Abstract
The consistently low animal productivity and the limited consumption of beef and milk in tropical America restrict most of the population to predominantly cereal diets, low in animal proteins. A major political, economic, and social effort should be made to examine the possibilities for producing and consuming more animal protein. The tropics are rich in plant resources, for the most part not edible by man (1), that can be used either for industrial purposes or for conversion into animal products via the raising of cattle, sheep, and goats that can feed on a wide variety of plant materials. From 60 to 70% of a total of 1,680 million hectares in tropical America is in pasture, or is potential pasturage area. This represents a tremendous source of feed for ruminant animals. Furthermore, tropical America has over 400 million bovines, over 140 million sheep, and nearly 38 million goats, all invaluable animal resources (2).
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© 1976 Plenum Press, New York
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Chicco, C.F. (1976). Increasing the Production of Ruminants in Tropical America. In: Scrimshaw, N.S., Béhar, M. (eds) Nutrition and Agricultural Development. Basic Life Sciences, vol 7. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-2883-4_33
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-2883-4_33
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