In world agriculture, as well asgrowing of grain crops, livestock raising is almost everywhere widespread. At the same time, meadows and pastures occupy three times more land in the structure of land than arable land. The main part of livestock production is given by countries located in the temperate climate belt. First of all, the geography of world livestock production is determined by the conditions for the accommodation of livestock. At the same time, three branches of livestock breeding play a leading role in the development: cattle breeding, as well as pig and sheep breeding.
There is a big difference in developmentAnimal husbandry in developing and developed countries. In developed countries, the volume of animal husbandry prevails over agriculture and an intensive type of farming is used for it. In most developing countries, livestock production is a secondary industry and is conducted extensively. In developed countries, the improvement of the feed base, industrialization and selection in livestock breeding led to the fact that they achieved enormous success in its intensity. Because of this, livestock farming confronts them with the same problems as farming - there is overproduction of products. Therefore, the governments of such states are forced to pursue a policy of restraining and reducing production.
Cattle (in the world it is about 1.3billion heads) gives almost all the production of milk and more than a third of the production of meat. The most characteristic is the dairy direction for densely populated areas of North America and Europe, which are located in the forest and steppe zones of the temperate zone. Meat and dairy cattle breeding is widespread not only in these zones where there is intensive agriculture, but also in more arid regions, where there is much less manpower. Meat cattle breeding has gained its primary development in the arid regions of the subtropical and temperate zones. Such reasons for the spread of individual livestock sectors are determined not only by climatic conditions, but also by the availability of fodder for livestock.
The most dynamically developing industriesAnimal husbandry in modern times represents pig breeding. In the world now there are more than 800 million pigs. Success in the development of pig production led to the fact that the cost of pork is less than the cost of beef. It is important that pig production is possible not only in areas where grazing is carried out, but often carried out year-round in stalls using imported feed and food industry waste. However, the pasture content of pigs with sufficient land areas is poorly distributed due to the fact that it is much more profitable to develop such livestock sectors as cattle breeding and sheep breeding in these areas. In addition, pig production is practically absent in Muslim countries for religious reasons.
Pig breeding is usually closer todensely populated areas and to areas where potato growing and other industries for growing fodder products are developing intensively. Almost half of the total number of pigs in the world falls on the countries of Asia, primarily China. Other livestock sectors, particularly sheep breeding, also prevail in areas where there are extensive pastures. In regions with a more arid climate, as well as semi-desert and steppe pastures, fine-fleeced sheep breeding is more often conducted. In those areas where the softer climate and they are better provided with moisture, meat-sheep breeding predominates. The largest place in the world for the spread of sheep breeding is the semi-desert and steppe regions of Australia.
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