Livestock

Fixing our global agricultural system to prevent the next COVID-19

While the world's attention is focused on controlling COVID-19, evidence points at the biodiversity crisis as a leading factor in its emergence, and the outbreak of many past emerging infectious diseases. Agriculture is a major driver of biodiversity …

Impact of farmland exclosure on the productivity and sustainability of a mixed crop-livestock system in the Central Rift Valley of Ethiopia

Livestock provides numerous benefits to smallholders in sub-Saharan Africa, but also represents a potential agent of environmental degradation. Exclosures have been implemented in grazing areas for the past decades in Ethiopia and have been effective …

Crop residue management and soil health. A systems analysis

Due to the scarcity of alternative organic amendments, the retention of crop residue in fields can be considered key in promoting physical, chemical, and biological attributes of soil health in agricultural systems of developing countries. However, …

Multi-scale trade-off analysis of cereal residue use for livestock feeding vs. soil mulching in the Mid-Zambezi Valley, Zimbabwe

Cereal residues represent a major resource for livestock feeding during the dry season in southern Africa. When kept on the soil surface instead of feeding them to livestock, crop residues can contribute to increasing soil fertility and maintaining …

Conservation agriculture in African mixed crop-livestock systems. Expanding the niche

Competition for crop residues between livestock feeding and soil mulching is a major cause of the low and slow adoption of conservation agriculture (CA) in sub-Saharan Africa. Retaining crop residues in the field is not only a prerequisite for CA but …

Impact on productivity of peri-parturient rise in fecal egg counts in Creole goats in the humid tropics

The control of gastrointestinal nematodes requires an understanding of their epidemiology so that particular parasite stages can be targeted. Dam infection during early lactation is one example of this in ruminant nematode infections. The existence …