Tag Archives: CIAT

Agriculture / Animal Feeding / Cattle / Climate Change / Forages / PA / Report / Southeast Asia

Improving forage crops in livestock systems shows potential for reducing climate change

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Vietnamese farmers with cattle fodder. A report by CIAT says livestock systems that use improved forage crops reduce the effects of climate change (photo credit: ILRI/Werner Stür). Last week, AlertNet published an opinion piece highlighting recent research by the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) on how forage-based systems, which dominate agriculture in the tropics, … Continue reading »

Africa / BecA / Food security / HIV-AIDS / ILRI / Nutrition (human) / PA / South America / Tanzania

Guinea pigs for African tables? A ‘Cavy Innovation Platform’ is set up in Cameroon

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Cavies (aka guinea pigs) in a special pig pantry off the side of a kitchen in Peru (photo on Flickr by Emile Hardman/QuintanaRoo). Could guinea pigs be a new protein source in Africa? In a special report  on ‘Solutions for a hungry world’ by AlertNet, Emma Batha describes how the raising of guinea pigs (Cavia porcellus), also called … Continue reading »

Agriculture / Climate Change / CRP7 / ILRI / LivestockFutures / PA

New tool for determining future weather will help farmers adapt to climate change

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A youth sets out with his weeding tool for his family’s sorghum plot in Katanga Village, near Fakara, in Niger (photo credit: ILRI/Stevie Mann). Philip Thornton, a scientist at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), who leads a research theme of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) on Data and … Continue reading »

Drought / Drylands / East Africa / Insurance / Kenya / PA / Pastoralism / PLE / Vulnerability

Kenyan herders cope with drought by buying livestock insurance

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Sake Dabasso Halake stands proudly in front of Equity Bank’s Marsabit branch. She smiles, clutching an envelope filled with 16,000 Kenyan shillings that she just received. It was her insurance payout for the 10 cows she lost during the drought. Photo on Flickr by Jeff Haskins. Jeff Haskins, director of the Nairobi office of Burness … Continue reading »

Africa / Agriculture / Asia / Caribbean / Climate Change / CRP7 / Food security / ILRI / Latin America / LivestockFutures / PA / PLE

Time Magazine and CGIAR say small poor farms + big climate change = ‘A PERFECT STORM’

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Time Magazine‘s Bryan Walsh reports this week on report and series of maps detailing where climate change and hunger are likely to intersect in future, with possibly devastating results unless the world’s agricultural researchers manage to help small-scale farmers ‘climate-proof’ their crops and livestock in the coming (drying, flooding) decades. The study was led by scientists … Continue reading »

Africa / Agriculture / Asia / Climate Change / Food security / Latin America

‘Gloomy’ future for agriculture in a much warmer world–climate change researcher Gerald Nelson

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Farmer Celeste Sitoe with her maize harvest in Lhate Village, outside Chokwe, in Gaza Province, southern Mozambique (photo credit: ILRI/Mann). The Associated Press today broke a story that researchers are predicting a ‘gloomy’ future for agriculture in the face of greater and faster warming of the world than expected. ‘. . . [O]n our current … Continue reading »

Animal Feeding / Climate Change / Colombia / Fodder / Forages / Latin America / Livestock

Colombia tests forage crops against climate change

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Colombia, with 24 million head of cattle, is showcasing two advances towards reducing the 13 percent of climate-changing gas emissions attributed to livestock production around the world. The key words in this endeavour: brachialactone and Lotus uliginosus. Brachialactone, a chemical compound discovered in this Andean country on the roots of the African Brachiaria humidicola, gives … Continue reading »

Africa / Agriculture / Asia / Directorate / Food security / ILRI / Latin America / PA / Pro-Poor Livestock / Research

‘Complex’ Third World animal agriculture and food security highlighted at Minnesota ‘UN General Assembly’

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A Gujjar child rests against her favourite buffalo on a trek in the Himalayan foothills; the Muslim transhumant Gujjar of northern India as well as Afghanistan and Pakistan are among the estimated one billion people worldwide who depend on livestock for their livelihoods (photo credit: ILRI/MacMillan). Both the Minnesota Post and Minnesota Public Radio News … Continue reading »

Africa / Agriculture / Asia / Food security / PA

Experts tackle world hunger worries

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Carlos Seré, one of three agricultural experts who spoke yesterday on a panel at the University of Minnesota about securing the global food supply (photo credit: University of Minnesota). ‘With 29 countries facing severe food shortages and the global population expected to increase over the next 40 years, experts have set a timeline to not … Continue reading »

Africa / Agriculture / Asia / Directorate / Food security / ILRI / Latin America / LivestockFutures / Markets / PA / PLE

Growing interest in utilizing smallholder farmers–Jarvis

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Andy Jarvis, of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, makes a presentation on ecosystem services in Colombia (photo credit: CIAT’s Neil Palmer). Andy Jarvis, who leads a Decision and Policy Analysis Program and runs a ‘Linking Markets to Farmers’ blog at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), based in Colombia, blogged yesterday about an … Continue reading »