Livestock Research for Rural Development The international journal for research into sustainable developing world agriculture

LRRD is fully OPEN ACCESS, with no publication charges, on the principle that research findings related to sustainability of farming systems should be freely available in the public domain.
Papers may be copied and reprinted freely.

The LRRD Vision

LRRD is committed to action in the face of the emergencies of climate change and the loss of biodiversity. LRRD policy focuses on the type of research that will have the most impact on the need to make changes to livestock production systems in order to respond to these emergencies. Reducing the need to import animal feed to developing countries by using local resources is one way of responding to these emergencies as intensive industrial-scale production of maize and soybean in the exporting countries is one of the factors contributing to global loss of biodiversity.

We believe that future requirements of society for food can best be met from integrated small to medium family farm systems in which:

• most resources are produced locally as this will impact directly on both loss of biodiversity and greenhouse gas emissions that result from deforestation and monoculture of soils in exporting countries
  
  
• the direct and indirect use of solar energy is maximized
  
  
• all wastes are recycled
  
  
• the carbon footprint is negative
  
  
• there are overall environmental and social benefits

The LRRD Mission

To promote research on:

1. use of local resources for live stock production in ways that are non-competitive with human needs and which do not depend on imported feeds
   
   
2. development of systems for producing renewable energy by:
   
   
1. biodigestion of animal and human organic wastes
   
   
2. gasification of dry fibrous residues from crops grown primarily as food/feed for humans and live stock
   
   
3. increasing use of draft animal power
   
   
3. increasing biodiversity and sequestering atmospheric carbon by promoting integrated farming sytems based on high biomass crops (trees, shrubs, sugar cane, cassava and plants of the Aracea family .... among others)
   
   
4. promotion of indigenous live stock breeds that have high reproductive rates and adaptation to use of local feed resources and local climatic conditions
   
   
5. regeneration of soil fertility through tree and shrub legunes and recycling of organic matter
   
   
6. development of emerging markets for ecosystem services, such as carbon sequestration and nutrient sequestration
   
   
7. promotion of “farmer“ markets for food produced in environmentally friendly and socially just, family-oriented small-scale farming systems
   
   
8. recycling of wastes
   
   
9. improving the efficiency of use of water