New dual-purpose sorghum: Food for people and livestock

Posted on December 18, 2008 by ILRIComms

New varieties of food-feed sorghum are meeting the basic needs of India?s 208 million crop-livestock farmers, as well as feeding its growing human population.

Throughout the tropics, farm animals are kept underweight and underproductive due to lack of feed. This constraint is stopping some 600 million poor farmers from meeting a fast-rising global demand for milk and meat. But a new partnership, developing dual-purpose food-feed sorghum varieties is helping to meet the basic needs of India’s farmers and leading to similar work in other crops and other countries.

The single most important ruminant feed resource on many of the small crop-livestock farms of Asia and Africa is not grass but rather the stalks, leaves and other remains of crop plants after harvesting. In India, for example, 44% of the feed annually sustaining all the country’s cattle, buffalo, goats, sheep and camel populations is made up of such crop ‘wastes’. The rest comes from planted forages and a shrinking area of pastures and other common lands. Expensive concentrates—the mainstay of livestock production in rich countries—are used only very occasionally.

While crop residues (straw and stover) have become a main feed for farm animals of the South, crop breeders until recently continued to focus solely on increasing grain yields. But a research partnership between India’s National Research centre for Sorghum (NRCS), the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and ILRI is redressing this oversight in India’s all-important sorghum crop, grown on nearly 10,000,000 hectares on the country. The research partners incorporated fodder quality traits in India’s crop breeding trials and in doing so, led breeders to identify sorghum varieties with high yields of both grain and stover as well as improved stover quality.

Partners in the sorghum food-feed collaboration

India’s National Research Centre for Sorghum (NRCS) leads the All-India Coordinated Sorghum Improvement Program mandated to test and release new cultivars. It also assesses the socio-economic importance of sorghum-based livelihoods.
Website: http://www.nrcsorghum.res.in

The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) provided conventional and molecular sorghum breeding, global crop economics and assessments of the impacts of crop interventions for the poor.
Website: http://www.icrisat.org

The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) conducted the livestock nutrition work and provided expertise in global livestock economics and assessments of the impacts of livestock interventions for the poor.
Website: http://www.ilri.org

Summary of results from the sorghum trials
The research partnership began in 1999 by assessing the potential impacts on India’s smallholder livestock productivity of planting sorghum and millet varieties with genetically enhanced stover fodder quality and quantity. Remarkably, results indicated that a 1% increase in just one livestock productivity-related parameter—stover digestibility—would result in increases in milk, meat and draught power outputs ranging from 6-8%. The net present value of the research was estimated to range from US$42-208 million, with predicted high rates of return to the research investment of 28-43% and corresponding high benefit:cost ratios of 15 to 69:1.

ILRI then proceeded to establish facilities for animal nutrition studies using large and small ruminants at ICRISAT’s Patancheru headquarters, close to the NRCS. These facilities enabled the research partners to make a stepwise evaluation of the relationships between fodder from different sorghum lines and livestock productivity—and to find a simple way of assessing these. Animal experimentation, while itself impractical as a routine screening tool, quickly laid a sound basis for developing and validating simple laboratory assessment methods and for quantifying potential impacts on livestock productivity.

In 2001 work began with combined feeding and laboratory trials of stover obtained from a wide range of sorghum varieties and hybrids. The trials simulated diverse on-farm circumstances, including those where stover is scarce, abundant and supplemented with other forages, because fodder qualities depend on a farm’s total feed resources. Across India’s great drylands, for example, where insufficient feed prevents animals from eating until they have satisfied their appetites, a fodder trait for ‘voluntary feed intake potential’ is likely to be irrelevant while another for ‘feed digestibility’ is critically important.

