Description: The data contains household demographic and income and spending data, household information on livestock kept, animal healthcare practices, animal diseases dealt with, and knowledge around animal health and disease.

The data set consists of 85 cases and 665 variables. Abstract: This study forms part of a larger ARC (Agricultural Research Council) project, which is aimed at developing vaccines for use by small-scale rural livestock communities, as part of the ARC/ OVI's (Onderstepoort Veterinary Institute) efforts to help farmers improve primary animal healthcare practices, which (through the control of animal diseases) is considered a crucial link to improving overall household food security in rural livestock keeping communities. The study focused on 2 rural livestock-keeping communities along the Limpopo/ Mpumalanga border, in the areas of Marble Hall and Rhenosterkop (respectively).

The quantitative component of this study explored issues in small-scale livestock farming including the gendered dimensions of farming and household labour practices; household farming and economic activities; issues around primary animal healthcare (including preventative healthcare practices of farmers, perceptions of healthcare services by the state, knowledge of animal healthcare practices, disease knowledge and knowledge of disease prevention and treatments, and use of and understandings around vaccines), household economics and household food security.

We administered face-to-face survey questionnaires to small-scale farmers in order to provide a descriptive demographic profile and understanding of the following: an understanding of farmer households in relation to education; use of agricultural land; household socio-economic conditions; livestock quantity across goats, sheep, cows, pigs and chickens; animal diseases prevalent in the areas; record keeping in relation to births, sale and deaths of animals; and training needs of farmers) and a set of questions related to farm activities and facilities (who manages day-to-day activities, land questions, household income, household and farming assets, types of household farming, sale and consumption of farming products, recordkeeping in relation to animal deaths and births, etc.); knowledge related to animal disease causation, animal healthcare and preventative animal healthcare practices; animal health practices and understandings; training and other assistance needs; as well as household food security and diet.

The final dataset for the survey comprises 85 completed survey questionnaires made up according to the following gender split:

85 in total, split (almost) evenly between the Rhenosterkop (/Siyabuswa) and Marble Hall areas

76 percent male and 34 percent female farmers

A few key limitations need to be highlighted in order to contextualise the results of this study.

The small sample size of this study means that results are not provincially representative or representative of municipalities

Some ambiguities in the survey questionnaire indicate that data must be treated with caution

High levels of non-responses were experienced for some sections of the survey questionnaire

Reporting on household income questions was problematic as is often the case in self-reported survey data.

Face-to-face interview

The study focused on 2 rural livestock-keeping communities along the Limpopo/ Mpumalanga border, in the areas of Marble Hall and Rhenosterkop (respectively).

An initial preparatory meeting was held with a selection of members of the small-scale livestock farming community, facilitated by an OVI researcher who is familiar with the farming communities featured in this study and who works with the farmers, state veterinarians and Animal Health Technicians. The meeting with the farming community briefed members about the research that was scheduled to take place. The animal health practitioners then enabled access to various livestock farmers/ keepers on the basis mainly of convenience, but also in keeping with a representative gender spread.

We selected small-scale farmers and households to be interviewed, without aiming for an equal split between male and female livestock farmers. Instead, we wanted our sample to reflect the skewed gendered participation in livestock keeping in the areas.