ArticleTropical animal health and production2025
Comparative analysis of Feedlot and Free-range cattle management on Botswana beef quality: a study of sustainability, post-mortem examination, and SWOT analysis.
Article in Tropical animal health and production, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Applying social entrepreneurship to One Health and climate education: a retrospective analysis of pre- and post-course survey data for a One Health and Global Food Security course.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2026Article
- The beef terroir: moving from a commodity and its role in human evolution to a new paradigm of health, epigenetics, and sustainability: a review.Frontiers in nutrition · 2026Review
- Interconnection between pastures, grazing ecosystem, animal welfare, meat quality, and human health.Animal frontiers : the review magazine of animal agriculture · 2025Article
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5 authors.
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Abstract
African agriculture faces triple threats of climate change, population growth and inequality, necessitating sustainability research in agriculture that comprehensively examines social, economic, environmental, and socio-political trade-offs. To examine sustainable beef production in Botswana, this study used a mixed-method approach to explore Feedlot and Free-range cattle management systems. First, competing but overlapping factors of environmental, economic, and social sustainability in beef production were identified from literature review, and a conceptual framework for sustainability was used to assess the trade-offs inherent in both management systems. Second, abattoir post-mortem examinations were used to compare 25 feedlot cattle and 22 free-range cattle across standard factors including: carcass dress mass (CDM), carcass grade, fat colour, conformation, dentition, carcass and offal postmortem decisions, and reasons for the decisions. Lastly, sustainability trade-offs for feedlot and free-range cattle management were compared through a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunity, and Threats (SWOT) analysis. Sustainability assessment showed that feedlots rely on imported grains like corn and soybean, increasing producers' uncertainty as an increasingly turbulent world affects grains availability and pricing. Free-range pasture systems, on the other hand, rely on rainfed agriculture (and often communal lands), which are increasingly challenged by the intersections of climate change, overgrazing and issues of land access. Feedlot animals had a significantly higher CDM (p = 0.0001) at 237.56 kg ± 6.98 (Mean ± SEM) compared to 184.50 kg ± 7.44 for Free-range cattle and higher incidences of red offal condemnation rates (lung, liver, and spleen) (p < 0.05) compared to free-range cattle. Free-range cattle had higher green offal condemnation rates specifically large tripe (p = 0.026) compared to feedlot cattle. SWOT analysis confirmed the trade-offs in several factors including carcass weight, feed costs, and climate change impacts. The conceptual framework for sustainability, postmortem findings and SWOT analysis reveal cattle farming challenges and trade-offs that must be made to address disease burdens, animal nutrition, and productivity in Botswana.
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