Farming systems research is an innovative approach to address the problems of resource poor farmers in less developed countries. FSR stemmed largely from the pioneering work of Collinson and that of Norman. The primary objective of FSR is to improve the well being of individual farming families by increasing productivity of their farming system. However, the work on FSR conducted in various international institutes is focussed by and large on crop systems. Multiple roles of livestock are analyzed in this paper with reference to Indian. They include (a) livestock as a source of food (b) as a source of power (c) as a source of manure (d) as a source of capital (c) risk against insurance (f) in the context of environmental stability; etc.