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.
From 29 April to 2 May 2014, the Humidtropics CGIAR research program held a capacity development workshop in Nairobi. The main topics of discussion were agricultural innovation systems, design and implementation of multi-stakeholder platforms (MSP), capturing knowledge and learning in MSPs, and reflexive monitoring of MSPs.
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Scientists from Colorado State University have just put the final touches on an intersting tool called: G-Range. It’s a tool that can simulate generalized changes in rangelands through time, with simulations that may span a few to thousands of years. Continue reading
The ‘FeedSeed’ project at the International Livestock Research Institute is working with public and private partners to help create a sustainable forage seed supply system in Ethiopia. The idea is to help local entrepreneurs start up forage seed businesses, mainly by establishing a public business incubator that can provide training and mentoring to the entrepreneurs. From 7-11 April 2014, the project organized a technical and business skills development training course for potential forage seed entrepreneurs. Continue reading
The livestock sector will need to provide meat and milk for a growing population, while at the same time limiting its environmental impacts. A recent policy brief from CIRAD shows that extensive dairy systems in Mali can be more efficient than intensive systems in Reunion Island, and just as efficient as semi-intensive systems in western France. Continue reading
New guidelines for the graduate fellowship program at ILRI are now in place that will enable the program to better serve the needs of graduate fellow researchers at ILRI. Continue reading
The Inter-Agency Donor Group on pro-poor livestock research and development (IADG) recently completed a successful Dairy Expert Consultation in Uganda. The three-day event in Masaka-Mbarara gathered over 50 dairy experts from six East African countries and beyond, and took place from April 1-3, 2014. Continue reading
A sourcebook from the CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food, entitled ‘Addressing Water, Food and Poverty Problems Together—Methods, Tools and Lessons’ presents more than 50 articles on how to improve ecological and social resilience. One of the articles looks at ‘A gendered sustainable livelihood framework to assess livestock water productivity’. Continue reading
Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries announces a call for International Awards for young agricultural researchers. Continue reading
Insuring animals who range with semi-nomadic herders across some of the harshest terrain on earth had defeated all previous efforts. Eventually he came across the work of a Kenyan economist, Andrew Mude of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), based in Nairobi. Mr Mude has developed an insurance model that uses satellite images to assess the impact of drought on the vegetation that camels, cows and goats need to survive. . . . Continue reading
The Food Climate Research Network (FCRN) site has published (10 Apr 2014) an interesting comment on an interesting paper by Petr Havlík et al., Climate change mitigation through livestock system transitions, published in Feb 2014 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Continue reading
ILRI Clippings 