Sorghum varieties were investigated for their morphological characteristics and structure (leaf blade:leaf sheath:stem proportions, plant height, stem diameter, residual green leaf area), chemical constituents (protein, fiber, sugar) in the stover and in vitro fermentation characteristics (true and apparent digestibility, rate of fermentation, partitioning of fermentation products). Results showed that fodder quality traits measured in the laboratory could be used to predict and account for at least 80% of the variation in relevant livestock productivity traits, such as digestible organic matter intake and nitrogen balance.

Traits were chosen also for the ease with which they could be measured (e.g. plant height, stem diameter) and/or be accurately predicted by near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). Importantly, use of NIRS technology allowed all the partners in the project, including those with no livestock feeding facilities, easy access to developed and validated NIRS prediction equations and consequently phenotyping for stover fodder quality capability. NRCS staff seconded to ILRI’s livestock nutritional facilities on ICRISAT’s Patancheru campus used the facilities and NIRS equations to comprehensively assess all newly submitted sorghum cultivars.

Breaking new ground in food-feed crops
Identification of superior dual-purpose food-plus-feed sorghum varieties is now helping India close its livestock feed gap as well as feed its growing human population. By increasing the country’s livestock productivity, this research is improving the livelihoods of some 100 million mixed crop-livestock farmers —and doing so in ways those small farmers should be able to sustain over the longer term. This partnership also led the way for similar work on millet, groundnut, rice, maize and cowpea and new collaborations are about to begin on wheat and various leguminous crops.

By generating superior dual-purpose sorghum varieties suited to India’s millions of smallholder farmers, this collaborative research has been path-breaking in demonstrating that traits for stover fodder quality and quantity can be incorporated into existing breeding programs to improve grain yields—and with minimum investments in equipment, staff and labour and minimum transaction costs for the collaborating institutions.

It further offers a practical two-step approach to development of food-feed crops. First, exploit dual-purpose traits in existing cultivars by complementing traditional crop improvement programs with information about the quantity and quality of expected yields of crop residues for livestock feed. Second, target dual-purpose crops for genetic enhancement. The first approach, comparatively cheap and logistically feasible, promises quick benefits for resource-poor farmers. The second, more strategic, approach requires more investments and benefits farmers later and over the longer term. In a world of scarce and rapidly diminishing land, water, fodder and other natural resources, both approaches merit the world’s attention.

ILRI Top story 22 August 2007
Sweet sorghum: utilizing every 'drop'

Contacts
For further information about this project contact:
Michael Blummel
ILRI c/o ICRISAT
Patancheru 502 234AP India
Email: m.blummel@cgiar.org

For further information about ILRI’s activities in Asia contact:

Iain Wright
ILRI’s regional representative in Asia
Email: i.wright@cgiar.org

Award-winning ILRI geneticist takes up prestigious UK appointment

Posted on December 17, 2008 by ILRIComms

After 13 years with ILRI, geneticist Oliver Hanotte is taking up a new appointment at the University of Nottingham.

ILRI geneticist Olivier Hanotte starts his new position as professor of population genetics and conservation at the University of Nottingham, UK on 1st January. He will also be the director of a charity based at the university called Frozen Ark. The charity is concerned with the ex situ conservation of endangered animals, including wildlife as well as livestock.

Hanotte joined ILRI in 1995 when the Nairobi-based International Laboratory for Research on Animal Diseases (ILRAD) merged with the Addis Ababa-based International Livestock Centre for Africa (ILCA). Since then ILRI has shifted from a predominantly African focus to a global focus, with ILRI offices not only in East, West and Southern Africa but also in South Asia and South East Asia, providing new opportunities for Hanotte’s research focus.

Research highlights
In his 13 years at ILRI, animal geneticist Olivier Hanotte has worked to unravel the diversity of developing-world livestock using the latest molecular technologies of DNA sequencing and genotyping.

ILRI deputy director general – research, John McDermott, says ‘In 1995, when Hanotte began his work at ILRI, we knew that the world’s livestock diversity was shrinking fast, but no one knew exactly what was being lost and where we should target conservation efforts. Africa and Asia’s genetic diversity was largely unknown and unmapped.

