This study was performed in the Poroma community of the Oropeza Province, in the department of Chuquisaca. The Poroma community is characterized by a high poverty level among its members due to a number of different factors. Some of the major factors include: a restricted market, small farms, an absence of support systems, and a lack of support for agricultural development. This lack of support is seen in areas such as: research, roads, electricity, technical assistance, marketing systems, organization, and institutions that support rural development. Numerous studies on the production systems of farmers have described and analyzed the agricultural components but ignored the part livestock plays in the development of a rural production system. Due to this situation, this study has placed priority on the study of the livestock production system in the Poroma community. The objectives of this study are: to characterize and identify the components of the livestock production system; to establish the internal relations of the livestock production system; and to establish the relation between the livestock system and other systems present in the community. In order to accomplish the mentioned objectives, the participative research method was applied. The methods used are: Macro planning (participative prediagnosis) followed by case studies (micro planning). The techniques used to collect data are characterized as participatory. With these, we plan to involve farmers in the study. Some of the most important things are family and community workshops, participant observation, and informal discussions. The study investigated components of the livestock system such as: management, food, health, and production. Animal handling was observed to be completely free, like mating or birth, with men intervening very little in comparison to practices such as castration, branding, and grazing. The predominant race is the Creole. Delivery times are concentrated between the months of June and August (dry season) and November to December (rainy season). The main food source is the mountain where native species are used in regeneration. In general, the animals are browsers and the supplements provided are salt and bran. Only a few families control the health of their animals while the majority of families don’t control their health at all. This means that many problems exist with animal disease. The most common diseases in animals are: cattle: foot and mouth disease, anthrax, and diarrhea; sheep and goats: coenurosis; mules: angina; pigs: external parasites and cysticercosis; and birds: diarrhea. With respect to external parasites, the most severe in all the species are ticks and lice. The infrastructure for the animals in this area is not recommended because it does not offer the health conditions for their rusticity, let alone protect them from inclement weather. The products of the livestock system such as milk, meat, leather, manure, etc. are more commonly used for family consumption than for sale. The revenue earned by community members for this service is regular and is obtained at certain times of the year. Generally, they receive it at the beginning and end of each year as well as at fairs that are held in the area.

Lack of access to agricultural extension and advisory services is one of the major challenges facing emerging farmers in South Africa. The purpose of the study was to determine the level of access to extension and advisory services by emerging livestock farmers in uThungulu district municipality of KwaZulu Natal province. A survey design of face-to-face interviews was used to collect data using a structured questionnaire. A sample of 1 437 was randomly selected from 4 792 emerging livestock farmers in the district. A sampling fraction of 30% was used. Stratified sampling was used to determine the number of participants from each local municipality. The survey was conducted with different groups of emerging livestock farmers representing different age groups ranging from 18 years of age and older. Descriptive statistical analyses were performed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 23 software. The results showed that more than 90% of emerging livestock farmers in the district had better access to public extension compared with 14% who had access to private extension. On average, 30% of the respondents indicated that they also had access to extension and advisory services from agricultural cooperatives. With regard to extension delivery approaches, advisory was the main (43.5%) extension approach practised in uThungulu district municipality followed by project approach (37.8%), participatory approach (36.4%) and technology transfer at 11.1%. In conclusion, the involvement of private sector and cooperatives in rendering agricultural extension and advisory services in the emerging livestock sector was an indication that various stakeholders collaborate in the improvement of agriculture in the province. The emergence of project approach showed that extension agents or officers have become more target oriented rather than technology transfer driven. The use of participatory extension approach indicated that in the 21st century, farmer’s opinions were also taken into consideration in the delivery of agricultural extension and advisory services in the emerging livestock sector. It was recommended that there should be a wider partnership of extension and advisory services involving various stakeholders such as farmers, municipalities, non-governmental organizations and the private sector, to address and boost the efficiency of services to farmers in South Africa. Therefore, more work is required to increase access to extension and advisory services through cooperative associations by organizing emerging farmers in cooperative associations for the participatory approach to succeed / Agriculture, Animal Health and Human Ecology / M. Sc. (Agriculture)

