Technical assistance developments for fertility problems for Tunisian livestock systems: AIA and OEP cooperation

摘要

Several reasons offered Tunisia a series of extremely positive factors which justified the Italian public participation. Such factors are reassumed as follows: geographic vicinity, political stability, religious tolerance, affinity for Italy, a relatively free market with acceptable infrastructures and encouragement for investments. Secondly, we found that 50% of the working force in Tunisia is dedicated to agriculture. Thus, an Italian participation with its own technology and means in Tunisian agricultural development programs is opportune at this moment. It is important to emphasize that Tunisia is the only North African country member of 1C AR. It has therefore a system of control performances in accordance with the international rules. These controls are limited only to milk production and are not collected with appropriate mechanographic programs. This results in an enormous difficulty in supplying the breeders with the management systems to provide adequate technical assistance on the farms.Except for milk recording, Tunisia has no system of "herd book" of the milk breeds, in particular of the Holstein, capable of improving the present performance of the animals. Current animal production, in particular milk production, is not sufficient to satisfy the increasing local population's needs. Aware of the necessity to find suitable solutions in order to resolve these problems, after in-depth verifications, the "Office de FElevage et des Paturage" (OEP) of the Ministry of agriculture of Tunisia and the "Associazione Italiana Allevatori" (AIA) have convened to develop a common program for the development and strengthening of Tunisian cattle milk production, through the collaboration between Italy and Tunisia. The project called "Trasferimentodi Tecnologia nel Settore dell'Allevamento Bovino Holstein in Tunisia" was presented to the competent authorities, approved and co-financed by the two Governments. The project will last 24 months. The interventions decided for the project regard trainingof professionals, managers and technicians; sanitary and managerial technical assistance regarding raising, consolidation of the Herd Book of bovine milking in Tunisia, rationalization and automation of milk recording, consolidation and strengthening ofthe existent organization for Artificial Insemination. The project indicates as a first major macro-objective the aggregation of the milk breeders in Tunisia through the constitution of a cattle register respecting the directives established by the Tunisian Government, directives that are in line with those established by the European Community for the member States. The second important macro-objective regards the constitution of a Herd-book of the Holstein population in Tunisia through the mechanizedcollection of the productive, reproductive and morphologic breeding data to be carried out on the farms. The data will be then inserted in a centralized data bank. AIA will supply information programs to assemble collected data and to supply aggregateddata to the breeders in order to ensure a more correct and productive management of the herd.