Building and scaling up knowledge on camelids

Abstract

At present, llamas and alpacas play an important role in the food security of populations living in high Andean areas and they also provide fibre, leather and meat. This alternative livestock is extremely important not only in arid regions of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador and Peru, but also in other countries that have discovered their economic potential, such as Australia, New Zealand, North America and Canada. In South America, production management is not efficient and does not generate income; they are subsistence economies. In the new globalised world it is relevant to achieve highly efficient livestock production to help territorial development without loss of identity. To such an end, we must take into account the vast experience and the great deal of information available for the last 20 years as well as the poor access to such information by the Andean communities. To begin to address these limitations, the International Agricultural Development Fund, the Biodiversity Foundation and other institutions have organised, since 2003, three editions of the ‘World Congress on Camelids’, with the next one to be held in Chile (12 November). Its aim is to achieve coexistence and communication between the different sectors so that there is consistency between economic, social, human and cultural issues.

The next stage will be to build a 2.0 website where all actors can actively interact through chat, blogs, social networks and forums, among other things. It will also provide a library including digitised material (Wiki), and allow for on-line training and the fostering of successful rural innovations. The project goal is to build, systematise and manage the day-to-day experience and technical knowledge in order to distribute such collective information (scaling up) trying to develop an alternative livestock production so as to achieve a productive and sustainable world in which camelid breeders are included.