significant change.

‘A recent agreement between farmers and animal rights activists here is a rare compromise in the bitter and growing debate over large-scale, intensive methods of producing eggs and meat, and may well push farmers in other states to give ground, experts say. The rising consumer preference for more “natural” and local products and concerns about pollution and antibiotic use in giant livestock operations are also driving change.

‘The surprise truce in Ohio follows stronger limits imposed by California voters in 2008; there, extreme caging methods will be banned altogether by 2015. In another sign of the growing clout of the animal welfare movement, a law passed in California this year will also ban imports from other states of eggs produced in crowded cages. Similar limits were approved last year in Michigan and less sweeping restrictions have been adopted in Florida, Arizona and other states.

‘. . . In the mid-20th century, developments in animal nutrition and farm technologies as well as economic competition spurred the emergence of large-scale farms, often driving out small farmers who could not afford the large capital investments or survive the lower prices.’

More . . . (New York Times, Farmers lean to truce on animals’ close quarters, 11 August 2010)

 

Why old (carnivory) habits die hard: Stone-tool butchery may be a 3.8-million-year-old affair

Reconstructed model of what Lucy looked like, from ‘Lucy’s Legacy: The Hidden Treasures of Ethiopia’, Houston Museum of Natural Science, July 2009 (photo by Trish Mayo)

If something new is always coming out of Africa, something old is always coming out of the Middle Awash, a (once wet, now desiccated) region of the Great Rift Valley lying near the Horn of Africa, in the Afar (or Danakil) Depression of northeastern Ethiopia. This is where chimpanzee and human lineages are thought to have split somewhere between 5 and 7 million years ago. And here, on these hot arid plains occupied by nomadic Afar people, is where American anthropologist Donald Johanson and his colleagues in 1974 discovered a 3.2-million-year-old upright-walking female hominid they named Lucy, regarded by many as the ancestor of all subsequent Australopithecus and Homo species

This cradle of hominids has just yielded yet another among many important anthropological finds, one already being disputed, that Lucy’s kin were already eating meat some 3.4 million years ago. The New York Times reports the following.

‘As early as 3.4 million years ago, some individuals with a taste for meat and marrow — presumably members of the species best known for the skeleton called Lucy — apparently butchered with sharp and heavy stones two large animals on the shore of a shallow lake in what is now Ethiopia.

‘Scientists who made the discovery could not have been more surprised. They said the cut marks on a fossilized rib and thighbone were unambiguous evidence that human ancestors were using stone tools and sometimes consuming meat at least 800,000 years earlier than previously established. The oldest confirmed stone tools are less than 2.6 million years old, perhaps only a little before the emergence of the genus Homo.

‘Some prominent researchers of early human evolution were skeptical, saying the reported evidence did not support such claims.

‘If true, though, the new find reveals unsuspected behavior and dietary habits of the Lucy species, Australopithecus afarensis. Though no hominid fossils were found near the butchered bones, A. afarensis is thought to be the only species living in this region at the time. Their large teeth with thick enamel indicated they subsisted mainly on tubers and other vegetation.

‘So the international team of paleoanthropologists, archaeologists and geologists concluded that they had found the first evidence that kin of the 3.2-million-year-old Lucy had used some form of stone tools and would not pass up a chance to feast on a cut of meat and nutritious bone marrow.

‘Pending new discoveries, the discovery team wrote in a report being published Thursday in the journal Nature, A. afarensis is the only hominid group “to which we can associate the tool use.” Whether these individuals made the tools or only selected naturally sharpened pieces of stone, the scientists added, was not yet determined. Nor is it known whether they were hunters or, more likely, scavengers of a lion’s leftovers.

‘In any case, the scientists concluded, the butchery evidence “offers a first insight into an early phase of stone tool use” by human ancestors, and it should “improve our understanding of how this type of behavior originated and developed into later, well-recognized stone tool production technologies.”

‘The leader of the research project, at Dikika, Ethiopia, was Zeresenay Alemseged, an Ethiopian paleoanthropologist at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.’

More . . . (New York Times: Lucy’s kin carved up a meaty meal, scientists say, 11 August 2010)

 

To attain self-sufficiency in meat, Malaysia needs to rein in the cost

The creation of many more “beef valleys” nationwide can be seen as the right step toward attaining self-sufficiency for meat.

However, while waiting for the beef valley projects to fully take off, Malaysia’s self-sufficiency for both beef and mutton meat are still alarmingly low, at about 25% and 10% respectively.

Read more … (The Star)