**2. The contribution of bovine livestock production to global food security in the high, medium and low income countries**

Cattle production could be practiced under the intensive, semi-intensive and extensive or range management systems. The beef and dairy cattle could also be managed under the mixed crop-livestock production system.

In high income countries, livestock keeping and production is mainly practiced under the intensive system and few farmers are involved [6]. Long term structures are used and the structures and building infrastructure are usually highly capital intensive. There is usually the use of exotic and high producing breeds of beef and dairy cattle. The production is usually defined as to either beef cattle production or dairy cattle production, and there is not a combination of these two. In the developed countries of the world, countries such as the United States of America, Holland and Argentina, production is highly specialized. Farming in the high income countries may involve land use regulations which may lead to high housing prices which are not affordable for the middle and low income countries households [7]. Economic opportunities for income generation intensive livestock production in the developed world usually involve a fewer number of people as compared to the larger numbers engaged in keeping livestock in the middle and low income nations [6]. Some

### *Impact of Beef and Milk Sourced from Cattle Production on Global Food Security DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.99322*

previous researchers [8] also pointed out that livestock keeping in all the three of high, middle and low income regions may be associated with other benefits related to leisure, recreation, tourism, education and inspirational opportunities.

In the low and middle income countries, majority of the households that keep livestock were reported [9] to have access to high consumption of livestock derived food such as bovine meat and milk than others who were not involved in livestock farming. In some of the low and medium income countries, about 40% of the livestock derived food was found to be obtained through importation from other countries rather than being sourced locally [9]. However, there is the need to continue to increase the local and global livestock production sectors, and also to have the plan to develop the small holder livestock production inclusive policies [9].

In the low and middle income nations, the international trade markets offer alternative means of meeting the nutritional need of the populace. Trade based strategies such as cross-border food supply networks are employed. Also, the net-exporting countries have been known to step down their food export during the times of food scarcity and thus posing increased threat of food unavailability to the net-importers [10]. Thus, the increased production of livestock derived food such as beef and dairy products, alongside the importation of food products from high income countries could be found to be an adequate strategy to meeting up with the increasing food demand and food insecurity in the low and middle income nations [11].
