AGRICULTURAL NEWS - The popularity of goats in developing countries can be attributed largely to their hardiness, their value as social currency, and the reduced risk associated with smaller animals compared with cattle.
This is according to Carina Visser and Esté van Marle-Köster of the Department of Animal and Wildlife Sciences at the University of Pretoria in their article, ‘Challenges to the development of a rural goat industry in South Africa’.
“More goats can be kept and cared for on a piece of land that may be able to support only one bovine,” they add.
According to the article, one of a collection published last year by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization after its European Regional Conference on Goats, goats are often seen as a form of ‘fluid capital’, as they can easily be sold to cover immediate expenses such as school fees or fodder purchases for the rest of the herd.
