Goats are a powerful tool in assistance to alleviate poverty and they are also a powerful tool to utilize scarce vegetation in areas not suitable for other forms of agricultural production. If goats are kept in a wrong place and not managed well they may, however, destroy the environment. According to this paper, financed by DanChurchAid, the solution to the dilemma between the very efficient and useful goats for the poor people and the potential very destructive goats for the environment is found in intelligent management of the goats and not in preventing poor people to keep goats. Education and training of the goats keepers combined with punishment for possible bad management may be a practical solution. [ Originally posted on http://www.cop-ppld.net/cop_knowledge_base ]

1. Use of goats in poverty alleviation
and
potential effects on the environment
by
1
Jørgen Madsen, 2Mette Olaf Nielsen and 3Jørgen Henriksen
1
Department of Large Animal Science,
2
Department of Basic Animal and Veterinary Sciences
Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Copenhagen, DK-1870 Frederiksberg C., Denmark
3
Henriksen Advice, Copenhagen
__________________________________________________________________________
Contents
Summary 2
Introduction 3
Poverty and goats 3
Advantages and disadvantages of keeping goats 4
Key issues and concepts in relation to keeping goats 5
Socio-economy 5
Environment and land-use 6
Different kinds of goats related support 6
Special considerations to get the most benefit from a goat. 6
Goat management and environmental impact 9
Further reading 10
Websites 12
Copenhagen, October 2007

2. Summary
Goats are a powerful tool in assistance to alleviate poverty and they are also a powerful tool to
utilize scarce vegetation in areas not suitable for other forms of agricultural production. If goats
are kept in a wrong place and not managed well they may, however, destroy the environment.
Livestock keeping is of extreme importance for about 1 billion poor people in the world, and
goats are, by many poor people, considered a very very useful animal and goats can certainly
create food security, cash income and many more services to the owners and it can sustain the
survival of people in the very harsh and dry environments that is often left over for the poor
people.
There are many advantages and also disadvantages by keeping goats compared to other animals,
but the small size and low cost of the goat and their ability to utilize vegetation in areas where no
other animals can survive are important advantages. The main disadvantage is that they have to
be headed/looked after, fenced/stall fed or teathered/tied in areas, where they can destroy
valuable vegetation.
The solution to the dilemma between the very efficient and useful goats for the poor people and
the potential very destructive goats for the environment is found in intelligent management of the
goats and not in preventing poor people to keep goats. Education and training of the goats
keepers combined with punishment for possible bad management may be a practical solution.
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3. Introduction
The overall objective of Danish development aid is to alleviate poverty in the developing
countries. In addition there are three cross-cutting objectives, i.e. improving the conditions of
women; promoting environmentally sustainable development; and promoting democratisation
and human rights (Danida 1997). The use of goats as a tool in development assistance has to
conform to these objectives.
In the following it is in short described and discussed what poverty is. This is followed by a more
detailed description of how goats can be used to alleviate poverty and how the management is
important for the goats’ influence on the environment. Other important issues not dealt with in
this report are how the situation of the women can be improved by being owners of goats and
how livestock projects can promote human organisation and democratisation.
Poverty and goats
The rich perceive poverty as deprivation of materials for well-being. However the poor perceive
poverty as a more multidimensional social phenomenon: it ranges from food and material
deprivation to the psychological experience of multiple deprivations (World Bank, 2001).
The multiple dimensions of poverty as described by the poor underscore the importance to them
of livestock. Apart from producing several goods the livestock are also delivering many very
important services considered to assist in alleviating poverty. Goats are taken as an example in
Table 1.
Table 1 Goat products and services
Products Services
Meat (raw, cooked, blood, soup) Cash income
Milk (fresh, sour, yoghurt, butter, Security
cheese) Gifts
Skins (clothes, water/grain, Loans
containers, tents, thongs, etc.) Religious rituals
Hair (cashmere, mohair, coarse hair Judicial role
tents, wigs, fish lures) Pleasure
Horns Pack transport
Bones Draught power
Manure (crops, fish) Medicine
Control of bush encroachment
Guiding sheep
The human-animal relationship is ancient. One of the main reasons for animal domestication,
which started some 10.000 years ago, was to reduce the problem of unpredictability of food
supply associated with unpredictable weather. The earliest livestock species to be domesticated
for food were pigs, sheep, goats and cattle.
