**Goat System Productions: Advantages and Disadvantages to the Animal, Environment and Farmer Disadvantages to the Animal, Environment and Farmer**

**Goat System Productions: Advantages and** 

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.70002

António Monteiro, José Manuel Costa and Maria João Lima Maria João Lima Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

António Monteiro, José Manuel Costa and

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.70002

#### **Abstract**

Goats have always been considered very useful animals. Goats success is related to its excellent adaptability to the difficult mountain conditions, extreme weather and low value feed acceptance, versatile habits and high production considering their size. These are some reasons because goats are among the first animals to be domesticated. In terms of evolution, goats could be separated by their dispersion area in three large groups: the European, the Asian, and the African. Global goat populations, mainly in Africa and in Asia, have increased for centuries but very strongly in the past decades, well above the world population growth. They are also used for forest grazing, an integrated and alternative production system, very useful to control weed growth reducing fire risk. Despite some exceptions, no large‐scale effort to professionalize this industry has been made so far. There are consumers for goat dairy products and there is enough global production, but misses a professional network between both. Regarding goat meat, the world leadership also stays in Africa and Asia, namely in China, and there is a new phenomenon, the spreading of goat meat tradition through Europe due to migrants from Africa and other places with strong goat meat consumption.

**Keywords:** goats, production systems, milk, meat

#### **1. Introduction**

Goats were among the first farm animals to be domesticated. According to Ref. [1], goats have been linked to humans for at least 10,000 years. Due to their great adaptability to difficult environment conditions and to different diets, they have always been considered very useful animals for their good productivity and easy to handle and they do not compete with man for food and eat cheap feeds.

Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons

In the last 50 years, global goat populations have increased by about 240%, while other livestock species have maintained or decreased their populations. Currently, there are about 1 billion goats around the world. More than 90% are located in Asia and Africa and only 1.8% in Europe. While in the countries, where goat production is massive, high adaptability to the environment is one of the main breed characters, in the developed countries, most of the goats are of genetically selected breeds for high production [2].

In rural areas of developing countries, the contribution of goats is highly valued and has an important role in feeding the populations, an item that is often not adequately recognized when comparing goats with sheep and cattle. In fact, goats are extremely intelligent animals, very agile, and independent, with a high level of resistance to diseases, much better than other ruminant species.

Despite the fact that in recent decades there has been a great progress in research aimed at increasing the goat productivity, there is still a great work to be done, namely in the applicability of the different races to the different environmental realities of the underdeveloped and developing countries. In these areas, the current and potential importance of goat production combined with the use of breeds that have not yet been fully selected and exploited will certainly be a reality in the near future. At both local and macroeconomic levels, goats will certainly be an animal production that will enhance the livelihoods and sustainable development of the world's poorest populations [3].
