Abstract
The ideal small-scale rabbit production model (SSRPM) represents an alternative and self-supporting system, based on renewable farm resources, that embodies the greatest potential for achieving a favourable, sustained impact (chiefly nutritional and economic) on limited-resource farm families who are mostly from the lesser-developed countries. The objective of this paper is to address major issues and factors that influence the degree of impact from the three-tiered SSRPM as a development project planning tool. Sustainability issues of meat rabbit production profoundly depend on ecological (e.g., renewable natural or on-farm resources), economical (e.g., investment and operating costs and market outlets), and sociological (e.g., gender sensitivity and community participation) aspects as external factors of the SSRPM. Intermediate factors that support or guide the SSRPM involve the dimensions of project development: feasibility, design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation. Internal factors that influence SSRPM components (i.e., genetics, materials for housing and equipment, diet quality, health management, and other factors) are likewise critical. In summary, as rabbit scientists, we should share a common mission of promoting appropriate - environmentally-friendly, economically sound, and socially acceptable - SSRPM’s, designed to meet the forecast of increasing pressures on natural resources and greater demands for food for the rising world population. In this mission, if success is realized, we can claim that meat rabbit production, in part, indeed sustained humanity.