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4. Food insecurity is one of the dimensions of poverty and it encompasses food production, stability
of supply and access to quality food. Goats can assist in all three dimensions as landless people
who can not grow crops can keep goats, the goat production is less influenced by weather
compared to crop production and the milk and meat produced by the goats are of high quality in
most if not all aspects as protein, minerals and vitamins.
Poor livestock-keepers use the smaller mammals and poultry more for food than the larger
species. Smaller animals as goats are more prolific, have lower requirements in terms of capital
and maintenance costs and are less risky to keep. They are also easier to sell when cash is needed
for school fees or other purposes.
In addition, small ruminants generally perform better under conditions where food availability is
scarce compared to cattle.
Advantages and disadvantages of keeping goats.
Goats are relatively cheap and are often the first asset acquired, through purchase or customary
means, by a young family or by a poor family recovering from a disaster, such as drought or war.
Goats, once acquired, become a valuable asset providing security to the family as well as
products such as milk and dairy products. The advantages and disadvantages of goats relative to
resource-poor people are shown in Table 2.
Table 2. Advantages and disadvantages of goats in relation to poor people
Advantages Disadvantages
Able to use fibrous feeds, especially browse. Susceptible to predators and thieves.
Efficiently use of marginal land. Small value often makes formal credit systems
Efficient use of water. uneconomic.
Wide climatic adaptation. Small value makes formal insurance systems
Relatively cheap to purchase. difficult to administer.
Security from several low value goats being Susceptible to broncho-pneumonia.
less risky than one high value cow. Susceptible to internal parasites.
Suitability to small farms and landless. Less easy to control than other species.
Relatively drought tolerant. Food preferences and dental set-up makes
Fast reproductive rate quickly builds up herd. goats capable of inducing severe damage to
Fast reproductive rate ensures early returns vegetation (trees and brush) compared to other
on investment and enables early credit ruminant species
repayment.
Small size enables easy and quick movement
of households in emergencies.
Easy for women and children to handle.
Few facilities required.
Lack of religious taboos against goat meat
which often commands higher price than
other meat.
Small size allows easy home slaughter.
Potential for integration into perennial tree
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5. crop systems.
Relative trypanotolerance.
Agility and capability of walking long
distances enables goat production from areas
unsuitable for other livestock species
Key issues and concepts in relation to keeping goats.
Socio-economy
In studying livestock keeping by the poor and the marginalised, we have to be conscious of
various key socio-economic concepts that are not necessarily relevant in commercial livestock
production, but which has to be considered when supporting and interfering in the production
system.
Ownership, control and access to benefits
In a traditional small-scale livestock production system it is not always easy to decide who the
owner of an animal is. Ownership is not a simple concept, but several rights that can belong to
different persons. An example can be that the male head of a family assign ownership of a
particular animal to a wife or son but still make the important decisions regarding herding. The
head may still have to be involved in decisions regarding slaughter or sale. The situation may be
further complicated if the animals belong to relatives who stay in town.
Knowledge
There is much important knowledge in communities that have specialised over generations in
livestock production. Those involved in assisting poverty stricken livestock-keepers need to
understand and respect these traditions. But livestock systems change as production intensifies
and crop and livestock production become integrated, and needs for knowledge change
accordingly. These new needs often have to be satisfied by livestock-keepers’ own evolving
knowledge, but in most cases, however, the changing systems require more thorough
dissemination of external knowledge and it requires access to other services to be efficient.
Markets
Markets affect all livestock-keepers as all sell livestock or produce and buy other necessities.
