‘Animal agriculture is the Cinderella of the agricultural world’,
Jimmy Smith tells the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group
on Agriculture and Food for Development.

Presentation to the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group

on Agriculture and Food for Development

The role of livestock in smallholder livelihoods

29 June 2016

by Jimmy Smith, director general of the International Livestock Research Institute

Livestock can play major roles in development. Today I’m going to talk about the diversity of the livestock sector—and the many diverse ways that livestock contribute to economic growth and poverty reduction, to food and nutritional security and to sustainable food production.

Of course, mention of the ‘livestock sector’ conjures up greatly diverse images. The intensive livestock production systems common in rich countries—with sheds housing thousands of broiler chickens, or feedlots of beef cattle, or air-conditioned pig units, or high-tech dairy milking parlours—contrast sharply with the practices of small-scale farmers raising a couple…