‘We now have a much better picture of the livestock diversity hotspots in Africa and Asia and where the world needs to focus its conservation and genetic improvement efforts. This is due in large part to Hanotte’s scientific leadership, commitment to scientific excellence, innovative partnerships and capacity building activities across two continents’ says McDermott.

In 2003, Hanotte became leader of ILRI’s project on Improving Animal Genetic Resources Characterization. He has supervised project members working in Nairobi, Addis Ababa and, since 2005, in Beijing at a joint laboratory established with the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science on livestock and forage genetic resources. He has established long term collaborations with several research institutes such as Trinity College at the University of Dublin (Ireland), Rural Development Agency, RDA (South Korea) and the joint FAO-IAEA division in Seibersdorf and Vienna (Austria).

Seminal work by Hanotte and his team has disclosed the origin and distribution of genetic diversity of livestock species including cattle, sheep, goat, yak and chicken in Africa and Asia. These findings are now providing a rationale for targeted conservation and utilization programs for developing-country livestock breeds at risk of extinction. This work also gives us a glimpse into the distant past of the peoples and civilizations of Africa and Asia.

Hanotte’s research has been published in leading scientific journals, including Science, PNAS, Animal Genetics and Molecular Ecology. He has produced over 80 scientific publications and received several international awards, including the CGIAR Science Award in 2003 for Outstanding Scientific Article. He has also supervised and co-supervised research projects of over 50 students and scientists.

Hanotte and colleagues at ILRI continue to break new ground. Current work includes research to better understand and characterize the adaptive traits of indigenous livestock to their local production environments, specifically the genetic and adaptive mechanisms for resistance and tolerance to infection and disease. Research includes tolerance of trypanosome infections in ruminants, resistance to gastro-intestinal worms in sheep and resistance to avian viral infection in poultry. Their work supports the new field of ‘livestock landscape genomics’, which has the long-term and ambitious aim of exploiting advances in the genomics and information revolutions to reliably match breeds to environments and sustainably increase livestock productivity.

Recognized as a leading expert in livestock diversity, Hanotte was invited to write the opening chapter, on the Origin and History of Livestock Diversity, for a major FAO-led study, ‘The State of the World’s Animal Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture’, released at a Swiss conference in September 2007. He serves on the editorial boards of two major livestock journals (Animal Genetics and the Journal of Animal Breeding and Genetics), and as a regular scientific referee for major scientific journals. His group collaborate with ILRI’s sister CGIAR institution ICARDA in the characterization of the genetic resources of small ruminants.

Hanotte says, ‘I’m very much looking forward to my new position, but leaving ILRI is bittersweet. I have spent the greater part of professional life here in Kenya. I will greatly miss my colleagues and the rich culture of Africa. But I also know that there will be opportunities for collaborations in the future’

‘When you are studying or working in the North, you can get distorted information about Africa and Asia. And you can become removed from the realities. One of the big advantages of working with ILRI is that you’re based in a developing country. That means you’re never too far away from the people that you’re working for. ILRI is an open door to African and Asian farming societies and cultures’

Contacts:

Olivier Hanotte
Professor of Population and Conservation Genetics /Director of theFrozen Ark
School of Biology
University of Nottingham
Nottingham
NG7 2RD, United Kingdom
email: olivier.hanotte@nottingham.ac.uk

John McDermott
Deputy Director General – Research
International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI)
Nairobi, Kenya
Email: j.mcdermott@cgiar.org

Further information:
Olivier Hanotte’s recent published research on BioInfoBank: http://lib.bioinfo.pl/auth:Hanotte,O
Overview of ILRI research on Improving Animal Genetic Resources Characterization
The State of the World’s Animal Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture
Frozen Ark website http://www.frozenark.org/

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View research opportunities with ILRI

Rift Valley fever ‘may strike again’ soon

Posted on November 21, 2008 by ILRIComms

As fears have been growing that Rift Valley fever could hit East African countries again in early 2009, a research-based 'toolkit' is helping the Kenya Government to manage the risk to human and animal lives.

