Using sustainable livestock production index for development of livestock sector: case study of an arid region in India

Abstract

Using the tool of sustainable livestock production index, the study attempts to assess the sustainability status of the livestock sector in the arid state of Rajasthan in India. Sustainable livestock production index (SLPI) has been worked out as a composite index encompassing ecological, economic and social dimensions by aggregating a total of eight representative variables. The sustainability scores of seven agro-climatic zones in the state were less than 0.5 suggesting ardent policy attention for improving the sustainability of livestock production in the region. Based on relative values of component indices, economic efficiency index, social equity index and ecological security index, and respective representative variables, the study has identified the regions and the specific dimensions therein that require policy attention for the orientation and development of programmes which are geared towards the sustainable development of the livestock sector.

Keywords:

• economic efficiency
• social equity
• ecological security

Introduction

In agrarian countries like India, livestock make a substantial contribution to livelihood security by providing income, food, fuel, manure, draft power and serving as current assets for a vast majority of rural households. Empirical evidence from India shows that during the severe drought that affected the country in 2002–03, the real value of output from crop production fell steeply by nearly 10% compared to the previous year, while it increased marginally by 3% for livestock production during 2001/02–2002/03 (CSO 2006).

Livestock contributes about one-fourth (24.4%) to the agricultural GDP in India (CSO 2010). In this context, in order to provide policy guidelines for sustainable development of livestock, this paper constructs an index encompassing economic, social and ecological dimensions of livestock production and sustainability, using the predominantly arid state of Rajasthan as a case study.

Material and methods

The study pertains to seven agro-climatic sub-zones which cover all the districts within the state of Rajasthan. The zones are contiguous areas within the state boundary that have more or less homogenous physical characteristics like, soils, climate, topography, vegetation, crops, etc. The agro-climatic zones are delineated in the present study, the districts falling in each zone and their selected physiographic features are presented in Table 1. District level secondary data for the triennium ending 2005–06, from various published and unpublished sources, has been used to build the database at agro-climatic zonal level.

Table 1.  Agro-climatic zones of Rajasthan state.

Agro-climatic zone	Districts included	Physiographic features
Zone I: Irrigated north-western plain	Ganganagar & Hanumangarh	Annual rainfall 400 mm, canal irrigated alluvial and aeolian plain
Zone II: Semi-arid eastern plain	Ajmer, Dausa, Jaipur & Tonk	Annual rainfall 500–700 mm, scarce surface water resources, water table 15–25 m
Zone III: Flood prone eastern plain	Alwar, Bharatpur, Dholpur, Karauli & Swai Madhopur	Average annual rainfall 750 mm, high water table, excessive forest degradation
Zone IV: Southern plain and Aravali Hills	Bhilwara, Chittorgarh, Rajsamand & Udaipur	Annual rainfall 500–900 mm, predominantly tribal belt
Zone V: Arid western plain	Barmer, Jaisalmer, Jodhpur, Bikaner & Churu	Annual rainfall 100–400 mm, high diurnal temperature range, scarce water resources
Zone VI: Transitional plain	Jalore, Jhunjhunu, Nagaur, Pali, Sikar & Sirohi	Annual rainfall 300–500 mm, limited irrigation, vegetation xerophytic and mesophytic
Zone VII: Southern and south-eastern Plain	Banswara, Baran, Bundi, Dungarpur, Jhalawar & Kota	Annual rainfall 600–850 mm, high relative humidity, canal irrigation, extensive natural vegetation
Note: Based on agro-climatic zoning done by National Agricultural Research Project (NARP) of Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) (Ghosh 1991) and Planning Commission (Khanna 1989).

The sustainable livestock production index (SLPI) has been constructed using eight indicators. Three of which capture the economic and social dimensions of sustainability and two which cover the ecological aspects. Two observations may be made in this regard. Firstly, the variables actually selected to represent a given dimension are also reflected in the concerns of the other dimensions of livestock sustainability. Secondly, most of the variables display both, positive and negative correlations between them, which rather than being a problem, actually enhances the capacity of the constructed index to capture the inherent differences and also the intrinsic synergy among the various aspects of livestock sustainability.

The logical reasoning for the choice of indicators is as follows.

Livestock productivity

Expressing productivity in monetary units helps to capture not only physical productivity as influenced by feed and fodder quality, climate and technology, but also the performance of marketing and other rural institutions affecting the farm prices.

Labour productivity

Labour productivity reflects the efficiency of labour in the livestock sector.

Energy availability from livestock products

To counter the potential bias arising out of a region's specialisation in high value products, the per capita calorie availability from livestock products was included for economic sustainability.

