Livestock presentations at Asian Society of Agricultural Economics Conference in Hanoi

Posted on 18 Oct 2011 by ILRI Communications • Leave a comment

From 13–15 October 2011, several staff of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) attended the 7th International Conference of the Asian Society of Agricultural Economists, in Hanoi, Vietnam. ILRI organized two parallel sessions: (1) Food safety policy in a developing-country context: Examples from case studies in livestock value chains (2) Assessing the impact of livestock research … Continue reading →

Agriculture / Article / Drylands / DRYLANDSCRP / Environment / Farming Systems / Food Security / Geodata / ILRI / NRM / Research / WLE

A BIG conversation starts on ways to increase food supplies while protecting environments and eradicating hunger

Posted on 14 Oct 2011 by Susan MacMillan • 3 Comments

An animated 3-minute video clip by the University of Minnesota’s Institute for the Environment. Justin Gillis has published an interesting piece this week in the Green Blog of the New York Times on a big study just published in Nature by Jon Foley, director of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota. … Continue reading →

Agriculture / Drought / East Africa / Film and video / Food Security / Kenya / Vulnerability

Small farmers are productive farmers, if given the right support–de Schutter

Posted on 4 Oct 2011 by Susan MacMillan • Leave a comment

Watch this 6-minute ILRI film about a previous drought that devastated much of East Africa in 2008–2009. In Kenya, the Kitengela Maasai pastoral rangelands south of Nairobi, and the hot and dry crop-livestock farming district of Kitui further east, experienced many of the worst effects, including reports of the deaths of up to half of … Continue reading →

Agriculture / CGIAR / Food Security / Research

Greater coherence among agricultural research bodies to be urged at Montpellier G20 meeting

Posted on 13 Sep 2011 by Susan MacMillan • 1 Comment

An opinion piece by Mark Tran in the Guardian‘s Poverty Matters Blog yesterday (12 Sep 2011) argues that the G20 faces obstacles in its efforts to spread good farming practices, and that a lack of coherence among agricultural research bodies is a major obstacle. ‘Spreading good ideas and practices in farming sounds like a simple enough … Continue reading →

Africa / Agriculture / Drylands / DRYLANDSCRP / East Africa / Livestock Systems / Pastoralism / West Africa

What future of pastoralism in a changing climate?

Posted on 25 Aug 2011 by Peter Ballantyne (ILRI) • Leave a comment

Pastoralism—a free-range livestock production system—is practised in all of Africa’s dryland regions, and in some communities it is the main source of food security and income. But will pastoralism survive in the changing climate? The August 2011 issue of Joto Afrika provides research findings, lessons learned and success stories from across Africa. Contents include: The future … Continue reading →

Africa / Agriculture / East Africa / Ethiopia / Farming Systems / ILRI / ILRIComms / IPMS / Livelihoods / NRM / Report / Value Chains / Water / WLE

Market-oriented irrigated crop development improves farm incomes in Tigray

Posted on 20 Aug 2011 by Peter Ballantyne (ILRI) • Leave a comment

A working paper by Gebremedhin Woldewahid, Berhanu Gebremedhin, Kahsay Berhe and Dirk Hoekstra on Shifting towards market-oriented irrigated crops development as an approach to improve the income of farmers: Evidence from northern Ethiopia was released on 5 May 2011. Rainfed crop production in Ethiopia’s semi-arid areas is associated with extreme rainfall variability which occasionally leads to complete crop … Continue reading →

Africa / Agriculture / Crop-Livestock / East Africa / Ethiopia / ILRI / IPMS / Livestock / Livestock Systems / Markets / Report / Research

Interdependence of smallholders’ net market positions in crop and livestock markets: Evidence from Ethiopia

Posted on 18 Aug 2011 by Zerihun Sewunet • Leave a comment

A working paper by Moti Jaleta and Berhanu Gebremedhin on ‘Interdependence of smallholders’ net market positions in crop and livestock markets: Evidence from Ethiopia was released on 12 April 2011. Using simultaneous-equation models, this paper examines whether there is interdependence between smallholders’ net market positions in crop and live animal markets under mixed crop-and-livestock production systems. Data … Continue reading →

Agriculture / CCAFS / Climate Change / Drought / East Africa / Food Security / ILRI / Kenya

Daily Nation calls on scientists to ‘come out boldly’ to help Kenya adapt to climate change

Posted on 8 Aug 2011 by Susan MacMillan • Leave a comment

Kenya minister of livestock development Hon Mohammed Kuti and Equity Bank CEO James Mwangi at the launch of an ‘Index-based livestock insurance’ scheme in Marsabit, in January 2010; led by ILRI scientists, this project is making livestock insurance available to Kenya’s northern pastoralists for the first time (photo credit: ILRI/Mude). An editorial in Kenya’s Daily … Continue reading →

A4NH / Agri-Health / Agriculture / CCAFS / CGIAR / LIVESTOCKFISH

CGIAR builds its funding and research, including a new program on meat, milk and fish production by and for the poor

Posted on 1 Aug 2011 by Susan MacMillan • Leave a comment

CGIAR Research Program 3.7: One of the slides in a presentation made by ILRI at the CGIAR Fund Council meeting in Montpellier, France, in April 2011 about the program led by ILRI on ‘More meat, milk and fish by and for the poor’ (image credit: ILRI/Staal). A new research program of the Consultative Group on … Continue reading →

Agriculture / Drought / East Africa / Food Security / USA / Vulnerability

Feast and famine in Kenya: The real emergency is lack of aid to help farmers produce more food–Roger Thurow