Community-Based Livestock Breeding: Coordinated Action or Relational Process?

Abstract

Over the past decade, community-based breeding programs (CBBPs) have been promoted as a viable approach to improving smallholder livelihoods through a systematic livestock breeding. CBBPs aim to initiate systematic breeding at the community level, including an organized animal identification and recording of performance and pedigree data. To ensure the breeding programs' continuity, building capacities, and ownership among participants are essential to the approach. This study's purpose was to understand how CBBPs have evolved in specific institutional settings and which dynamics occur in the course of implementation. We addressed these questions in reflective conversations with six coordinators of a diverse sample of CBBPs: goats (Malawi, Uganda, and Mexico), sheep (Ethiopia), alpaca (Peru), and cattle (Burkina Faso). The interviews and analysis were guided by categories of the multi-level perspective. The respondents considered lack of funding and weak institutionalization as the main constraints on the CBBPs. While the idea of participation and localized ownership was at the center of the programs, linear paradigms of knowledge transfer prevailed. In all cases, the impulse to start a CBBP came from individual researchers, who relied on intermediaries, such as extension agents, for implementation. Personal relations and trust were seen as both a factor in the success and a positive outcome of CBBPs. We conclude that these findings have different implications depending on how rural development is conceptualized: proponents of the innovation systems perspective would call for stakeholders to further align their interests and coordinate their actions. Proponents of process-relational concepts, in contrast, would not consider the CBBP a product but a starting-point for initiators and participants to continuously discover new ways of collaboration and engagement.

Going to scale—From community-based to population-wide genetic improvement and commercialized sheep meat supply in Ethiopia

“…Other collective arrangements may include lamb conditioning initiatives to provide export slaughter houses with appropriate lambs. Ultimately CBBPs can be seen as a "starting-point for initiators and participants to continuously discover new ways of collaboration and engagement" (Wurzinger et al, 2021).…”

Exploiting morphobiometric and genomic variability of African indigenous camel populations-A review

“…All economically important traits Frontiers in Genetics frontiersin.org Frontiers in Genetics frontiersin.org should be considered in the breeding objective; thus, production and functional traits, the latter increasing profit by reducing costs, need to be taken into consideration. Farmers are also involved in setting up the breeding objectives (Ouédraogo et al, 2021;Wurzinger et al, 2021). In Gao, Mali, camels are mainly produced for milk (Traoré et al, 2014).…”

“…It is also imperative to establish community-based breeding programs (CBBPs) (incorporating indigenous knowledge), involving all relevant stakeholders. The scheme is aimed at initiating systematic breeding at the community level, including an organized animal identification and recording of performance and pedigree data ( Wurzinger et al, 2021 ). The breeding plan should involve incorporating the breeding objectives and traits of preference including the socio-cultural practices of the pastoralists.…”

The African Goat Improvement Network: a scientific group empowering smallholder farmers

“…To facilitate this knowledge transfer in the absence of a formal cooperative extension service, a system of community-based breeding programs (CBBP; see Abbreviations Table ( Supplemental Materials )) could leverage local researchers and technical experts familiar with the traditional animal husbandry production systems of that community. CBBPs have recently grown in popularity ( Wurzinger et al, 2021 ). With a CBBP approach, farmers and local communities actively participate in the decision-making using their priorities and preferences.…”