Breeds and sustainable systems

It is considered that the farming system uses such breeding plans that do not damage the environment. Those breeding plans in which highly productive animals are produced does not maintain sustainability instead sustainability is considered in those breeding plans that are conducted at small scale and involve recycling of waste materials, use local food sources and local breeds and these are labor intensive processes.

When the food sources are not good and when the environment is harsh than local breeds are important in order to use sustainable breeding plans. This system has a draw back that it does not produces efficient animals when we want to produce them for meat and milk as compared to intensive systems in which highly productive animals are produced.

There are some reasons why we use these local systems:

·        In an are where there are harsh environmental conditions in such areas intensive systems fail to work so in such areas only local breeds work. We can take the example of cattle that is present in tropical areas. This term can be applied to small animals like rabbits, pigs etc but not to large animals.

·        When we use these systems than we can avoid the migration of local people to urban areas so that urban areas cannot be stressed. In these areas life is very difficult for humans and they deserve better life so these local breeding plans are a temporary solution.

·        These local systems do not damage environment and they are better for animal welfare, but animal welfare is not considered in each case. If the egg production system is intensive than they use such cages that are rich in food. Another advantage of these intensive systems is that these animals produce less concentration of carbon dioxide and produce less amounts of pollutants as compared to local breeding plans. According to a report organic chickens are more contaminated and more contaminants are present in their meat. The hens that are free and search out their food themselves are not happy than those hens that are present in those cages that are enriched with food. When we want to produce animals on industrial scale than animal welfare is not considered a task. These systems makes the farmers independent from multinational companies but this is not good in developing and under developed countries. These multinational companies provide cheap genetics as the main priority of these countries is to feed their people. If we talk about genetics it is very cheap like price of 1 kg meat of chicken is less than 1% of its total cost. There are very few multinational companies that provide cheap protein sources.

·        There are some breeds that better adopt to the environment that is local. It is not true that just local breeds are well adopted to the local environment but not the foreign breeds. There are some foreign breeds that better adopt to the new environment. We can take the example of Nelore cattle that better adopted to the Brazilian environment. Adaptation to a new environment is problematic in some animal species. The small animals like rabbit and pigs etc can better adopt to the new environment as compared to large animals like cattle etc. The food sources that are obtained from highly productive animals are of better quality as compared to those sources that are obtained from local breeds. In developed countries the small farmers even can bred highly productive rabbits, poultry etc.

·        The products that are produced from local breeds are of better quality. We can take the example of local ilberian pig that is involved in the better production of cured ham as compared to the white pig that is not local. The animals that are not much effective in the production of milk or meat are conserved or kept as they are involved in the production of high quality products. There are some products that don’t show much difference in case of intensive animals or local breeds like cheese that in case of obtained from local breeds just show apparent difference.