Small-holder systems

there is no internationally agreed definition of small-scale livestock keepers. Small-scale livestock production is often used interchangeably with smallholder, subsistence and family farming, or with resource-poor, low-income, low external input, low-output or low-technology livestock keeping.

The FAO defines smallholder farmers as small-scale farmers, pastoralists, forest keepers or fishers who manage areasless than 10 hectares (0.1 square kilometers). Smallholders are characterized by family-focused motives such as favouring the stability of the farm household system, using mainly family labour for production and using part of the produce for family consumption.

Infustrial animal agriculture, not factory farms

Tiny Beam Fund use industrial animal agriculture:

“Industrial” production is understood by Tiny Beam Fund as a distinctive method and system of production and type of value chain characterized by features such as hired labor, confined housing, controlled feed and diet, high throughput, products geared for commercial purposes, and vertical integration. As such, it is quite different from other forms of animal agriculture such as pastoralism.

From Erb et al., 2012

Extensive livestock systems are systems where animals find a large proportion of their feed from sources not edible to humans, such as grasses and insects, harvest residues and kitchen waste. In intensive systems, animals are usually fed feedstuff that includes primary crops such as cereals, soya, but also fishmeal as well as roughage.

A standard on livestock classification systems was developed by Seré et al (1996). This classification system is currently the standard system for livestock typologies, used by international institutions such as the FAO, ILRI (International Livestock Research Institute) and many authors. The most elaborated global analysis based on this classification system was conducted by Thornton et al. (2002).

• Livestock systems that exclusively rely on livestock production (grassland based and landless systems)
  • Landless livestock production systems (LL). Subset of the solely livestock production systems in which less than 10 percent of the dry matter fed to animals is farm-produced and in which annual average stocking rates are above ten livestock units (LU) per hectare of agricultural land.
  • Grassland-based systems (LG). Subset of solely livestock production systems in which more than 10 percent of the dry matter fed to animals is farm-produced and in which annual average stocking rates are less than ten LU per hectare of agricultural land. This class is further differentiated in classes “Temperate Zones and Tropical Highlands”, “humid and Sub-humid Tropics and Sub-tropics”, and “Arid and Semi-arid Tropics and Sub-tropics”. This class is sometimes also split into two groups: intensive and extensive grazing systems (Thornton et al., 2002; Steinfeld et al., 2010).
• Systems that combine livestock and crop production (mixed farming systems). Mixed-farming systems (M). Livestock systems in which more than 10 percent of the dry matter fed to animals comes from crop by-products or stubble or more than 10 percent of the total value of production comes from non-livestock farming activities.
  • Rain-fed mixed-farming systems (MR). A subset of the mixed systems in which more than 90 percent of the value of non-livestock farm production comes from rain-fed land use.
  • Irrigated mixed-farming systems (MI). A subset of the mixed systems in which more than 10 percent of the value of non-livestock farm production comes from irrigated land use.”

MFA food sec Classifying livestock systems

#Bryant/Project/MFA_Food_Securiy
MFA Livestock and Food security finished

The impacts of livestock on food security, economies and the environment strongly depends on the type of livestock system we consider. Here we consider 3 key types of livestock system: Small-scale or smallholder systems, extensive and pastoral systems, and intensive or industrial systems. Note that there is often overlap between categories, particularly small scale and extensive systems. Research can vary in how they define these systems, so where studies use these terms in specific ways, we will highlight the definition.

Small-scale or smallholder systems: The FAO defines smallholder systems as being relatively small (in the bottom 40% for their country) in one or more of the following ways:

• Physical size: Using very little land
• Production size: Farming few animals (in the case of livestock farmers)
• Economic size: Generating little revenue per production unit

Furthermore, other factors that might define an operation as a smallholder farm include:

• Farming mostly or entirely for own consumption
• A high number of laborers relative to production, or a significant proportion of labor from family

The research community often defines smallholders are those with less than 2 hectares of land, however some extend this to up to 10 hectares. Note that a common misconception is that family-run farms and smallholder farms are interchangeable terms. In fact family run farms can be extremely large, industrial entities.

Extensive systems are where livestock are raised on large areas of land, typically grassland. They are low input, low productivity forms of agriculture, as animals derive all their food from the land (rather than from purchased feed). Pastoralism is a specific type of extensive animal agriculture where a farmer follows or moves their animals across an area, usually referred to as a ‘rangeland’.

Lastly, intensive or industrial animal production attempts to maximize the volume of animal products produced and revenue generated to the exclusion of all other aspects of animal rearing. Animals are raised in dense enclosures called “confined animal feeding operations'' or CAFOs (also informally described as “factory farms”). Industrial animal production systems often show specialization, vertical integration, and corporate consolidation. A small number of corporations attempt to own every aspect of the production chain: growing their own feed and employing their own specialists such as engineers and veterinarians. Whilst they are often large operations, defining CAFOs by size is often country dependent; what is considered an “intensive, large scale” chicken facility in Vietnam may be considered small in Brazil.