Community based small ruminant breeding programs in Ethiopia: Progress and challenges
Introduction
Ethiopia is endowed with different agro climatic zones favorable to support huge livestock population with great diversity. Sheep and goat are among the most important species distributed in all agro ecological zones and different landscapes with immense contribution in the national, rural and pastoral economy. According to CSA (2018), there are 31.3 million sheep and 32.74 million goats. Studies made on the small ruminant revealed the presence of highly significant within breed genetic variation (Gizaw et al., 2007; Hassen et al., 2012; Mekuriaw, 2016), which could result into a huge productivity improvement if properly tapped. However, in most cases the flock size of individual farmers is far below the effective population size of selection.
Small ruminant genetic improvement can help to improve the livelihood of the producers via increasing meat and milk production and number of animal that might be ready for market either in commercial or seed stock. However, implementing breeding schemes in developing countries is difficult due to the infrastructure and institutions required for collecting information and the time required for realizing genetic improvement (Van-Arendonk, 2011a). The success of genetic improvement programs in developing countries is generally not determined by the anticipated rate of genetic gain, but by their compatibility with the breeding objective of the farming system and the involvement of farmers (Kosgey et al., 2006). Considering the past genetic improvement approaches and their suitability to the Ethiopia's condition choosing an approach that better fit to the production system is required and breeding programs shifted from central nucleus scheme to community-based breeding programs (CBBP) (Gizaw, 2015). CBBP is essential to:mobilize the community as one breeding unit; engage all necessary livestock improvement packages; adopt recording pedigree information of flocks in each household; and initiate farmers in regular selling of breeding stock and commercial stocks. It is focused on indigenous stock and consider farmers' needs, views, decisions and active participation, from inception through to implementation, and their success is based upon proper consideration of farmers' breeding objectives, infrastructure, participation, and ownership (Sölkner et al., 1998; Haile et al., 2011; Mueller et al., 2015).
In recent years, CBBPs have been promoted as a tool for economic and livelihood development through genetic improvement of livestock and for conservation of local breeds in developing countries (Haile et al., 2011; Mueller et al., 2015). One-tire community based breeding program has been conducted by governmental and non-governmental institutions for small ruminant productivity improvement and in-situ conservation.There is increased productivity (more births, better growth and reduced mortality), increased income from sheep/goat production and increased meat consumption. Additionally, the cooperatives have been building capitals on the initial revolving funds supported by the project (Haile et al., 2018). Moreover, due to its feasibility to implement in local communities with little funding compared to centralized nucleus schemes, CBBP has attracted global interests and is also being scaled out in many places in Africa (Haile et al., 2019). Although, there is successes stories in the Ethiopian CBBP’s, presence of challenges are obvious.Thus, the objective of this paper is to review the progress of CBBP’s, benefits gained still, constraints encountered in the course of implementation and indicating some possible mitigation strategies for the encountered challenges in the CBBPs.
Section snippets
Study approach
Village based breeding program has been conducted by governmental (Agricultural Research Institute, Ethiopian Bio-diversity Institute, National Animal Genetic improvement institute and Bureau of Agriculture and Rural Redevelopment Office) and non-government organization (ICARDA-ILRI-BOKU, Biosciences for eastern and central Africa through International Livestock Research Institute (BecA-ILRI), Livestock and Fishery Sector Development Project). However, most of them are at infant stage i.e there
Conclusion
Community based breeding program has been operated successfully in smallholder goat/sheep producers in mixed crop livestock and sheep barley production systems. However, in pastoral and agro-pastoral communities and farmers that have larger flock sizes even in the mixed production system are resisted because of restricted freedom in flock movement, fear of losing independency in decision- making and lack of interest in mixing their own flock with others.Moreover, the progressive results of
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors whose names are listed immediately below certify that they have NO affiliations with or involvement in any organization or entity with any financial interest or non-financial interest in the subject matter.
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