Dr. Thomas R. Preston was born in Cumbria, north-west England, and brought up on the family farm. He was educated at Newcastle University and gained his D.Sc. from work done at the Rowett Research Institute, Aberdeen. He has spent the last 32 years, living and working in tropical developing countries, beginning in Cuba, and including extensive experience in Mexico, Dominican Republic, Ethiopia, Colombia and most recently in Vietnam. He is known in Britain as the inventor of the intensive barley - beef production system in the 60s. However, during his time in Cuba, at the height of the American blockade, he realized that intensive beef production based on cereals was not feasible economically while from the ecological viewpoint, the tropics offered much greater production potential in indigenous crops such as sugar cane. He has since devoted his time to developing feeding systems using locally available resources not competitive with human needs. He is the principal promoter of the idea of the University of Tropical Agriculture Foundation and  the coordinator of the program. 

Nguyen Van Lai: Vietnamese. Researcher and student of the present M.Sc. course at the University of Tropical Agriculture Foundation.  His B.Sc. is in Animal Husbandry and he has done work to determine the nutritive value of tropical plants as protein sources for pigs.  From 1991 to 1996 he was at the University of Agriculture and Forestry, Ho Chi Minh city, and did research with cassava leaf and roots as feeds for pigs. He presently is doing research on local feed resources for local pig (Mong Cai ) and exotic (Large White) pigs in small scale farming systems.  He is one of the staff members of the UTA Foundation. 

Useful web links 
http://www.cipav.org.co/lrrd/lrrdhome.html 
http://www.hcm.fpt.vn/inet/~lrrd 
LRRD (Livestock Research for Rural Development) is an international journal published electronically as a forum for exchange of knowledge on sustainable rural development. It is continually updated as papers are published immediately they are refereed and edited. 

http://www.hcm.fpt.vn/inet/~ecofarm 
This is a presentation of activities at an ecological farm doing research, training and demonstrations on sustainable agriculture 

http://www.hcm.fpt.vn/inet/~utaf 
UTAF stands for University of Tropical Agriculture Foundation.  This is an initiative directed towards developing more appropriate ways of facilitating learning about the strategy

The world population is growing very fast. In 1950 it was 2.5 billion and increased to 5.3 billion by 1990. The projections for 2030 show the world population rising to 8.9 billion. It is therefore a fundamental issue that any intervention involving livestock must be predicated on their synergistic role in benefit of the whole farming system rather than as producers of meat, milk or eggs using feeds which are in competition with human needs. 

The tropics present great opportunities for sustainable development thanks to the enormous cultural and biological riches of these regions. The rational exploitation of local feeds and local breeds of livestock will support much more sustainable production systems in the medium and long term. These have received insufficient attention in the past and have not been considered seriously because of the introduction of "exotic" systems based on high inputs, high technology and "breeds of high genetic merit". As a result, local breeds in many tropical countries have disappeared or their population is decreasing drastically. 

Various studies demonstrate that the appropriate use of local feed resources and indigenous livestock breeds requires close integration between crops and livestock within the system. The excreta is recycled on the farm to produce energy and the effluent is used for fertilizer to produce protein supplements for the livestock. 

A strategy should be developed useful for poor people. They face several problems such as: lack of credit, land, livestock and appropriate technologies or wrong technology transfer, lack of technicians and research according to their reality and priorities and there is lack of people's participation in the development process. 

The complexity of the reality should make scientists think more carefully about the appropriate strategy that will get people out of poverty. Research in Asia of replications of the famous Bangladesh Grameen Bank micro-credit programs show that there is an ideal progression for farm families in the sub-continent, that even the poor aspire too. According to this experience poor women invest in small livestock and the household step by step gets out of poverty. There is a great and unmet challenge for research on local resources to cater to the needs of these people. 

Key words: Local feed resources, on farm research, recycling, biodigesters, genotype-environment interactions, indigenous knowledge, local breeds, integrated farming systems, women, poverty, small livestock