The work elaborated in this thesis is developed for fulfilling the needs of the degreeproject for a Master of Science with major in Energy Systems, organized at the Facultyof Engineering and Sustainable Development at the University of Gävle, Sweden. Theaim of the work is to perform the sizing and simulation of a photovoltaic thermal(PVT) system a livestock farm. This work has been developed within the frameworkof the RES4Live H2020 project. In the introductory section, a background studyregarding energy use in the agricultural sector of the European Union (EU), focusingon livestock farms at the pilot site countries, and its breakdown to the energy vectorscontributing to the energy use is presented. Additionally, a literature review with amarket assessment of global PVT and concentrated photovoltaic thermal (CPVT)deployment along with a market assessment of renewable energy technologiesdeployed in farms, are both performed. The aim of the work performed is clarifiedthrough the presentation of the theoretical principles, the considered practicallimitations and the simulated results. In the theoretical part all the relevant aspects ofthe PVT technology as well as its suitability for electricity and heat generation andutilization in EU livestock farms are elaborated and discussed. Relevant technical andeconomic indicators against which different technologies can be compared areintroduced in this section. Next, the methodological approach followed in this thesisis presented. Several scenarios for the PVT system sizing are simulated in the dedicatedsoftware environment of Winsun. The obtained results are discussed. Conclusionsregarding the potential contribution of the elaborated approach towards thestandardization of the process of PVT systems’ deployment for meeting the needs ofEU livestock farms, are. The operating temperature and the collector area significantlyaffect the renewable share in covering the thermal energy needs of the farm. The useof a heat pump for covering the residual thermal demand within a net-meteringframework for the electricity produced by the PVT system was proved to very highdegrees of thermal self-sufficiency. Finally, the thesis discusses the environmentalimpact and sustainability of the approach for alignment with the SustainableDevelopment Goals (SDGs) #7 on “Affordable and Clean Energy” & #11 on“Sustainable Cities and Communities” of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda forSustainable Development. The thesis results suggest that the incorporation of PVTsystems in the context of livestock farms can significantly reduce fossil fuel demandfor meeting the thermal needs of the farm. PVT technologies and systems can bringaffordable and clean thermal and electrical energy to end-users in developed andemerging cities and communities around the globe and thus support the global energytransition and assist climate change mitigation actions.

This study was motivated by the realisation that the Eastern Cape Province is a leading producer of cattle, but few to none of those cattle makes it to auction markets. The study was conducted in the Elliot area, selected as an area with a high number of Land Redistribution for Agricultural Development farms, as well as private farms and communal farmers. Most of these farmers battled to sell their cattle to the auctions or abattoirs. The objective of the study was therefore to investigate challenges facing smallholder beef cattle famers and those factors which prevented them to access auction markets to sell their cattle in the Elliot area. The second was to assess the effectiveness of the Livestock Improvement Scheme in support of smallholder beef cattle farmers in terms of the outcome and achievements of training these individuals to become successful farmers. The last was to find out how beef cattle farmers benefited from the scheme. Both semi-structured interviews and an open-ended questionnaire were used to collect data. A sample size of 10 farmers (eight farmers from LRAD/private and two from communal farmers) was selected, and observation was done on the auctions and abattoirs available in Elliot. The study found that smallholder cattle farmers struggle to sell their stock through formal and informal markets, as they are faced with marketing constraints.Such marketing constrainst are lack of marketing information, drought, poor condition of cattle, lack of infrastructure, shortage of land for grazing, price takers, stock theft, transaction costs, problems with cattle identification, and lack of physical access to markets. The study has also made recommendations on how smallholder cattle farmers of Elliot can be developed to procure markets to sell their stock.

In this thesis, different types of PVT (photovoltaic-thermal collectors) for three different farms in Europe will be studied, as part of the RES4LIVE project from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Action programme. A suitable renewable energy system will be proposed for each farm, considering the temperature range requirement and the climate conditions in each farm. In addition, three simulation tools that will be used, namely, WINSUN, Collector Energy Performance Tool (CEPT) and Scenocalc, will be evaluated and compared. The PVT systems combine the production of electrical and thermal energy. The combination of these two technologies can result in higher electrical efficiency due to the cooling effect of the fluid in the thermal part. Other technologies that form part of this study include the concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) and concentrated photovoltaic thermal (CPVT) systems. There are two types of flat PVTs, unglazed and glazed. The advantages and disadvantages of each system will be disclosed in the section on literature review. In addition, the operation of the concentrated collectors have been compared with the flat PVT collectors. Three simulation tools are being compared in this project and the most widely used tool is Scenocalc, the free tool supported by the European Commission. In the results section, the inputs for each simulation tool are explained, starting with the weather files that were taken at the same time for all the simulation tools so that the outputs could be compared. These results will be shown numerically for each farm and compared in tables and represented in graphs to decide which one is best for each location. The outcomes have shown that Scenocalc has a very different thermal result compared with the other tools in the case of the flat collectors. On the other hand, WINSUN has resulted to be a suitable simulating tool for a first approach to the production of the different technologies. In the case of CEPT, this program is best fitted for concentrated collectors since it takes into account both the thermal and electrical IAMs, whereas Scenocalc only considers the thermal IAMs.