Our online travels today offer us juxtapositions as unexpected (and as oddly fruitful) as any physical safari to the heart of Africa or other continent. Today, for example, we can be reading software-mogul-turned philanthropist Bill Gates on the brave-new-world of laboratory grown meat (‘How food scientists are reinventing meat — and how it can benefit … Continue reading
Category Archives: Cattle
Cattle / Climate Change / Drylands / Environment / Food Security / Forages / Goats / Pastoralism / Presentation / Sheep / Small Ruminants / Soils / USA / Vulnerability / Wildlife
Want to green the world’s deserts? Do the unthinkable: Put livestock back on them — Allan Savory
Watch this new provocative 22-minute TedTalk by Allan Savory on ‘How to green the world’s deserts and reverse climate change’. Alan Savory, a Zimbabwean-born biologist/ecologist and rangelands specialist, gives environmentalists pause in a recent TedTalk, published 4 Mar 2013, on the ‘cancer’ of desertification of the world’s drylands, which make up some two-thirds of the … Continue reading
Africa / Animal Breeding / Animal Production / Biodiversity / Books and chapters / Cattle / Countries / Goats / Guinea / ILRI / Livestock / LIVESTOCKFISH / Mali / Research / Sheep / West Africa
Management of globally significant endemic ruminant livestock in Guinea and Mali
Although livestock play a central role in rural development in West Africa, traditional livestock systems are in general characterized by high mortality rates, low reproductive rates and low offtake rates. Furthermore, the presence of trypanosome-infected tsetse flies in the subhumid and humid areas seriously holds back the potential for livestock production. The region’s endemic ruminant … Continue reading
Animal Diseases / Animal Health / Cattle / Central Africa / Disease Control / East Africa / ECF / ILRI / Kenya / Launch / Southern Africa / Vaccines
Vaccine developed by KARI, supported by ILRI, is ‘milestone in control of Africa’s livestock diseases’
Faith Kivuti with her mother milking a cow in Kenya (photo on Flickr by Jeff Haskins). A vaccine to protect cattle against a lethal disease known as East Coast fever has been launched in Kenya, where Kenya Livestock Development Minister Mohammed Kuti says the development ‘is a big relief to livestock farmers in East, Central and … Continue reading
Livestock and mobile technology: Livestock live talk at ILRI on 11 December 2012
Su Kahumbu, a Kenyan social entrepreneur (TED Global Fellow 2010) and 2010 winner of Apps4Africa award for the the iCow application, a cow management platform that helps small-scale farmers manage their dairy cows, will give a presentation on ‘livestock and mobile technology’ at the ILRI Nairobi campus John Vercoe Auditorium, on 11 December 2012, from 1500-1600 hours. View the event announcement: The iCow … Continue reading
Buffalo / Cattle / Dairying / Directorate / Event report / ILRI / India / South Asia
India’s livestock development trajectory ‘exemplary’–Not only huge in aggregate but also small in scale and sustainable in nature
ILRI’s Sapna Jarial translates a speech delivered by a village council president on field visit in Haryana, India, on 4 Nov 2012, made by ILRI management and board (photo credit: ILRI/Nils Teufel). Ilse Köhler-Rollefson, a German livestock researcher and activist ‘for socially responsible and ecologically sustainable livestock development’, asks in a recent blog post, ‘Whose … Continue reading
A4NH / Animal Health / Cattle / Dairying / Disease Control / East Africa / Emerging Diseases / Epidemiology / Human Health / ILRI / Interview / Kenya / Zoonotic Diseases
‘Crypto’ and other diseases we get from animals are on the rise in poor countries
Leonard Gitau, a small-scale livestock farmer in Dagoretti, Nairobi, speaks to journalists during a media tour of urban farmers in Nairobi on 21 Sep 2012 (photo credit: ILRI/Paul Karaimu). Sarah Ooko, special correspondent for the East African, reports that ‘animal to human diseases are on the rise’ in this region. ‘Zoonoses’ is the term used … Continue reading
A4NH / Agri-Health / Article / Cattle / Dairying / East Africa / Food Safety / Human Health / ILRI / Interview / Kenya / Zoonotic Diseases
Cattle in the capital, managed well, can improve nutrition and health in Kenya’s slums
Leornard Gitau, a small-scale livestock farmer in Dagoretti, Nairobi speaks to journalists during a media tour of urban farmers in Nairobi on 21 Sep 2012 (photo credit: ILRI/Paul Karaimu). In the Nairobi suburb of Dagoretti, ‘Leonard Gichuru Gitau is a city dweller, but it doesn’t take a detective to see that he is also a … Continue reading
Article / Cattle / Disease Control / Epidemiology / Goats / ILRI / Pastoralism / PPR / Sheep / Vaccines
New Scientist’s Fred Pearce reports on ‘How African herders rid the planet of a disease’
Tom Olaka, a community animal health worker in Karamajong, northern Uganda, was part of a vaccination campaign in remote areas of the Horn of Africa that drove the cattle plague rinderpest to extinction in 2010 (photo credit: Christine Jost). Fred Pearce writes in New Scientist about How African herders rid the planet of a disease, … Continue reading
Article / Cattle / Dairying / North Africa
Got Milk? Dairy found essential to prehistoric development in Africa–new research
Petroglyphs and pictographs in the Jebel Acacus, Libyan Sahara (photo on Flickr by Carsten ten Brink / 10b travelling). This month’s publication of a scientific article on new evidence of livestock herding in prehistoric Africa is stirring interest. ScienceDaily, for example, reports the following: Chemical analysis of pottery reveals first dairying in Saharan Africa nearly 7,000 years … Continue reading
ILRI Clippings 