"The assessment builds on the work of the Livestock, Environment and Development (LEAD) Initiative"--Pref.

The study considers the most efficient means of satisfying the growing demand for pork, poultry and dairy products in China's large municipalities and discusses the major issues hampering the development of the sector. These constraints include difficulties in making the transition from an administered to a market system; price distortions due largely to the scope of consumer and producer subsidies; insufficient reliance on interregional and international trade to solve problems of feed and livestock product supply; lack of functional specialization within the industry; and various weaknesses of support services and the sectoral management structure. The report reviews the recent developments in China's livestock production, the organization of the sector, the emergence of Agricultural Trade Markets (ATMs) in large cities as a result of 1985 policy reforms, and influences determining future growth of urban demand for livestock products. Each component of the industry is examined in detail, including feed supply and processing, livestock and poultry breeding, animal health and veterinary services, alternative production systems and product processing.

Informed livestock sector policy development and priority setting is heavily dependent on a good understanding of livestock production systems. In a collaborative effort between the Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Livestock Research Institute, stock has been taken of where we have come from in agricultural systems classification and mapping; the current state of the art; and the directions in which research and data collection efforts need to take in the future. The book also addresses issues relating to the intensity and scale of production, moving from what is done to how it is done. The intensification of production is an area of particular importance, for it is in the intensive systems that changes are occurring most rapidly and where most information is needed on the implications that intensification of production may have for livelihoods, poverty alleviation, animal diseases, public health and environmental outcomes. A series of case studies is provided, linking livestock production systems to rural livelihoods and poverty and examples of the application of livestock production system maps are drawn from livestock production, now and in the future; livestock's impact on the global environment; animal and public health; and livestock and livelihoods. This book provides a formal reference to Version 5 of the global livestock production systems map, and to revised estimates of the numbers of rural poor livestock keepers, by country and livestock production system.