My thinking is that smallholder livestock production gas emissions might be different from the developed countries livestock production gas emissions. Due to type of feeding, feed resources, animals species and possible the differences in the prevailing environmental temperatures might influence livestock gas emission. Do adapted species produce the same amounts of gases that the introduced exotic species, biological mechanisms. The purpose (dairy, meat, eats, etc) of production of an animal in relation to gas emissions should be quantified. There is a misnomer with climate change science, scientists unanimously agree that climate change and variability will greatly affect the poor countries (livestock & crop production) however despite this acknowledgement resources are channeled to developed countries to study climate change ignoring the potential catastrophic implications in poor countries. Africa itself generalization of climate change effects is improper, as you compare North, Central and Southern Africa. Lets have a larger proportion of this study taking into account poor countries with representation of continents.
Good luck
This issue has largely been addressed at this year EAAP conference (http://www.eaap2018.org/#programme). The organizers intend to upload the different presentations in the next few days, so please visit regularly the web page of the congress.
I believe the most important issue is that ruminants in many less-developed systems have low output of products (meat and milk), so the amount of GHGs produced per unit of food product is very high. There are many reasons for the lower productivity and these animals typically have high local value as family-owned resources that produce food and provide power for farming and transport. It is not a simple problem, but it is clear that their output of GHGs is a global issue. There do not seem to be major differences among breeds with a species.
Jack
Can you further elaborate on the low output of products (meat and milk), so the amount of GHGs produced per unit of food product is very high. This implies that less developed production systems contribute more of this GHGs than intensive production systems ?.
One can measure GHG output in several ways. Now the focus is more on output per unit of product that can be consumed (liter of milk, kg of meat, number of eggs, kg of wool, etc. Countries or farms or families with lower output of product per animal generate more GHG per unit of consumable product. For example, lowest GHG per kg of milk protein is in countries with highest yield per cow. GHG output per kg of milk protein is about 7-fold greater in Sub-Saharan Africa than in North America.
I think tropical temperature also influences on rumnant's intake capacity, more the fact that tropical forages are richer in fiber and have a high degree of lignification compared to temperate forages. All these parameters have some influences on GHG emissions.
Riana
Do we have any exact studies on the effect of high degree of lignification possibly (C4 vs C3) plants on GHG emissions, this might explain or shed light on the production systems.
@Never Assan
Direct comparisons of CH4 production from ruminants fed tropical forages vs temperate forages under the same experimental conditions are extremely rare; therefore, it may be unwise to generalize the results. That said, the meta analysis in the paper below may provide some useful results on this topic. This paper provides an analysis of data from several different studies and a comparison of methane production (L/kg Organic Matter Intake) from ruminants fed C3 grasses vs C4 grasses in relation to their nutritive composition:
Archimède, H., et al. 2011. Comparison of methane production between C3 and C4 grasses and legumes
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377840111001222
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