Livestock is often associated with wealth. However, about 70 percent of the world's 1.3 billion poor live in rural areas, and of those an estimated 70 percent, or about 600 million, depend on livestock as part of their livelihood.
For many, livestock is one of the few means of asset creation and escaping the poverty trap. Livestock are often the only means of transforming inedible biomass of marginal areaswhere many of the world's poor live into high value products. Thus, livestock must be an integral part of nearly all rural poverty reduction strategies.
The poor keep livestock under various production systems including: (i) pastoralists, mostly in the arid and semi-arid areas, who have livestock as their main source of livelihood; (ii) small mixed farmers, who use livestock for traction, manure for organic fertilizer and fuel, meat, milk and fiber; and (iii) landless livestock farmers, often in peri-urban areas, who feed animals on residues from arable crops and fodder from communal areas. Women often keep livestock and get most of the revenue from livestock production.
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