**6.1 ASF pathway**

It is regularly quoted that 'livestock products provide one-third of humanity's protein intake'; this broad estimate, based on FAOSTAT23 data, came from [40]. ASFs also offer a resilient source of nutrition during seasonal or climatic fluctuations in the availability of plant-sourced foods. As ASF are income elastic, the consumption of ASF by rural poor usually is supplied from their own production [41], and some studies done in Africa showed that livestock keepers are more likely to eat ASF than non-livestock keepers [42], although it is not always necessarily own-produced. For any effective intervention in improving nutrition through livestock, it is essential to thoroughly look into the linkage pathways between the two. Considering the positive links between livestock and human nutrition, the major linkage pathways are an increase in income, increased availability and accessibility of ASFs, provision of inputs like manure, traction, etc., and women empowerment. The direct pathway through which livestock contributes to human nutrition is by providing ASFs that

#### **Figure 1.**

*Diagram of impact pathways through which livestock can affect nutrition. Pathways identified during the workshop 'Livestock, livelihoods and human nutrition', Senegal, November 2014. Adapted from Dominiguez et al. [39].*

improve the diets of livestock rearing households. The role of ASF in human nutrition and its importance in diets are clearly discussed in the previous sections.
