Modeling livestock systems under tropical conditions with special reference to Indonesia
1982
Levine, J.M. (Resources Management International Inc., Sulawesi Tenggarra (Indonesia))
Two types of models are used, a biological and an economic model. The biological model traces the energy flow through the plant-animal system, and the economic model reports on cash flows and calculates internal rates of return. Most biological and economic models reported in the literature are of improved systems and cannot simulate conditions of nutritional stress, extreme patterns of weight loss and gain, and reduced fertility that are common in the tropics. The scarcity of good tropical animal data makes it difficult to develop a biological model, but one example of such a model developed with the data from the tropics is discussed. Triangular distributions of estimated values of unknown technical coefficients may be used in tropical economic modeling if it is understood that output is dependent on assumptions made. Nine agroclimatic zones in Indonesia are identified, and the availability of livestock data is discussed. The basic investment in good data collection in these zones must be made if development is to proceed efficiently. Simple biological or economic models of village smallholder systems can be a powerful aid to development planning once the proper data are available.
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