This study identifies and ranks the risk factors and the main aetiological causes of infectious disease mortality in zebu cattle within the first year of life, raised under smallholder mixed farming system.
This makes it a potentially sustainable tool for farmers in that region to use in post-harvest handling, though widespread use depends on the development of production and distribution channels, and raising awareness among smallholder farmers.
Here we have estimated the mortality rates in zebu cattle raised in a smallholder mixed farming system during their first year of life, identified the periods of increased risk of death and the risk factors for calf mortality, and through analysis of post-mortem data, determined the aetiologies of calf mortality in this population.
By raising the productivity and incomes of smallholders, it will promote the inclusive economic growth needed to free millions of rural people from abject poverty.
By contrast, the small-scale commercial sector (i.e., smallholders whose livelihoods depend upon raising and selling poultry) is much more vulnerable to shock and needs government support to prevent bankruptcy and to assist restocking.
Conservation agriculture for smallholder farmers raises challenging questions regarding its adoption, diffusion and scaling at farm level and beyond.
Minimum tillage combined with mulching (MTM) is critical to conservation agriculture, yet its use by smallholder farmers raises challenging questions regarding adoption, diffusion and scaling at farm level.
Next, it might help the environment: those smallholders manage a disproportionate share of the world's water and vegetation cover, so raising their productivity on existing land would be environmentally friendlier than cutting down the rainforest.
Larger farm size also allow smallholders to allocate different portions of their land into various adaptable crop and livestock enterprises, thus raising their adaptive capacity (Fisher et al. 2015).
Most farmers in Africa are smallholder producers who raise one crop per year and have little to sell beyond what feeds their family, if that.