Markets are now global and even if livestock-keepers sell only locally and do not use purchased
inputs, their prices are still affected by global prices of meat and feed. The global demand for
meat is sharply rising but so is the price of concentrate feed for livestock. The cost of scavenging
or browse feeds for goats is most likely not increasing sharply, but the importance of these feeds
in relation to the environment may place limitations on their use as feeds for goats. The increased
demand for meat should be utilized by the goat keepers to create an income. However, this
requires that he market is organised and reachable by the farmers.
Gender
The most vulnerable groups in societies are found to be female-headed households, single
mothers, orphans, men with large families, unemployed youths, adolescent mothers, casual
workers and women married to irresponsible or alcoholic husbands. In general it is these women
who are the poorest and the ones that should benefit the most from assistance through livestock.
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6. Environment and land-use
Some of the poorest people are found in parts of the world, where limited access to water,
salinity of soils, difficult climatic and topographic conditions make vast areas unsuitable for crop
production, and where improvement of productivity of the local vegetation is difficult. The
alternative value of such areas is therefore close to zero, and grazing of the natural vegetation
represents the only way to utilize such marginal areas for agricultural production. Goats can due
to their agility and feed preferences (browsing) thrive and (re-)produce in areas, which are
largely unsuitable for other livestock species. This is unfortunately associated with an ability of
goats to also induce substantial damage to the vegetation, by debarking and ultimately destroying
trees and bushes. Vulnerable grazing areas can therefore be increasingly destroyed by
overgrazing and at risk of desertification.
It is tempting to speculate that this problem could efficiently be overcome by persuading local
farmers to give up goat production. This is however a very unfortunate approach, which holds
very little promise for success due to the long tradition and background for animal husbandry
based on this livestock species. If grazing areas have very low (if any at all) alternative value in
terms of agricultural production, asking the farmers to abandon livestock production is in effect
equivalent to asking them to give up their foundation for subsistence. The solution should be
sought in alternative management practices to balance grazing pressure according to carrying
capacity of the grazing areas.
Different kinds of goats related support.
Support to the poor through livestock has been performed in different ways. Delivering of goats
to the poor is the most direct use of goats. Giving micro credit to the poor, allowing them to buy
some goats is also a direct mean, but there are several other means to assist the goat production.
Support to improved production and health (breed development, feed development, animal
health-care, disease surveillance and public health), product development (processing, cooling,
marketing) and institutional development (farmer capacity building, institutional development,
improved policies and enforcement) as well as general extension services and training are all
important for the goat production to be commercially successful. To benefit from these
additional means of supporting the goat producers, it is a pre requisite that the poor owns a goat!
Special considerations to get the most benefit from a goat.
The improvement of the production and marketing of goats kept by resource-poor livestock-
keepers can be the first step out of poverty. The basis of this improvement has to be a thorough
understanding of the existing system and a genuine engagement of the goat-keepers themselves.
Without their involvement and motivation, outside interventions are doomed to fail.
It is important to realize that improvement of the production economy/ reduction of risks can be
one of the key incentives to motivate farmers to alter production practices, e.g. favouring a more
environmentally sustainable development.
Goat farmers adopt a variety of strategies to manage goats, and especially to cope with the harsh
environment of the arid and semi-arid tropics, mainly very high temperatures (35-45 oC), low
annual rainfall (250-600 mm), lack of feed and water. Husbandry practices are therefore aimed at
mitigating these elements; the rationale is the avoidance of risk.
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7. Feeding
Good nutrition is a prerequisite for good health, good reproduction, high milk yields and high
growth rates, all necessary for a successful goat production system and the economic
sustainability of the production. Goat farmers normally base their feeding of the goats on the
natural vegetation, which therefore varies seasonally, and the goat-keeper has only little, if any,
control. Some farmers may also make use of crop by-products and try to feed their goats as best
they can with what is available. Goat-keepers can reduce the seasonality in feed supply by
herding the goats to different areas or by growing out-of-season forage crops or by conserving
forage and other locally occurring resources, for example protein-rich tree fruits.
The options for feeding the goats depend on the production system as illustrated in table 3.
