Regarding sustainable small scale livestock production, my concern is: are we dealing with pure livestock operations or mixed livestock crop operations. If mixed an important concern is the interaction between the livestock and crop enterprises. This would include the extent the livestock are providing draft power for the crops. This in an adverse economic environment that can often have severe labor shortages aggravated by a major undernourishment of that labor. It should be noted that a full day of agricultural labor, either animal, crop, or combination can require 4000 kcal/day when most smallholder farmers only have access to 2500 kcal/day. Which, when allowing 2000 kcal for basic metabolism, allows only 500 kcal for work, good for only 2 hours of diligent effort working with either livestock or crops. Thus, time devoted to livestock is time taken from crops, and conversely time devoted to crops is at the expense of livestock.
Thus, in this labor shortage environment farmers are not interested in maximizing returns to livestock or maximizing returns to crops. Instead, they are interested in maximizing total returns to all farm enterprises, deliberately reducing management on one enterprise to enhance returns to another. Isn’t this the rational thing to do?
Unfortunately, those assisting farmers tend to be focused on their specific concern, either as animal scientists or agronomists and have difficulty appreciating the compromises the farmers must make in managing both to optimize the returns from each while maximize the total returns.
When in Ethiopia which has extensive livestock component among their smallholder farmers, I had some discussions with groups of farmers was able to estimate the daily allocation of time for each. Also, you might want to consider the drag on both livestock and crops when livestock is utilized for draft. This is a deceptively expensive source of draft mostly in terms of daily time caring for the animals regardless of if working that day, and the extra land required for forage. Again, in Ethiopia one farmer mentioned if he had reliable access to contract tractors, he would get rid of some of his animals and plow extra land for crops.
Please review the following webpages:
https://agsci.colostate.edu/smallholderagriculture/ethiopia-diet-analysis/
I hope this is helpful to the total discussion.
Thank you.
Dr. Dick Tinsley