CGIAR Research Programs
Last week in Mukono, the International Livestock Research Institute convened an inception and planning workshop for the new ‘more pork by and for the poor’ project. With funds from Irish Aid, the project will catalyse emerging smallholder pig value chains in Uganda for food security and poverty reduction. The new project builds on the results … Continue reading
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
From 29 April to 2 May 2014, the Humidtropics CGIAR research program held a capacity development workshop in Nairobi. The main topics of discussion were agricultural innovation systems, design and implementation of multi-stakeholder platforms (MSP), capturing knowledge and learning in MSPs, and reflexive monitoring of MSPs.
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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
The ‘FeedSeed’ project at the International Livestock Research Institute is working with public and private partners to help create a sustainable forage seed supply system in Ethiopia. The idea is to help local entrepreneurs start up forage seed businesses, mainly by establishing a public business incubator that can provide training and mentoring to the entrepreneurs. From 7-11 April 2014, the project organized a technical and business skills development training course for potential forage seed entrepreneurs. Continue reading
A sourcebook from the CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food, entitled ‘Addressing Water, Food and Poverty Problems Together—Methods, Tools and Lessons’ presents more than 50 articles on how to improve ecological and social resilience. One of the articles looks at ‘A gendered sustainable livelihood framework to assess livestock water productivity’. Continue reading
Insuring animals who range with semi-nomadic herders across some of the harshest terrain on earth had defeated all previous efforts. Eventually he came across the work of a Kenyan economist, Andrew Mude of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), based in Nairobi. Mr Mude has developed an insurance model that uses satellite images to assess the impact of drought on the vegetation that camels, cows and goats need to survive. . . . Continue reading
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 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
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
ILRI Clippings 