To escape the flooding in Pakistan, spiders create megawebs in trees (photo on Flickr from M1K3Y; more images on the Nej Lon Blog). More than 150,000 cattle have died in Pakistan as a result of the recent flooding, which, just 12 months after the last massive flooding in the country, has washed away fodder resources and … Continue reading
Feed scarcity in smallholder systems is a key constraint to improved livestock production in developing countries. However, development efforts which have taken a narrow technology-focused approach to dealing with feed scarcity have had limited success. The IFAD-supported ‘Fodder Adoption Project’ ran between 2007 and 2010 and aimed to address issues around inadequate livestock fodder at … Continue reading
Owen Barder at the opening of an ‘AgKnowledge Africa Share Fair’ held at the Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, campus of the International Livestock Research Institute in Oct 2010 (photo credit: ILRI/Apollo Habtamu). Owen Barder writes in his blog of an interesting recent meeting held on ‘the future of aid’ by the World Bank London office. He … Continue reading
Livestock is an important sub-sector within Ethiopia’s economy in terms of its contributions to both agricultural value-added and national GDP. Between 1995/96 and 2005/06, it averaged 24% of agricultural GDP and 11% of national GDP. At the household level, livestock are crucial to the lives of pastoralists, agro-pastoralists, and smallholder farm households; they help to … Continue reading
Elephants and livestock both need water on a regular basis (photo of Kenya elephant on Flickr by Shawna Nelles). CNN reports that ‘As the Horn of Africa suffers its worst drought for 60 years, there are reports of growing conflict between people and wildlife over the region’s limited resources. ‘. . . Jan de Leeuw, … Continue reading
A woman holding her young malnourished baby queues for food at the Badbado refugee camp, in Mogadishu, Somalia (photo on Flickr by United Nations/Stuart Price). The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS Net) and the Food Security and Analysis Unit (FSNAU) report that in Somalia, in addition to the five areas where famine has already been … Continue reading
The CGIAR Consortium Senior Information and Knowledge Officer, Enrica Porcari (middle), with CGIAR CEO Lloyd Le Page, at a CGIAR news briefing on ‘Research Options for Mitigating Drought-induced Food Crises,’ 1 Sep 2011 (photo credit: ILRI/Susan MacMillan). Lloyd Le Page, chief executive officer of the Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centers (CGIAR), is a guest … Continue reading
‘A partnership between academics and a beer company, which sent sorghum prices soaring in East Africa, has been highlighted as a way of harnessing agricultural research to fight the effects of drought such as the one in the Horn of Africa. . . . ‘The example was highlighted at a press briefing in Nairobi last … Continue reading
A woman holds her severely malnourished young child in a camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Mogadishu (photo on flickr by UN/Stuart Price). August survey results from the Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit—Somalia (FSNAU) ‘indicate that the prevalence of acute malnutrition and the rate of crude mortality have surpassed famine thresholds in Bay Region … Continue reading
The following three slide presentations were presented this August (2011) by scientists working at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), in Nairobi, Kenya, on topics related to sustaining pastoral production systems in the Horn of Africa. In light of the drought ravaging Kenya’s north and the drylands of other countries of Africa’s Horn, the results … Continue reading
ILRI Clippings 