— Special Issue — Current status, challenges and the way forward for dairy goat production in Asia – conference summary of dairy goats in Asia

Abstract

Asia hosts more than half of the world’s 1 billion goats and is also where domestication of wild goats began. Goats, including dairy goats, are adapted to a wide variety of harsh environments and thus play key roles as providers of nutrition, food security and socioeconomic status to their human owners in many lowincome Asian countries. In many countries in Southeast and East Asia, medium and large scale commercial dairy goat farming can be profitable enterprises because of the high price of goat milk, and good demand due to its health and medicinal properties. In some Asian countries, dairy goats play important roles in noncommercial activities, including use as educational animals in elementary schools in Japan and show animals in Indonesia. Dairy goat farmers in Asia are faced with numerous challenges, such as a shortage of high producing animals adapted to the local environment, lack of quality feeds during a prolonged dry season, many diseases and difficulty getting their product to market, however, the increasing demand for goat milk in the newly developed and developed economies in Asia provides an optimistic future for dairy goat production in this region.