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The northeastern region (NER) of India is characterized by a high proportion of tribal people for whom pig keeping is integral to their way of life; over a quarter of all India’s pigs are in the NER. Assam is the major state; it has the largest human population (27 million) and the biggest pig herd (over 1.5 million). The increasing demand for animalsource foods in the NER and in India generally, matched with the current low productivity of the NER pig population, suggests that well-targeted interventions to improve pig production could deliver significant livelihood benefits for tribal and other marginalized groups in the region. This context led to the study reported here which appraised the state’s pig sub-sector in order to:(i) build a comprehensive understanding of the pig systems in Assam through a participatory process involving key stakeholders and (ii) identify entry points for effective public-and private-sector interventions in the pig sub-sector in order to improve livelihoods and generate employment.

By its very nature, an appraisal does not set out to provide definitive answers but rather to identify key issues that are likely to be responsive to development interventions or that require research to fill the gaps in knowledge. Therefore, the appraisal applied two complementary methods: a review of secondary information from or relevant to Assam and the collection of primary data through semi-structured interviews. The interviews were carried out between September and December 2006 at district, village and household levels with consumers, market agents, producer households and district-and village-level key informants in Dhemaji, Golaghat, Kamrup …