Sustainable Livestock Management for Poverty Alleviation and Food Security

By K van’t Hooft, ETC Foundation, The Netherlands, T Wollen, Livestock Advocacy, Heifer International, USA, D P Bhandari, Heifer International, USA. Order book at CABI website

The book “Sustainable Livestock Management for Poverty Alleviation and Food Security” – written by Katrien vn’t Hooft, Terry Wollen and Dilip Bandari (the latter two from Heifer International) – was published by CABI in 2012. It presents the characteristics of different types of livestock keeping systems by smallholders, and strategic ways to improve them. One of the strategies presented is ‘the Wheel of Animal Production and Wellbeing’ with eight basic ways to reduce cattle mortality and improve productivity in smallholder dairy. Between 2014-2015 this method was improved by Dutch Farm Experience together with the SAFAL Solidaridad dairy program in Bangladesh. A ready-to-use participatory planning, monitoring and evaluation tool for dairy programs with smallholder dairy farmers was developed, now called the ‘NLF Wheel of Animal Production and Wellbeing’. This method is effectively used in both Dutch Farm Experience training programs and NLF field programs, including the pilot project ‘Enhancing safety and quality of milk in Ethiopia’.