Animal health care and ethnoveterinary animal remedies among smallholder farming households in South Africa

This brief article comments on the diminishing of indigenous knowledge associated with healing animal diseases, known as ethnoveterinary knowledge, among smallholder livestock farming households and the implications of this trend for the development and sustainability of small-scale agriculture. We base our argument on our contact with smallholder farmers in three rural provinces, where we had conducted surveys for a larger project. While recording the cost of production among smallholder livestock farmers, we were struck to find that most remedies were conventional ones and by the cost paid by the farmers for the remedies. Upon probing, it appeared that the use of ethnoveterinary medicines was diminishing due to the limited number of people who have this knowledge, among other factors. Here, we stress the importance of conserving indigenous knowledge and probing from the literature some of the potential drivers of this trend. We also discuss the broader implications for smallholder farmers and the rural development agenda.