Female literacy rate

Females have a predominant role to play in the livestock production systems and account for 69% of the total work force within the livestock sector. Therefore, female literacy captures social equity, and includes the potential not only for women's social and economic participation but also for population stabilisation.

Access to public infrastructure facilities for livestock

The livestock support services have a vital role to play in enhancing the productive performance. In the scenario where such facilities are largely provided by the state, their accessibility and quality is important for the sustainability of the livestock production system. In the absence of quantifiable data for capturing the quality aspect, the study takes into account the inter-zonal variations in the availability of public infrastructure as an indicator, with the presumption that higher densities of such facilities implies better access, thus, contributing positively to social dimensions of sustainability.

Growth rate of common property resources (CPRs)

Rural inequalities generated by private property based farming system are partly reduced by CPRs as the resource poor households significantly supplement their income from CPRs. It also contributes to the poor man's nutrition by facilitating his food gathered from forests, pastures and grazing lands.

Relative area under natural vegetation cover to cultivated land

Forests, pastures and grazing lands are the most valuable natural habitats for maintaining the wide flora and fauna in the agricultural landscape. Sufficient land area under natural vegetation cover is normally the most appropriate way to preserve the quality of land, hence it was postulated that a higher area under forests, pastures and grazing lands vis à vis the net sown area has a positive impact on sustainability of the system.

Percentage of surplus animals in relation to feed and fodder

This indicator captures the carrying capacity of land.

The first three indicators pertain to economic, the next three to social, and the last two to ecological dimension of sustainability. The postulated a priori effect of each indicator on sustainability of the livestock production is positive except for the last indicator.

The SLPI is a generalisation of the relative approach used for construction of the human development index by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP 1990). Each indicator (variable) was indexed (I _ijk ):

where, X _ijk =value of ith variable representing jth component of SLPI of kth region.

The calculated index for each indicator I _ijk is used to calculate the indices for various components of SLPI, i.e. economic efficiency index (EEI), social equity index (SEI) and ecological security index (ESI) as the simple mean of respective indices:

The composite index for each region has been calculated as a weighted mean of the indices obtained from the above equation, i.e.

where ‘W’ denotes the weight assigned to the respective component of the SLPI and calculated as the ratio of inverse of the proportional contribution of EEI, SEI and ESI to the sum of all the three inverse proportions.

Results and discussion

On a scale of 0–1, the mean value of SLPI was 0.343 (Table 2). In the case of agriculture also, the average score of Sustainable Livelihood Security Index (SLSI) across agro-climatic zones in Rajasthan was observed as 0.389 (Saleth 1993) and the study concluded that the agricultural sustainability status is weak in the state.

Table 2.  Economic, social and ecological dimensions of livestock production sustainability across agro-climatic zones in Rajasthan.

Zone	Agro-climatic zones	SLPI	Rank	EEI	Rank	SEI	Rank	ESI	Rank
I	Irrigated north western plain	0.479	1	0.780	1	0.554	1	0.314	3
II.	Semi-arid eastern plain	0.333	5	0.706	2	0.474	3	0.182	7
III	Flood prone eastern plain	0.343	3	0.507	3	0.468	4	0.216	6
IV	Southern plain & Aravali hills	0.307	6	0.222	6	0.475	2	0.318	2
V	Arid western plain	0.351	2	0.378	5	0.354	7	0.323	1
VI	Transitional plain	0.340	4	0.472	4	0.440	5	0.226	5
VII	Southern and south-eastern plain	0.247	7	0.158	7	0.430	6	0.286	4
Mean		0.343		0.461		0.457		0.267
C.V. (%)		20.3		50.1		13.2		21.6
Abbreviations: EEI, economic efficiency index; SEI, social equity index and ESI, ecological security index.

The inter-zonal variations in SLPI were not very sharp (C.V.=20.3%) across the state. Considering three categories: (1) SLPI < 0.3; (2) SLPI 0.3 to 0.5; and (3) SLPI >0.5, representing low, moderate and high sustainability status, respectively (Saleth 1993; Sen and Hatai 2007), in six out of seven zones the livestock production turned out to be moderately sustainable, while in the southern and south-eastern plain zone the status was poor.

The top ranking zone, irrigated north-western plain zone with SLPI of 0.479, comprises of the agriculturally advanced districts of Ganganagar and Hanumangarh. These districts have fertile alluvial soil deposits from the Ghaggar River. Due to the availability of three canal systems, proportions of land available for cultivation is high which facilitates livestock production in the zone. In the bottom two zones, the districts either have rugged topography such as, Udaipur and Chittorgarh or a low area under cultivation and irrigation such as, Rajsamand and Dungarpur. Largely the cash crops, like cotton, sugarcane and horticultural crops are grown in these areas. The livestock production was poor in these zones because of a low population and low productivity of milch animals.