Table 3 Options to improve the feeding of goats
Free grazing Tethered Stall-fed
Feed supply Select grazing area Select best site. Select quality feeds
Develop forage crops Develop forage crops Develop forage crops
Mix feeds
Supplement diet with Supplement diet with Supplement diet with
energy, protein, energy, protein, energy, protein,
minerals. minerals. minerals.
Treatment of feed Conserve feeds Conserve feeds Conserve feeds
Treat with urea Treat with urea Treat with urea
Mix feeds Mix feeds
Wilt wet feeds Wilt wet feeds
Chop unpalatable Chop unpalatable
feeds feeds
Presentation Increase total grazing Ensure comfort and Feed at correct height
time Safety Avoid contamination
Allow time for Move frequently of feed with urine and
Ruminating Allow sufficient time manure
Ensure presence of to graze Present feeds in an
Shade Ensure presence of accessible manner
Select best time to Shade Ensure adequate
graze space and access to
feed for all goats
Feed little and often
Clean up waste feed
Water Allow preferably at Allow frequent access Allow continuous
least daily access Access.
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8. Breeding
Tropical goat breeds are the result of hundreds of years of pressure by the tropical environment
through natural selection, combined with some selective breeding by their owners. As a result,
goat breeds are well adapted to surviving in tropical environments with high temperatures, low-
quality feeds, limited water and a high disease challenge.
Breed improvement should only be considered if the standard of management (especially feed
and health) can be improved sufficiently to take advantage of the greater genetic potential.
However, it has been found that owning an improved goat potentially will stimulate owners to
improve their feeding and management if they have the means. Owners will quickly learn that
the improved genetic potential, expressed as milk yields or growth rates, brings greater rewards
to better management, but it may not always be possible to utilize it.
Health
In most situations, the majority of the important diseases can be controlled through simple
preventative measures such as good feeding, clean water, clean housing, vaccination, drenching,
spraying/dipping and foot trimming. If these basic measures are done when appropriate, 80-90
per cent of the important diseases affecting goats can be controlled. Goats can get many different
diseases but the efforts should be directed at establishing what the common and important
diseases are in any area, and efforts should be focused on controlling them.
Goats are more susceptible to internal parasites than sheep or cattle, perhaps because they are
browsers, normally consuming vegetation above the height at which infective larvae are found.
Goat farmers all over the world have found that controlling internal parasites is a key
determinant of successful goat production. Management controls include:
• Grazing kids separately from adults on ‘clean’ pasture or ahead of the adults
• Prevent contamination of feed with urine and manure
• Avoiding wet/swampy areas
• Selecting bushy areas
• Consider cut-and-carry feeding and wilting wet feed.
Mange if left unchecked can kill goats and in certain circumstances can sweep through a flock
causing high mortality rates. It is vital to treat the disease early with an effective acaricide
vigorously scrubbed into the affected sites.
Other diseases may have to be controlled by tick control or by vaccination depending on the type
and seriousness of the disease in the area.
When goats are introduced into a new area or interventions are put in place to improve goat
production in an efficient and sustainable way it is important to train local goat keepers in simple
animal health technics and methods to ensure proper health of the animals – is possible under
supervision of a veterinarian from a closets centre. Experience has demonstrated again and again
that it is too expensive to have veterinarians to do the actual health care in remote thinly
populated areas. Similarly, there are many good experiences with local trained animal health
workers, se for example Schreuder & Ward 2004.
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9. Goat management and environmental impact
Livestock and livestock production have a wide range of interactions with, and impacts on, the
environment, which can have both adverse and beneficial consequences. The livestock influence
the atmosphere and climate, the land degradation, the water resources and the biodiversity.
Goats as well as sheep, cattle and other ruminants produce methane, which is a strong
greenhouse gas. It is not possible to reduce the production of this gas without reducing the
number of animals or by manipulating the digestion happening in the stomach of the ruminants,
and this is not likely to be possible in the near future. With more efficient production, however,
the number of animals can be reduced while keeping the production at the same level.
