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.
Samuel Mutiga has been selected as a Fellow for the Leadership Enhancement in Agriculture Program (LEAP) of the Norman E. Borlaug International Agricultural Science and Technology Fellows Program. Samuel, a PhD student at the Cornell University, USA, is currently attached to the BecA-ILRI Hub’s Capacity and Action for Aflatoxin Reduction in Eastern Africa (CAAREA) project. … Continue reading
An initiative called the Dynamic Drivers of Disease in Africa Consortium, which is hosted by the UK’s STEPS Centre, at the Institute of Development Studies, in Brighton, issued a news release today regarding the science and poverty implications of transmissions of animal-to-human diseases. This comes upon reports by UK officials this week of a the … Continue reading
‘Livestock live talks’ is a new series of high-level monthly institutional one-hour seminars hosted by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). The new seminar series aims to address livestock-related issues, mobilize external as well as in-house expertise and audiences and engage the livestock community around interdisciplinary conversations that ask hard questions and seek to refine … Continue reading
The Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS) awarded Segenet Kelemu the 2011 TWAS Prize for Agricultural Sciences during the 23rd TWAS General Meeting in Tianjin during the 23rd TWAS General Meeting in Tianjin on Tuesday 18 September. Read more about this on the BecA-ILRI Hub website Watch a video clip of the award ceremony … Continue reading
The American Society of Animal Science (ASAS) has released five ‘Grand Challenges documents‘ that advocate research priorities for the future of animal science. The issues covered are: Animal health: Support for animal health research would improve disease resistance, disease prevention and animal productivity. Climate change: A better understanding of climate change would keep animal agriculture … Continue reading
Dairy farmers in Tanzania. Farmers in East Africa are embracing climate-resilient farming practices but food insecurity prevents many of them from doing more to cope with a changing climate (photo credit: ILRI/Nils Teufel). Smallholder farmers across East Africa have started embracing climate-resilient farming approaches and technologies according to new research recently published by the CGIAR … Continue reading
An artist’s rendition of the next Landsat satellite, the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) that will launch in Feb 2013 (photo credit: NASA). The Landsat program is the longest continuous global record of Earth observations from space—ever. Since its first satellite went up in the summer of 1972, Landsat has been looking at our planet. The … Continue reading
The UN-led process for determining the next round of global development goals is officially underway. This will be an extremely important effort, which will likely have profound implications for both the developing and developed world for decades. Against this backdrop, the ONE Campaign and other groups have been advocating for a radical, yet extremely simple, … Continue reading
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
Recognizing the chronic need for strengthening of advisory services around the world, the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR) was a founding member and co-funder of the recently established GFRAS – the Global Forum for Rural Advisory Services. GFAR and GFRAS need your input! They are preparing an important paper called “The New Extensionist”, proposing … Continue reading
ILRI Clippings 