For people living in absolute poverty and chronic hunger, the solution is not to rid the world of livestock, but to find ways to farm animals more efficiently and more sustainably
We need to conserve the most important livestock genetic diversity for possible future use – by poor and rich farmers alike
Livestock feed is a key constraint to the commercialization of smallholder livestock production
While vaccines remain the most cost-effective medical and veterinary interventions for controlling disease, opportunities also exist to improve animal health by improving existing veterinary services and access by poor livestock keepers to those services
Mixed crop-and-livestock farms will, more than the traditional breadbaskets and rice bowls of the past, feed the developing world over the next few decades
Human, livestock and environmental health are inextricably linked, Sixty-one per cent of all diseases are ‘zoonotic’ –that is, transmissible between animals and humans.
Making smallholder production more competitive is a powerful tool to reduce poverty, raise nutrition levels and improve the livelihoods of rural people in many developing countries
Expert opinion agrees that the best way to tap into the potential of the drylands is to build on the foundation of their livestock economies rather than ignoring them or seeking to replace them.
ILRI staff help local livestock herders in Kenya’s Marsabit District understand how they might benefit from a new ‘index-based’ livestock insurance policy scheme, which is providing 650 herders who paid for this insurance with their first payout this month, following the loss of forage due to a drought that hit Marsabit as well as much … Continue reading
For the November 2011 ‘liveSTOCK Exchange’ event at ILRI, Ramadjita Tabo reflects on crop-livestock research in West Africa … Livestock research in West Africa has made good progress in the past years. With the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, I collaborated extensively with the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), the International Institute … Continue reading
For the November 2011 ‘liveSTOCK Exchange’ event at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Oumar Diall, of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), reflects on ILRI’s animal health work in West Africa … In past years, most livestock research centered on three pillars: Animal health, animal reproduction and genetics, and animal nutrition. Fewer … Continue reading
Brighter Green has just published a study on Ethiopia’s complex relationship with livestock. It uses climate change as entry point to explore the effects of the expansion and intensification of the livestock sector in Ethiopia for the country’s food security, resource use, and issues of equity and sustainability. In this policy brief, Brighter Green questions whether … Continue reading
For the November 2011 ‘liveSTOCK Exchange’ event at ILRI, Sabine Douxchamps reflects on her livestock-water work in West Africa … Rainwater management strategies (RMS) have been extensively studied and promoted in the Volta Basin during the last decades. However, water scarcity still limits the agricultural production of most of the smallholder crop-livestock farms of the … Continue reading
For the November 2011 ‘liveSTOCK Exchange’ event at ILRI, Purvi Mehta-Bhatt reflects on capacity strengthening at ILRI … ‘ILRI was the only place in Africa, where I could get the international level training in livestock research’; ‘I may now be an African policy maker, but one of the greatest contributing factors to my ability to … Continue reading
From 13–15 October 2011, several staff of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) attended the 7th International Conference of the Asian Society of Agricultural Economists, in Hanoi, Vietnam. ILRI organized two parallel sessions: (1) Food safety policy in a developing-country context: Examples from case studies in livestock value chains (2) Assessing the impact of livestock research … Continue reading
Dans le cadre du ‘LiveSTOCK Exchange’ organisé par l’ILRI, Mathieu Lesnoff du CIRAD discute des enjeux de la recherche liés à la demande croissante des produits animaux des pays du sud. Par rapport à l’approche « productiviste » classique des années passées (e.g. « une intervention – une réponse sur la production »), trois évolutions … Continue reading
For the November 2011 ‘liveSTOCK Exchange’ event at ILRI, CIMMYT’s Bruno Gérard reflects on crop-livestock systems research at ILRI … There has been a long presence of ILRI (then ILCA) in West Africa, focusing both on Sudanian and Sahelian mixed crop livestock systems. A turning point for ILRI research in West Africa was the concentration … Continue reading
Members of the Canada-Africa Parliament Association on their visit to Ethiopia (photo credit: ILRI/Zerihun Sewunet). On 10–11 October 2011, six members of the Canada-Africa Parliament Association (4 parliamentarians and 2 senators) visited Ethiopia. At the request of the Canadian Embassy, the CIDA-funded IPMS project at ILRI organized a field visit to Ada’a District—one of the project’s … Continue reading
ILRI Clippings 