Land and pasture degradation related to overgrazing by livestock is a frequent and well studied
issue. Pasture degradation can potentially take place under all climates and farming systems, and
is generally related to a mismatch between livestock density and the capacity of the pasture to be
grazed and trampled. Mismanagement is common. Ideally the land/livestock ratio should be
continuously adjusted to the conditions of the pasture, especially in dry climates where biomass
production is erratic, yet such adjustment is rarely practiced. This is particularly the case in the
arid and semi-arid communal grazing areas of the Sahel and Central Asia. In these areas,
increasing population and encroachment of arable farming on grazing lands have severely
restricted the mobility and flexibility of the herds, which enabled this adjustment. Pasture
degradation results in a series of environment problems, including soil erosion, degradation of
vegetation, carbon release from organic matter decomposition, loss of biodiversity owing to
habitat changes.
The degradation can be classified as:
• desertification (in arid climates);
• increased woody plant cover in semi-arid, subtropical rangelands; and
• deforestation (in humid climates).
The capacity of small ruminants, in particular goats – to grow and reproduce under conditions
otherwise unsuitable for any form of agricultural production and other ruminant livestock –
makes them useful and very often essential to poor farmers pushed into these environments for
lack of alternative livelihoods. Because of their adaptive grazing, sheep and particularly goats
have extended their reach further into arid, steep and otherwise marginal territory than cattle.
The browsing of goats affects land cover and the potential for forest re-growth. Under
overstocked conditions, they are particularly damaging to the environment, through degradation
of vegetative cover and soil.
What is special in relation to goat keeping and the environment is related to:
• the goats, - and other ruminants -, special abilities to digest fibrous feeds
• the goats ability to select the best parts of the plants
• the goats feed preference for browse, incuding bark of trees
• the goats curiosity and movement over large areas and distances
• the goats ability to survive without water for longer periods
These abilities of the goats make them very efficient to utilize the scarce and poor vegetation in
dry area that may not be utilized by other livestock species or humans. If no one looks after them
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10. and feed them and they are let loose, then they are able to survive even in a dry area where no
other livestock except for camels are able to survive. Because of this efficiency the goat has
earned a reputation of being particularly destructive to the environment- while the reason is that
they are not properly managed and controlled by the goat keepers.
It is true that goats can change the environment by eating large parts of the vegetation and even
remove the more fibrous bushes. This is used to clear land without using machines in landscape
management, but when it happens in areas where it is not intended, because people is not
managing the goats, but just letting them loose in fragile landscapes, then the goats, - or more
correct the goat keepers - are a problem.
Goats can be let loose in areas where there is sufficient vegetation to be utilized as feeds and
where they do not intrude into fragile areas not meant for grazing or browsing. In other areas
where there is a risk that the goats will enter gardens or fields with crops they have to be herded
or even tethered if it is not possible to herd them in a manner where they are kept away from
certain areas. There may also be situations where the areas available for the goats to
graze/browse are so small that tethering or stall feeding is the only options. The goats will in
general grow slower and/or produce less milk if they are stall fed or tethered because of their
natural habit of selective browsing. If the goats are tethered and forced to graze in stead of
browsing bushes then the chance of the goats getting a severe parasite burden is also increased.
The story about the goats and the environment may be that the goats are accused of spoiling the
environment, but it is the humans that should be convicted/punished if they do not manage this
very efficient and useful animal well.
In areas where the alternative value of the land is close to zero, and goats are the only means of
providing agricultural production from the land and hence provide people a livelihood, the
solution is not to remove the goat but to introduce proper management. In fragile area, which can
not survive with goats running loose without proper herding, one could even imagine that the
goat owners should have a licence to keep goats, and if they do not manage them well then the
licence could be taken away from them.
Further reading.
Delgado, C., Rosegrant, M., Steinfeld, H., Ehui, S. and Courbois, C. 1999. Livestock to 2020:
the next food revolution. Food, Agriculture, and the Environment. Discussion Paper No. 28,
International Food Policy Research Institute. (IFPRI), Washington D.C., USA. 72 pp.
