The CIDRAP reports this week on a global survey that ‘indicates that while there has been sustained progress on developing national action plans to address antimicrobial resistance (AMR), major gaps remain. Continue reading
Driven by population growth, urbanization and rising incomes, demand for livestock products in Africa and Asia may increase by 200% by 2030. Increased availability of milk, meat and eggs offers huge opportunities to meet this demand, improve diets and decrease malnourishment, especially among millions of infants, school-age children and pregnant and lactating women. New livestock-related businesses could also enhance the incomes of poor people and enable them to purchase better food for their families. But the supply of livestock products in many developing countries is constrained by low animal productivity, largely due to shortages of quality animal feed. Continue reading
Today, the 7th Multi-stakeholder Partnership meeting of the Global Agenda for Sustainable Livestock brings together more than 250 livestock specialists from over 50 countries to demonstrate the positive contribution of livestock to the lives and wellbeing of hundreds of millions of people on the planet, and foster the sustainable development of this rapidly-growing sector. Continue reading
At the Ezwilini Conference, experts were trying to find ways to unlock the livestock value chain, finances and access to credit for rural farmers. They probed issues to do with improving the livelihoods of livestock smallholder farmers and other value chain actors through value addition and marketing. Continue reading
Rural farmers in Zimbabwe and the whole of Southern Africa are set to receive a major boost in their livestock production through the expected launch of the beef value chain finance initiative this year. The initiative, whose pilot project was successfully undertaken in Swaziland, includes a loan scheme for smallholder farmers who want to take up beef fattening for the market. This came out during the on-going International Conference on Livestock Value Chain and Access to Credit being held in Ezulwini, Swaziland. Continue reading
book by Burns and Worsley (available in hardback, paperback and eBook formats) will be of interest to all those looking to make a greater difference in international development (that is, in development parlance, to take solutions to scale). ‘Navigating Complexity in International Development: Facilitating Sustainable Change at Scale’, published by Practical Action Publishing, Oct 2015, 198 pages. Continue reading
Innovation platforms are widely used in agricultural research to connect different stakeholders to achieve common goals. This thirteenth brief reflects on some of issues and opportunities faced when innovation platforms – or the innovations they generate – are scaled out. Continue reading
Scaling out research results for wider application and use is a goal of every research for development project in today’s CGIAR. It is also one of the most difficult things to achieve. Scaling out was on the agenda of recent end-of-project workshops of the IFAD-financed MilkIT project. At a recent workshop team members and partners listed out some of the critical success factors such a project needs to be able to scale out its results. Continue reading
Livestock farmers in Africa struggle to access good quality inputs, effective knowledge and fair markets. Regulation of the livestock input sector is very weak in Kenya, allowing unqualified people to open shops selling veterinary pharmaceuticals; many of which are counterfeit or under-strength. This leads to extensive misuse of drugs through poor diagnosis and administration of products. … Continue reading
ILRI Clippings 