The Government of Kenya and its partners are preparing for a Rift Valley fever outbreak if the short rains of this East African region are unseasonably heavy or prolonged in high-risk areas during December 2008 and January 2009 (FEWSNET: 11 December 2008). Livestock keepers are being urged to report unusually high numbers of animal deaths or sick animals with increased rates of abortion, low milk yields, yellowing of eyes, blood-stained nasal discharges or blood in faeces.

In September 2008, EMPRES WATCH, the newsletter of the Emergency Prevention System for Transboundary Animal and Plant Pests and Diseases, a unit of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), issued a chilling warning to countries in Africa and the Arabian Peninsula that Rift Valley fever could strike again soon.

ILRI veterinary epidemiologist Christine Jost says: 'While heavy rains in northern Kenya and elsewhere generated concerns that Rift Valley fever might reappear in the rainy season (October–November 2008), there have been no outbreaks of the disease reported yet in Kenya. A reported outbreak in Saudi Arabia is being controlled.'

The last outbreak of Rift Valley fever in East Africa, in late 2006 and early 2007, killed more than 300 people in Kenya, Tanzania and Somalia and severely disrupted the local and regional livestock trade and associated livelihoods. In Kenya alone, economic losses were estimated to have exceeded US$30 million, with the country’s poorest pastoral peoples bearing the brunt of the losses.

The EMPRES warning was based on climatic models that track anomalous sea-surface temperatures in the Indian and Pacific oceans. With or without accompanying El Ñino events, these have been shown to be associated with abnormally prolonged and heavy rainfall in East Africa.

Rift Valley fever is spread initially by mosquitoes feeding on livestock; unusually heavy rainfall and subsequent widespread flooding provide ideal conditions for the generation of vast swarms of these insects. Very unusually, this year a ‘positive Indian Ocean Dipole’ has been detected for the third consecutive year. This phenomenon was associated with serious outbreaks of Rift Valley fever in East Africa in 2006/07, in Sudan in 2007 and in Madagascar in 2007/08.

Over the past 70 years or so, Rift Valley fever outbreaks in East Africa have occurred on average every 10 years; before 2006, the last outbreak had occurred in 1997/98. The apparent increase in frequency of outbreaks in the region starting in 2006 may indicate that climate change is already impacting this and other diseases associated with specific climatic conditions

What is Rift Valley fever?

Rift Valley fever is a viral disease that mostly affects cattle, sheep, goats and camels and sometimes also infects people. In arid and semi-arid part of East Africa, it is associated with abnormally heavy rainfall and flooding, which provides ideal conditions for mosquitoes to emerge and breed. Livestock bitten by mosquitoes infected with the virus that causes Rift Valley fever can themselves become infected, after which a wide range of biting insects transmit the disease further.

The females of one group of mosquitoes (Aedes) can pass the virus to their eggs, which can survive for long periods of time in the soil. When flooding occurs in an area, the eggs in the soil hatch and those carrying the virus quickly develop into adult mosquitoes already infected with virus, which then transmit the virus to livestock.

It is thought that people become infected with Rift Valley fever mostly through close contact with infected livestock: animal health workers and those involved in slaughtering and butchering infected animals are at most risk. The general public is at little risk so long as people thoroughly cook any meat they eat.

Although most human Rift Valley fever cases are mild and present as flu-like conditions, the disease can be much more severe and lead to death.

Lessons learned from the 2006/07 outbreaks
In late 2006, pastoralists in northeastern Kenya observed unusually heavy rainfall and flooding, the emergence of swarms of Aedes mosquitoes and the first cases of the livestock disease they recognized as Rift Valley fever—all before an international Rift Valley fever warning was issued. Although the pastoralists reported the situation to local authorities, the flooded roads and heavy rains, in addition to the region’s remoteness and generally poor infrastructure, made acting on the reports problematic. Many roads became impassable, for example, and much of the affected region lay outside areas with mobile phone coverage. Official action in the affected and at-risk communities was taken only with the first reports of human cases, by which time it was already too late to contain the outbreak in livestock and prevent human deaths.