Dorward, A.R. and Anderson, S. 2002. Understanding small stock as livelihood assets: indicators
for facilitating technology development and dissemination. Report on review and planning
workshop. 12th to 14th August 2002, Imperial College, Wye, UK. 4-7.
Herts, M. and Buch-Hansen, P. 2007. Dansk udviklingsbistand – er der en fremtid? Forlaget
Thorup. 126 pp.
Kitaly, A., Mtenga, L., Morton, J., McLeod, A., Thornton, P., Dorward, A., Saadullah, M. 2005.
10

11. Why keep livestock if you are poor? In: Livestock and Wealth Creation. Improving the
husbandry of animals kept by resource-poor people in developing countries. Eds: Owen, E.,
Kitalyi, A., Jayasuriya, N. and Smith, T. 13 - 27
Kjeldsen-Kragh, S. 2007. The Role of Agriculture in Economic Development. The Lessons of
History. Copenhagen Busness School Press. 412 pp.
Martin, A. M. 2000. French research involvement in animal production and natural resource
management in developing countries. In: Linkages, Livestock and Livelihoods. Promoting
coordination in livestock research for poor people. Proceeding of the First Interagency Meeting
on Livestock production and Animal Health. Imperial College, Wye, UK. Eds: Hainsworth, S.D.
Godfrey, S.H., Matthewman, R.W. and Richards, J.I. 67-71.
Nell, A. J. Ed. 1998. Proceeding of an International Conference on Livestock and Environment.
Wageningen. IAC, Wageningen, Holland. 294 pp.
Nielsen, H. 1996. Socio-Economic Impact of Smallholder Livestock Development project,
Bangladesh. In: Integrated Farming in Human Development. Eds: Dolberg, F. and Petersen, P.H.
DSR Forlag. 64-70.
Peacock, C., Devendra, C. Ahuya, C., Roets,M., Hussain, M. and Osafo,E. 2005. Goats. In:
Livestock and Wealth Creation. Improving the husbandry of animals kept by resource-poor
people in developing countries. Eds: Owen, E., Kitalyi, A., Jayasuriya, N. and Smith, T. 361-
385.
Schreuder, B.E.C. & D.E. Ward. 2004. Afghanistan and the development of alternative systems
for animal health in the absence of effective government.
http://www.oie.int/eng/publicat/RT/2301/PDF A-F-E/21.Schreuder.pdf
Steinfeld, H., Gerber, P., Wassenaar, T., Castel, V., Rosales, M. and Haan C. de. 2006.
Livestock’s long shadow. Environmental issues and options. FAO, Rome. 390 pp.
World Bank 1998. Assessing Aid. What Works, What Doesn’t and Why? Oxford University
Press. 148 pp.
World Bank. 2001. World Bank Development Report 2001. Attacking poverty:World Bank
Development Report 2001. WDR 2000/2001. http://www.worldbank.org/poverty/wdpoverty/
World Bank. 2005. Directions in development. Agricultural Growth for the Poor. An Agenda for
Development. 197 pp.
Ørskov, E.R. 1993. Reality in rural development aid, with emphasis on livestock. Rowett
Research Services Ltd., Bucksburn, Aberdeen AB2 9SB, UK. ?? pp.
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12. Websites.
Animal Production and Health Division of the United Nations Food and Agriculture
Organisation (FAO AGA):
http://www.fao.org/ag/againfo/home/en/home.html
Domestic Animal Diversity Information System (DAD-IS):
http://dad.fao.org/en/Home.htm
Ecological Society of America (ESA) Issues in Ecology:
http://www.esa.org/sbi/sbi_issues/
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC):
http://www.ipcc.ch/
International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI)
http://www.ilri.cgiar.org/
Livestock and the Environment/Livestock-Environment Interactions:
http://www.fao.org/ag/aga/LSPA/LXEHTML/Default.htm
Livestock, Environment and Development (LEAD) Initiative:
http://www.virtualcentre.org/en/frame.htm
Internation Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)
Livestock Services and the Poor: http://www.ifad.org/lrkm/book/english.pdf
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