GOAT-SAT: Earth observation for weather-smart worm control

Goats are crucial to livelihoods across rural Africa. They are widely used as a source of food, income, and provide a safety net in the face of crop failure. Climate change is increasing variation in growing conditions, and goats especially have a key role to play in building resilience in rural communities, while enhancing soil fertility and enabling sustainable use of sensitive environments. Ability to realise these benefits is strongly constrained by disease. Endemic parasite infections that debilitate animals and undermine survival and productivity are ubiquitous, but symptoms can be predicted and mitigated. The availability of tools to predict outbreaks of parasitic disease is currently limited and regular whole-herd antiparasitic drug treatments are logistically and financially out of reach for most small farmers. Similarly, drug interventions are prone to failure through drug resistance, and chemistries used have known off-target ecological impact.

The current application aims to combine state-of-the-art remotely sensed rainfall data with climate-driven models of parasite biology to generate disease risk forecasts, and to transform them into effective decision support tools for farmers and supporting organisations. This will enable proactive assessment of regional livestock disease and nutritional risks to support livelihoods and resilience to climate change.

The main outcome will be a disease forecasting tool to help alert farmers to period of high risk and stimulate timely application of targeted treatment approaches and nutritional intervention. Projections of epidemiological risks and benefits across Africa and how they are changing will inform policy makers of areas at risk and help them to focus efforts appropriately and provide good advice. As a result of this project, tools will be created for rapid evaluation of and adaptation to disease and nutrition threats throughout Africa, to support sustainable production and food security in the poorest areas.

The project directly addresses the UKRI Global Challenge Area "Equitable access to sustainable development", specifically by targeting its first sub-priority: secure and resilient food systems. Parasite infection, especially by gastrointestinal nematodes, is the dominant production-limiting disease of grazing livestock worldwide. Infections are endemic, difficult to control effectively, and disproportionately affect small farmers who have limited access to advice and drugs. Excessive reliance on chemical treatment has led to widespread drug resistance, while climate change makes infection increasingly hard to predict. We showed in previous work that targeted selective treatment of parasites can be applied by resource-poor smallholder farmers; predicting risk would help them further by focusing monitoring and treatment, and to refine and apply local solutions that simultaneously improve nutrition, leading to better integration of plant and animal production on smallholder farms. Outcomes will be improved animal health and production, impacting directly on rural livelihoods; the project seeks also to map those positive livelihood impacts.