A recent perspective piece published in Nature Climate Change by researchers Philip Thornton and Mario Herrero suggests that we still know very little about how climate change will impact these mixed farms and especially the interactions between crops and livestock. This is alarming as mixed farming systems form the backbone of smallholder production in developing countries,producing over 90% of the world’s milk supply and 80% of the meat from ruminants. Continue reading
Category Archives: Climate Change
Just how much gas does Africa’s livestock produce? A new environmental lab sets up to find out
Scientists at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Kenya have established a state-of-the-art laboratory to help find a strategy to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from livestock in Africa. Continue reading
Toughening animal agriculture for worse climate with ‘preventive breeding’–Scientific American
Scientists from . . . CGIAR . . . are setting up a “preemptive breeding” program to develop livestock with resistance to potential widespread outbreaks of currently localized diseases to help reduce some of the losses that would occur. CGIAR scientists presented their preemptive breeding strategy and new evidence of threats from climate change to the science advisory body of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change on June 4. Continue reading
ILRI supports early career agricultural researchers through the CIRCLE fellowship program
ILRI is a ‘host’ and ‘home’ institute for the CIRCLE program which is integrated into ILRI’s graduate fellowship program and coordinated by the Capacity Development unit with support from the Livestock Systems and Environment (LSE) program and the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). Continue reading
Ethiopia national, international researchers explore deeper collaboration
On 4 and 5 December 2014, the Ethiopian Institute for Agricultural Research (EIAR) and CGIAR institutes in Ethiopia organized a special consultative meeting to ‘strengthen EARS-CGIAR partnerships for effective agricultural transformation in Ethiopia’. Continue reading
East and Southern Africa drylands learning event on community based adaptation and resilience
CARE Ethiopia, CARE’s Adaptation Learning Programme (ALP), the CGIAR Climate Change Agriculture and Food Security programme (CCAFS) and the International Centre for Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE).will organize a learning event in Addis Ababa in September to exchange learning from experiences and evidence on climate change adaptation and resilience Continue reading
New ‘G-range’ tool predicts how climate change will affect rangelands, which cover 45% of the world’s surface
Scientists from Colorado State University have just put the final touches on an intersting tool called: G-Range. It’s a tool that can simulate generalized changes in rangelands through time, with simulations that may span a few to thousands of years. Continue reading
Having your cake and eating it too–Working both the production and consumption ends of ‘the meat question’
The Food Climate Research Network (FCRN) site has published (10 Apr 2014) an interesting comment on an interesting paper by Petr Havlík et al., Climate change mitigation through livestock system transitions, published in Feb 2014 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Continue reading
The roads not taken: Should 1bn overfed people eat less meat? Or 1bn hungry farmers become more efficient?
The Butcher, by Marc Chagall, 1910 (via Wikipaintings). Should you become vegetarian to help mitigate against global warming? Well, you could, or you might try just eating less meat, if you’re one of some 1 billion people chronically eating too much food. On the other hand, you might try helping some 1 billion small-scale livestock … Continue reading
Yet more evidence that agriculture–particularly livestock agriculture–needs to be part of climate discussions
The farmyard, by Marc Chagall, 1954 (via Wikipaintings). Without big interventions, the future of food security looks bleak. So says an article in One Billion Hungry: Can We Feed the World Website. The clear message from . . . the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report is the urgent need for farmers to adapt to a changing … Continue reading