The Fallacy of Declining a Ride 'Pon Cow Back': Policy and Technology Options for Exploiting Livestock as Development Vehicle for Caribbean Economies

Cattle have historically played a significant role in human development since the taming and domestication of the first Auroch; the wild ancestor of today's bovines. The temperate countries; which have been authenticated as the historical locus of this initial domestication 10,000 years BCE; continue to retain their historical, natural advantage in cattle production. They therefore also continue to enjoy their historical head-start in terms of wealth creation for their several populations. Myriad technological developments, particularly during the past sixty years, have provided opportunity for developing countries to adequately mitigate the constraining effects of the tropical environment. The potential for vastly improved productivity and competitiveness in cattle production in the tropics has therefore remained largely unrealized. The author contends that this failure has been the result, not of non-availability of appropriate technologies, but largely their non-accessibility, due to deficiencies in public policy resulting in the failure to remove the several structural impediments to technology adoption. This provides the underlying thesis of this compilation of papers which he and his colleagues have authored/presented over the past decade.