This network is meant to be a learning community–a place where those that influence environmental decisions in animal agriculture can connect, share experiences, and collaborate. Read more … (LPELC) Continue reading
Category Archives: Knowledge and Information
When the cows go moo (with mobile phones)?
So here’s an odd one to ponder for the weekend – could cows have mobile phones? Last week I got to stay on a dairy farm for the weekend (city kids need to smell some country air from time to time). Whilst there, we got a tour of the milking parlour and, even though I’m … Continue reading
Information technology and manure have a symbiotic relationship
America’s dairy farmers could soon find themselves in the computer business, with the manure from their cows possibly powering the vast data centers of companies like Google and Microsoft. While not immediately intuitive, the idea plays on two trends: the building of computing centers in more rural locales, and dairy farmers’ efforts to deal with … Continue reading
Volunteer brings computer skills to Africa
In the fall of 2009, a pair of Kenyan interns at the Nairobi-based International Livestock Research Institute were trying to post an interview with an Australian member of parliament on the organization’s blog. They hoped to put the interview online, as the organization was trying to secure Australian funds to help finance its work. Nancy … Continue reading
World Agriculture launched in London
On 1 April a new journal World Agriculture was launched in London. A peer-reviewed, completely independent, non-profit, journal, it will explore scientific, economic and social evidence concerning agriculture and its interaction with forestry, climate change, population growth, migration, disease and ecology. Chairman of the Editorial Board, Professor Sir Colin Spedding, explained: “World Agriculture is not another specialist … Continue reading
Writing effective scientific reports
This ILRI learning module by Sylvester Dickson Baguma Ponniah Anandajayasekeram and Ranjitha Puskur on Writing convincing research proposals and effective scientific reports, Part B: scientific writing was released on 24 March, 2010. During one of the interactions between the management of the Capacity Strengthening Unit, and the Graduate Fellows of ILRI, the students identified the … Continue reading
PNG tribal life holds key to animal disease research
In the Papua New Guinea Highlands, people live in much the same way as they have for centuries. But even in these far reaches, technology is making its first tentative steps into this subsistence way of life. Villagers have been wooed by the lure of mobile telephones, provided to them by companies which are using … Continue reading
GPS tracking set to revolutionise livestock management
A recent trial of global positioning system (GPS) tracking technology on Twynam Agriculture’s “Buttabone” property in Western NSW has shown that steers graze only a fraction of the paddock available to them. “Most graziers realise that their cattle don’t use the paddocks evenly,” said Dr Mark Trotter from the University of New England’s Precision Agriculture … Continue reading
ICT in Africa’s insurance business
It’s all about the customer right now. The insurance sector is grappling with the same sorts of cost pressures evident in other industries, and “outsourcing is a trend” among most players, says Haydn Pinnell, MD of Gallium. …The insurance sector in Africa only represented about 1.3 percent of the global insurance business in 2007, according to … Continue reading
Cell phones and cattle: Mobile phones in agriculture
This thesis examines the impact of mobile telephony on productivity in developing nations. Previous studies have suggested that mobile phones have real impacts on economic outcomes in these countries. Using micro-data from Swaziland, Cambodia, and Honduras, this study looks to identify the effects of mobile phone ownership on household productive outcomes in a two-stage regression. … Continue reading
ILRI Clippings 