Goat and people share a road in Goma, DRC (photo on Flickr by Robert Guerra). Voice of America is reporting on a new livestock epidemic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The highly contagious viral disease is known as ‘peste des petits ruminants’, or PPR for short, sometimes as ‘ovine rinderpest’, and more … Continue reading
Young boys in Malawi on a break from class pose for the camera at The United Nations Millennium Villages Project (photo on Flickr by whl.travel). The Economist has started an interesting new blog, ‘Feast and famine: Demography and development’. On this blog, the magazine’s correspondents report on and analyse matters relating to demography and development, including food … Continue reading
Vietnamese farmers with cattle fodder. A report by CIAT says livestock systems that use improved forage crops reduce the effects of climate change (photo credit: ILRI/Werner Stür). Last week, AlertNet published an opinion piece highlighting recent research by the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) on how forage-based systems, which dominate agriculture in the tropics, … Continue reading
Fresh camel milk from Somali youths (photo on Flickr by G A Hussein). The Feinstein International Center, at Tufts University (USA), has published a report of a study on the impact of dry-season livestock support on milk supply and child nutrition in Somali Region, Ethiopia. Ethiopia’s Somali Region is the easternmost of Ethiopia’s 9 ethnically … Continue reading
Arid soils in Mauritania, where crops have failed because of a severe drought and the Sahel region faces a major food crisis: Over 700,000 people are affected in Mauritania and 12 million across West Africa (picture credit: Pablo Tosco/Oxfam International). Senegalese singer Baaba Maal has visited Mauritanian communities at the center of the current food crisis … Continue reading
Participants of an African swine fever workshop held in July 2011 at ILRI’s Nairobi headquarters: (From left) Raymond Rowland (Kansas State University), David Odongo (ILRI), Richard Bishop (ILRI), Maria-Jesus Munoz (Centro de Investigación en Sanidad Animal-Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Agrarias) and Jose-Manuel Vizcaino (head of the World Animal Health Organisation’s African Swine Fever World Reference … Continue reading
On 21 May, the Ohio State University- Eastern Africa Track II Certification training in collaboration with ILRI will commence in Addis Ababa, with courses also offered in other locations. The training will run through July 27, 2012. Read more Continue reading
The Ethiopian economy is currently witnessing strong growth; however agricultural productivity in the smallholder sector, in dairying for example, is not as high as it could be. The BBC reports on developments in the country, including from a dairy development project of the Dutch development organization SNV. As part of the report, Berhanu Gebremedhin of … Continue reading
Aurochs were the ancestors of domestic cattle (photo on Flickr by Marcus Sümnick). Lucas Brouwers, in a blog on Scientific American, has picked up on an interesting genetics study conducted at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), in Nairobi, Kenya, which targets a cattle disease known as contagious bovine pleuropneumonia (or CBPP for short). The study … Continue reading
Pigs at the Drestry Farm Industry commercial pig farm, in India’s northeast state of Assam (Sonapur, Karchia Village; photo credit: ILRI/Stevie Mann). In view of the pig production potential in . . . [India’s] Northeast and eastern states, a mission on pig production with focus on strengthening large pig-breeding farms and other infrastructure, incentives for producing … Continue reading
ILRI Clippings 