Update and Prospects of Small Ruminant
in South East Asia

Somkiat Saithanoo
International Livestock Research Institute (n..RI)1

Abstract

          Animal numbers and outputs need to be improved rapidly in South East Asia to respond to the increased demand of livestock products. Smallholder livestock producers could benefit of these opportunities, by implementing technology options for increasing animal productivity and efficiency in the use of locally available feed resources (pastures, crop residues, agro-industrial by-products and non-conventional feed resources), along with policies that favour their competitiveness. As smallholder has limited resources, there are lot of advantages to keeping small ruminant (sheep and goats) rather than large ruminant like cow and buffalo.

Trends in livestock production in South East Asia

          A large proportion of the population in South East Asia still live in rural areas and engage in agriculture (Table 1) although there is a trend of dramatic migration from rural to urban areas in recent years. Vercoe et al. ( 1997) showed forecast ruminant and non-ruminant meat production and demand per person in 2010 for some selected Asian countries (Table 2). This indicates a deficit of ruminant meat production in every country, and a deficit of non-ruminant meat production in most countries. It is therefore clear that more animal products need to be produced in Asia either through expanded production or increased productivities.

          Rising human population, urbanization and income-driven changes in food habits in South East Asia will necessitate a two to three-fold increase in the supply of animal products by year 2020 (Delgado et al., 1999). To respond to this increased demand, animal numbers and outputs need to be improved rapidly (Devendra and Thomas, 2002a), although it may result in greater pressure on the natural resource base, particularly on the more fragile lands where further expansion can occur, and in the urban/peri-urban areas where intensive systems are located. Also there will likely be more competition in the use of resources for livestock and crop production (Mueller et al., 2001). However, for poor farmers to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the Livestock Revolution, it is not only a matter of identifying technology options to boost livestock productivity in their farming systems in a sustainable manner, but also designing policy options that would increase their market competitiveness.

          The implementation of trade liberalization as mandated by the World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements is another factor that may affect the evolution of smallholder crop-livestock systems in South East Asia. If liberalization results in higher grain prices, it will likely increase the competitiveness of smallholders that use locally available feed resources with respect to commercial producers using grains, whereas increases in wages by more than the increase in return to capital would favour commercial systems (Quirke et al., 2003).

Major livestock production systems in South East Asia

          All types of livestock production systems as classified by Sere and Steinfeld (1996) are found in South East Asia. Those are:

a) Mixed rainfed systems
b) Mixed irrigated systems
c) Grassland based systems
d) Landless systems

          Mixed farming systems (combinations of cropping and animal raising) are the most common smallholder livestock systems in rainfed and irrigated areas. In these systems, livestock are mostly controlled in intensive cropping areas by stalling or tethering and shepherded grazing of roadsides, idle land and crop stubble (Devendra and Thomas, 2002b ). It is common to "cut and carry" grasses, weeds, and/or crop residues for animals in pens or even for those tethered. Supplementation with concentrates is seldom practiced, and it occurs mainly during the dry season.

          Grassland-based systems are also practiced but are not as common in the region as it is in Latin America or Africa. Extensive grazing systems tend to be low-input/low-output, in which animals graze native pastures or the under-story vegetation of upland primary or secondary forests. Poor control of ruminant in these systems often causes problems to neighbour crop producers who have to use precious labour and capital resources to build fences (Pezo et al., 2000). In South East Asia there are only 14 million ha of native grasslands; the largest being found in Indonesia, with smaller areas in countries such as Cambodia, Lao PDR, Vietnam and Thailand. However, in many regions, native grasslands are in decline due to changes in land use (Devendra and Sevilla, 2002).

          The other option of grassland-based systems is the integration of ruminants in tree plantations. Grazing animals under coconuts is common, but has often been discouraged in other plantation crops such as palm oil; rubber and fruit trees. These systems have considerable opportunities for expansion in South East Asia, and its potential impact increasing livestock population in the region cannot be disregarded, since the area under tree crops is about 210 million hectares (Devendra, 2002). Considering that stocking rates of 3.0 sheep or 0.25 cattle ha1 are achievable under tree crop, it has been estimated for Malaysia that if only 50% of the oil palm plantations are grazed, an extra 3.3