Cattle were domesticated 6,000 to 10,000 yr ago and have contributed greatly to human welfare. Important developments in agricultural history are specialized dairy breeds together with the necessary feed base and nutrition technology. Milk is a highly nutritious fooda perfect complement to cereal based diets. World-wide the average ratio of humans to cows milked is 20, ranging from about 5 in Oceania and USSR to 125 in mainland China. Milk produced per capita averages 98 kg, ranging from less than 1 kg in Indonesia to 765 kg in Oceania. Productivity per cow ranges from 333 kg in Africa to 4,560 in North America.
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H. J. Hodgson (1979) studied this question.
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