L'élevage, richesse des pauvres

25/01/2010 - Article

A book showing the extent to which animal production plays a pivotal role in the lives of farmers in developing countries.

The wealth of animal farmers is not restricted to the number of animals they own. Farmers have to decide between several possible uses for their animals: feeding their family, monetary income, plans to buy equipment, building an inheritance for their children, or participating in the life of their community. And they use a range of types of social organization in order to reach their objectives and manage unknowns. To be effective, animal production support policies have to take account of this strategic and organizational complexity.

Through a multidisciplinary approach to the concept of poverty, the book rejects analyses of the "poverty level" in exclusively monetary terms. It calls upon tools and theories generated by zootechnics, economics, geography and sociology, and presents a wide range of field observations made in Africa, the Maghreb, South America and India. In the end, these different observations have enabled a definition of poverty among livestock farmers as the inability to achieve their objectives.

L'élevage, richesse des pauvres
Stratégies d'éleveurs et organisations sociales face aux risques dans les pays du Sud
Editorial coordination: Guillaume Duteurtre, Bernard Faye
Update Sciences & Technologies Collection
Editions Quae, 2009