Global distribution of ruminant livestock production systems V5 (5 minutes of arc)

Livestock may be raised primarily for subsistence or local sales, or may be raised to supply international markets with large quantities of produce. The scale, purpose and nature of livestock enterprises is known as the production system. Ruminant livestock – such as cattle, buffaloes, sheep and goats –generally dependent directly on the environment in which they live for fodder and feed resources though some are raised or finished in feed lots. Their production systems therefore are largely determined by agro-ecology and land-use, but also influenced by capital investment, degree of specialisation and whether they are raised on grasslands, feedlots or as part of mixed crop-livestock farming systems. Seré and Steinfeld (1996) developed a farm-level ruminant systems classification based on the origins of feed, stocking rates, amount of irrigation and length of growing period. Spatial variables were found to proxy these factors and used to cast these systems to a map for the developing world by Thornton et al. (2002). This original map has been continually developed, as described in Robinson et al. (2011), resulting in the current Version 5 of the Global Ruminant Production Systems (GRPS 5). This classification is widely used; finding applications in the fields of food and nutrition security; livelihoods and economic growth; human and animal health and welfare; and natural resources and environment.