Poultry is important for many poor smallholders, but infectious diseases, such as Newcastle disease, can drastically reduce the poultry population in a village and affects the food security and the livelihood of many farmers. Newcastle disease vaccination can reduce the spread of disease, but may be hard to access for smallholders if there is not a supportive system in place.

Pastoralism is used to describe a society that derives majority of their food and income from livestock. This form of farming system is largely practised in the arid and semi-arid lands (ASAL). It is estimated that 70% of the landmass in the Horn of Africa is dry land; in Kenya 80% of the landmass is classified as ASAL, while approximately half of Tanzania consists of dry land.

Smallholder dairy farming is seen as a viable and promising activity to support the livelihoods of cattle keepers in low-income countries. This farming system, characterized by small herds of improved cattle raised under zero-grazing, is proven to lead to better milk yields, but also to require more constant and demanding inputs and resources to sustain production.

Pig production is thriving in Uganda and the demand for pork is increasing, therefore offering potential for smallholder farmers for increased income through pig production.

Livestock is poorly represented in N budgets for the African continent although some studies have examined livestock-related N flows at different levels. Livestock plays an important role in N cycling and therefore on N budgets including livestock-related flows. This study reviews the literature on N budgets for Africa to identify factors contributing to uncertainties.

Large-scale land acquisitions have increased in scale and pace due to changes in commodity markets, agricultural investment strategies, land prices, and a range of other policy and market forces. The areas most affected are the global “commons” – lands that local people traditionally use collectively — including much of the world’s forests, wetlands, and rangelands.

In a modeling study we examine vulnerability of income from mobile (transhumant) pastoralism and sedentary pastoralism to reduced mean annual precipitation (MAP) and droughts. The study is based on empirical data of a 3410 km2 research region in southern, semi-arid Morocco.

In this study, a land use/land cover change analysis method was developed to examine patterns of land use/land cover conversions of cropland to urban uses and conversions of rangeland to cropland uses in the United States (US) Midwest region. We used the US 2001 and 2006 National Land Cover Datasets (NLCD) for our spatial analyses of these conversion trends.

The delineation and protection of transhumance corridors are increasingly seen as critical to maintaining livestock mobility in agropastoral areas of West Africa by allowing passage through areas of increasing cropping pressure. Understanding the local politics surrounding the mapping and protection of transhumance corridors is important for policy formulation.