Livestock Potentials to Income and Poverty Alleviation in Rural Uganda.

      Аннотация: Over 85% of Uganda’s population lives in rural areas, where agriculture is the major contributor to livelihoods. Activities include arable farming with 29.7% of the total land, livestock pasture taking 21.2%, total water surface for fishing 18.2% while forest and woodland 7%. The importance of livestock has been widely acknowledged within agriculture however, inadequate attention has been put on the smallholder livestock keepers who own over 90% of the livestock in the country. Little or no attempts were made to assess the extended contributions of livestock to the households in monetary terms and on how it affects poverty situation of the rural households. Fighting poverty in the rural sector requires increased rural household income as a pillar. Therefore, a policy that touches individual farmers by encouraging production for the market is recommended, if rural farmers are to benefit and transform the subsistence production into business that pays. This can be through training, promotion of cooperatives, provision of premiums and credit facilities. The government should take lead by eliminating governance and infrastructural bottlenecks that affects the smallholder producers.

Ключевые слова: Agricultural economics, Income and Poverty Reduction