The Andalusian Federation of Goats Purebred “CABRANDALUCÍA” was established on 24th February, 2005 as an initiative of bringing together and coordinating all activities and projects undertaken by the goat breeders association in Andalucía.
By David R. Yáñez-Ruiz, CSIC
It is currently composed of six associations: Murciano-Granadina, Malagueña, Florida, Payoya, Blanca Andaluza and Negra Serrana. They include about 300 farms with goats and a census of more than 101,000 dairy goats. Such holdings are spread throughout the Andalusian region. Andalusia has over 1,100,000 dairy goats, representing approximately 40% of the national census. With over 235 million liters of milk, it is the largest producing area, with 50% of the Spanish production, which shows the importance of this species in Andalusia.
The main objectives of the Federation are:
- The representation, management and defense of the particular interests of the ssociations which is comprises, representing them in meetings that are conducted to collective bargaining, the approach of collective labor disputes, social dialogue and institutional participation in public organizations within labor administrations.
- The conservation and improvement of the goat breeder associations that constitute it.
- Promoting goat breeds represented.
- Access to all types of grants of local, provincial, regional and national character and in the European Union aimed at the preservation, enhancement and promotion of goat breeds in question.
- Promote professional, educational and cultural development in order to maintain and increase the level of preparedness and operational efficiency, optimizing the communication vehicles and systems around us.
- Contribute to the defense and promotion of economic and social interests which they represent.
CABRANDALUCIA develops many activities to achieve such objectives. Probably the most important is the organization of the Spanish National Goats Forum, which every year gathers specialists in goat production systems from many parts of the sector: farmers, nutritionists, veterinaries, cooperatives, policy makers, etc. This year the forum was held in Seville and dealt with issues such as the challenge of addressing aflatoxin contamination in feeds and milk and the opportunity in the sector to expand in new markets such as China and India, where an increasing demand of goats milk is occurring.
As part of the SOLID project CABRANDALUCIA’s role involved assisting and working together with colleagues at CSIC to undertake the rapid assessment tool as an exercise to evaluate the sustainability of ten dairy goat farms in Andalusia. This also included
holding two farmers’ meetings to discuss the outcomes from the assessment and to identify future research priorities within the project. As a result, CABRANDALUCIA and CSIC organized a one day workshop on ‘Nutritional strategies for the Dairy Goat sector’ at the Institute of Animal Nutrition (CSIC, Granada, 12 March 2013) where 125 people (including
farmers, advisors, scientists and local policy makers) attended.
We are currently involved in conducting the on-farm trials as part of WP 1 and 3 to evaluate the feasibility of introducing agro-industrial by-products in dairy goat feeding.