The score of SLPI gives only the summary picture of relative sustainability condition of each agro-climatic zone, its component indices provide more insight into the three dimensions of sustainability. The results showed that there were wide inter-zonal variations in the status of economic sustainability as captured through EEI, the index ranging from 0.158 to 0.780 with coefficient of variation of 50% (Table 2). The agro-climatic zones advanced in livestock and also agricultural production, viz., irrigated north western plain (Zone I) and semi arid eastern plain (Zone II) were the top two agro-climatic zones in economic efficiency with high EEI scores; whereas the southern and south-eastern plain (Zone VII) and southern plain and Aravali hills (Zone IV) were the bottom two zones with very low EEI score indicating a poor status of economic dimension.

The SEI scores for all the agro-climatic zones ranged moderately from 0.354 in arid western plains zone to 0.554 in irrigated north-western plains. The inter-zonal variations were quite low suggesting a near uniform situation of the state in terms of social indicators considered in this study.

Unlike the moderate SEI, the ESI scores were at the low level, ranging from 0.182 to 0.323, with higher inter-zonal variations (C.V. 21.6%) than observed for the social equity. Results showed that out of seven, four agro-climatic zones had a low ESI score (less than 0.3). These zones are largely from eastern and south-eastern part of the state. The regions with relatively better ecological security in general, either have a large area under forest and grazing lands (mountain regions) or low livestock population density.

The rank correlation coefficient among the SLPI and its three dimensions calculated using Spearman's rank correlations, showed the highest positive correlation between sustainability index and the economic efficiency of livestock production (Table 3). Among the various dimensions, the rank correlation of economic and social aspects was positive and high (0.571), while between the economic and ecological indices it was high and negative. These results indicated that by strengthening the economic efficiency the livestock sustainability can be improved but at the same time there would be a trade-off in terms of ecological security. Hence, it is important that the livestock development policy focuses on the utilisation of natural resources taking into account the ecological considerations.

Table 3.  Rank correlation coefficient among SLPI and its dimensions.

Districts	SEI	ESI	SLPI
EEI	0.571	−0.429	0.679
SEI		−0.143	0.143
ESI			0.214

The specific indicators vital for prioritising the policy for sustainable livestock production in each zone were identified on the basis of their low scores viz. values less than 0.30 (Table 4). The irrigated north western plain (Zone I) that ranked first in terms of the overall sustainability and also the economic and social dimension, needs to improve the access to livestock support services. Also, as the area under natural vegetation cover is low in the zone, the major sources of feed and fodder for livestock are mainly from the cultivated land. Hence, technological options for conserving the soil and water resources would be instrumental for sustainable agriculture and livestock production in the zone.

Table 4.  Areas of a priority policy focus for improving sustainability of livestock production in Rajasthan.

The scarce rainfall/arid zones falling in northern and north-western part of the state viz., arid western plain, irrigated north-western plain and transitional plain need investment allocation on development of livestock infrastructural facility like health, breeding and extension institutions, conservation and maintenance of an area under permanent pasture and grazing. The topography of the arid western plain that covers the Thar Desert necessitates establishing mobile veterinary and health care facilities to cover the vast stretch of area. In the desert region, since the natural vegetation cover is poor, the livestock farmers often migrate temporarily with their livestock in search of feed and fodder. Setting up of fodder banks, emphasis on research and development (R&D) initiatives for identification and development of suitable animal feed sources, especially from grasses, trees and non-conventional feed resources are important policy options for improving the sustainability of livestock production in such regions where the relative area under natural vegetation that covers the cultivated land is low.

The southern part of the state requires instantaneous policy attention to improve livestock productivity through technological advancement, labour productivity by training them in scientific livestock farming practices, and the introduction of value-added products for enhancing calorie intake. The eastern part of the state has low ecological security due to a high livestock population pressure and a shrinking area under pastures and grazing lands. Hence, a policy focus on balancing the livestock population in tune with the available resources is required in the region. The livestock breeding policy should be oriented towards selective breeding for producing animals with a higher genetic potential, so instead of a large stock of low productive animals the farmers can rear a few high producing animals, thus reliving the pressure on available feed and fodder resources.

Conclusions

The lower level of scores of SLPI indicated a discouraging sustainability status of livestock production system in all the agro-climatic zones of Rajasthan state; all of the three dimensions of sustainability need to be improved, yet the ecological aspect being the weakest, the policy focus on improving the carrying capacity of land should be of utmost priority.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Prem Chand

Present address: Zonal Project Directorate, Zone-VII, JNKVV Campus, Jabalpur-482004 (M.P.), India

Notes

¹