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.
Camel herding between Kenya’s northern towns of Moyale and Isiolo (photo on Flickr by azulnocturnal). ‘At a streetside kiosk in Isiolo, the price of camel bones for soup has jumped 250 per cent this year to 100 shillings ($1.10) a kilo, straining the pockets of many in the drought-hit eastern Kenyan town. In a bitter … Continue reading
Updated information as of 29 July 2011 by the Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET) and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on the drought in the Horn of Africa (illustration credit: FEWS NET and OCHA). Food insecurity remains at emergency levels across parts of the Horn of Africa, famine … Continue reading
CGIAR Research Program 3.7: One of the slides in a presentation made by ILRI at the CGIAR Fund Council meeting in Montpellier, France, in April 2011 about the program led by ILRI on ‘More meat, milk and fish by and for the poor’ (image credit: ILRI/Staal). A new research program of the Consultative Group on … Continue reading
Landscape of Kenya (photo on Flickr by Tim Cronin/Center for International Forestry Research). Former Wall Street Journal veteran reporter Roger Thurow, now senior fellow for Global Agriculture and Food Policy at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, last Friday (29 Jul 2011) described the paradox of great harvest and great hunger existing at the same time … Continue reading
Return to traditional agricultural approaches—William G Mosley A recent op-ed in the Washington Post, on the topic of the drought and famine in the Horn of Africa, argues that ‘while reactions of grave concern over this unfolding tragedy are natural, its causes are not. . . . The semi-arid Horn of Africa and the entire Sahelian … Continue reading
Elderly woman, Kenya (photo on Flickr by Curt Carnemark / World Bank). ‘. . . “For pastoral families, livestock is their life. If they lose their animals, they have no way of feeding their families, and they’ll need food aid to survive. And even once the crisis passes, if their livestock have died, they’ll have … Continue reading
Launch of the Humanitarian Appeal 2011 (photo on Flickr by United Nations Information Service / Jean-Marc Ferre). ‘Humanitarian agencies and donors agreed at an emergency meeting in Rome on 25 July that the response to the crisis must address the immediate needs of the desperate population and help build resilience to avert similar crises in the … Continue reading
The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS Net) reports on emerging food security conditions related to drought and other climate crises (image on the ReliefWeb website by the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the United States Agency for International Development Famine Early Warning Systems). The first food to arrive in famine-struck Mogadishu, … Continue reading
Children in Kenya’s Watamu District with milk (photo on Flickr by Thomas Blower). An article in this week’s Economist describes the value of helping communities in the Horn of Africa’s to build resilience to recurrent drought. It is this ‘Food Aid-Plus,’ argues the Economist, that has helped avert famine in southern Ethiopia (seeds), northeastern Kenya (school milk … Continue reading
Statue commemorating The Great Hunger in 18th-century Ireland (photo on Flickr by munksynz). Carl O’Brian in the Irish Times yesterday (26 Jul 2011) asks: ‘When does a food crisis become a famine?’ Irish journalists, people, government officials and aid agents have a particular passion for fighting famine, which so devastated their country in the mid-1800s, killing … Continue reading
ILRI Clippings 