First-ever livestock census indicates huge downturn

An historic livestock census in Afghanistan shows that livestock, devastated by four years of drought and many more of war, could take up to 10 years to regenerate naturally, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). "It is the first-ever livestock census in Afghanistan," Etienne Careme, an FAO information and liaison officer, told IRIN from the Afghan capital, Kabul, adding that an earlier exercise, conducted by the FAO in 1995, had been just a "survey". "The particularity of the 2003 livestock census is that it is a census," Careme explained, pointing out that the collected data covered 3,044,670 families in 53,214 communities across 36,724 villages. Preliminary results show that there are 3.7 million head of cattle in Afghanistan, 8.8 million sheep, 7.3 million goats, 1.6 million donkeys, 180,000 camels, 140,000 horses and 12.2 million units of poultry, an earlier FAO press release said. Comparisons with earlier surveys showed that the number of farm animals per family had plummeted, it added, pointing to the number of cattle per family that had fallen from 3.7 in 1995 to 1.22 in 2003, while the number of sheep decreased sharply from 21.9 to 2.9 over the same period. "It is important to have a clear picture. The government of Afghanistan needed this information to have a better picture of what can be achieved in the future in terms of planning," Careme stressed. Livestock production is a major source of income and food for farmers and their families. For some, such as the Kuchi nomads, animals were the only source of income, the media release said, adding that the Kuchi tribes and other semi-nomadic pastoralists had been particularly hard hit by the drought in the provinces of Ghazni, Zabol, Kabul and Kandahar. About 60 percent of Kuchi households had lost all their livestock, it said. The US $780,000 project was funded by the government of Italy and carried out by the FAO, involving around 900 Afghan interviewers, the media statement said. "A team of 28 supervisors, 24 women surveyors and 821 enumerators were employed for the data collection," Careme said. The regeneration of the herds could be effected by ensuring that the animals were healthy and well-fed, and that there were adequate breeding males for artificial insemination available, he said. "In addition, animals are also being imported from neighbouring countries. Without adequate veterinary control, there is a risk of spreading infectious diseases such as foot-and-mouth disease and peste des petits ruminants [also known as goat plague], which could adversely affect the recovery of the national herd," Careme stressed, adding that the FAO strongly recommended increasing the capacity of public veterinary services to manage these risks. The final results of the census were expected early next year and would contain detailed data from household and gender surveys, the press release said.