Animals
- Livestock on a farm in Kenya. Credit: S. Mann/Bioversity
Domestic animals particularly cattle, sheep, goats, pigs and poultry supply 30 percent of total human requirements for food. Moreover, they contribute to maintaining soil fertility. Manure is often the only fertilizer available to resource-poor farmers and larger livestock, such as cattle and buffaloes, are the smallholder's 'tractor'. Seventy per cent of the world's rural poor depend on livestock as a critical component of their livelihoods. Animal diversity also includes aquatic biodiversity.
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What are farm animal genetic resources?
Farm animal genetic resources include all animal species, breeds and strains (and their wild relatives) that are of economic, scientific and cultural interest to humankind in terms of food and agricultural production for the present or in the future. The term is frequently used as shorthand to refer to the approximately 40 species of animals (including approximately 10 000 breeds or strains) that have been domesticated or semi-domesticated during the past 12 000 years and that contribute to agricultural production. Very few wild relatives of these 40 species still survive.
Extinctions on the rise
It is estimated that approximately 16 percent of livestock and poultry breeds were lost over the last century. A further 22 percent of mammalian breeds and 48 percent of avian breeds are at risk of becoming extinct in the near future, and the rate of extinction is accelerating. Of the livestock breeds known to exist today, 70 percent are in developing countries. These local breeds are well adapted to the environments in which they were developed, often being able to survive and produce where exotic, supposedly more productive, breeds cannot. Loss of indigenous breeds in developing countries, coupled with inadequate programmes for the use and management of the genetic resources, is reducing livelihood options for the poor.
Urgent efforts are needed to document and characterize breeds in the developing world, to make known their qualities and potentials as part of the effort to conserve and use them.
Policies are needed
Effective policies are urgently needed to conserve farm animal genetic resources. CGIAR's System-wide Genetic Resources Programme (SGRP), for which Bioversity is the convening centre, has been working with the CGIAR centres, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) in particular, as well as other international organizations, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), to help devise options and strategies for the conservation and use of farm animal genetic resources.
Information source: Farm animal genetic resources: technical considerations for policy-makers concerning conservation and use
