Livestock genetic resources and production systems: a mediterranean overview

Abstract

The Mediterranean Region is one of the oldest and historically one of the most prosperous cradles of agriculture. Throughout the centuries, cycles of prosperity and rural decline have been linked to the economic situation of society. From an agricultural point of view, the eco-environmental concept is flanked to that of the single geopolitical one, which includes major social-economic factors; on this basis, it would be possible to define the zone around the Mediterranean Sea as a relatively homogenous. This zone corresponds to a rich and complex historic and cultural system in which agriculture has always been carried out in difficult natural conditions: irregular seasons and rainfall, soil erosion, and pronounced reliefs, as an association of certain traditional dryland plants like the olive tree, the vine and the palm with cereals and dry pulses. The cow and sow have always been the main animal resources of Central and Northern Europe, as the ewe and goat have been of the Mediterranean, traditionally raised for the production of milk which was then transformed into typical local products. Even today, in this zone, products from small ruminants are more appreciated than the derivatives of obtained cow’s milk. In particular, products from multiple purpose breeds of the small ruminant species present, are largely characteristic of the animal types that have accompanied man during the last 100 centuries. These breeds supplied food (milk and meat), clothes (wool and leather) and fertilizer from dung. The existence of sheep and goats in ancient European and civilizations of the Near East, was already evident in the third millennium BC when animal images began to appear in paintings, incisions, scriptures and artistic representations. Improvement of agricultural and livestock production methods can best be obtained through the balanced utilization of traditional systems and more advanced technologies, without underestimating the possible damage and immediate impact which application of the very modern plant and animal techniques could rapidly have on the quality of the environment. The evolution of traditional extensive systems towards more intensive ones, should not be introduced by force nor by too much planning; in many cases, this violates the principle and role of the traditional raising of livestock which has survived for centuries with satisfactory results.