ILRI and the Kenyan and Tanzanian veterinary departments worked together to conduct a series of studies of the 2006/07 outbreak, from which several lessons emerged.
A government-approved contingency plan to control outbreaks of Rift Valley fever should be in place well before a possible outbreak.
A system should be established to make emergency funds available at an early stage of an outbreak (before human cases occur).
International early warning systems should be supplemented with local systems that enable pastoralists and other people in the affected areas to report unusual weather and mosquito occurrences and suspected cases of Rift Valley fever in both animals and people. The widespread availability of mobile phones and increasing mobile phone coverage now make such an approach more feasible than in the past.
Existing vaccines for livestock are difficult to use effectively in East Africa because:
- the disease occurs in remote areas with poor infrastructure
- neither manufacturers nor veterinary authorities routinely maintain large stocks of vaccine for Rift Valley fever
- vaccine manufacturers need several months’ warning to produce sufficient new batches of the vaccine to enable sufficient populations of at-risk animals to be vaccinated
- the existing vaccine is not ideal; it causes abortion in pregnant animals
- vaccinating animals after cases of Rift Valley fever have been detected in a herd risks spreading the virus further via the needle used for the vaccinations
- the long intervals between outbreaks of Rift Valley fever make routine vaccination of large numbers of livestock against the disease appear prohibitively expensive.
Effective communication is vital to managing outbreaks of Rift Valley fever; all those in close contact with livestock, for example, should be informed of the risks associated with slaughtering livestock and handling carcasses. Clear, authoritative messaging is perhaps the single most important action that can be taken to prevent loss of human as well as animal life.
Because the disease is transmitted between livestock and people, it is essential that medical and veterinary authorities collaborate closely with each other to prevent and control outbreaks.

A decision-support tool is used for contingency planning
Once an outbreak of Rift Valley fever occurs, the disease spreads rapidly, leaving little time for authorities and affected communities to weigh options and make decisions. And due to the on-average decade-long interval between outbreaks, many of those with firsthand experience of an outbreak are no longer in their posts to tackle the next.

To address this, FAO and ILRI worked with multiple stakeholders to improve control of Rift Valley fever by developing a ‘decision-support’ tool. Targeted at directors of veterinary services in the East Africa region, the tool divides an outbreak of Rift Valley fever into a sequence of 12 key events, including the normal inter-epidemic period. For each event or period, the tool recommends a set of actions to facilitate timely, evidence-based decision-making. The tool helps decision-makers act early for prevention and control, based on an increasing levels of outbreak risk, rather than waiting for an outbreak to occur before action is taken.

Recently, in response to the Rift Valley fever warning issued by FAO, the decision-support tool was used by the Kenyan Veterinary Department to inform the drafting of a Rift Valley fever contingency plan.

Renewing African agriculture

Posted on November 21, 2008 by ILRIComms

Making Africa's diversity and complexity work for, rather than against, its small farmers

As 2008 draws to a close, I and other colleagues of mine in the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, which supports my Africa-based institute, the International Livestock Research Institute, have been reflecting on a ‘New Deal’ for African farmers, who face special agricultural conditions that demand special attention.

Rural Africa remains largely hungry and poor despite decades of improved agricultural technologies, crop varieties and management and policy options generated by agricultural science to help solve the continent’s special agricultural challenges.

What’s been missing is an integrated approach to African agriculture that is radically collaborative, holistic and futuristic—an approach that embraces rather than ignores the complexity of small-scale African farming and marketing and the continent’s special agro-ecological and cultural diversity.

We need not only new and better adapted crop varieties and more productive and more efficiently managed livestock, fisheries, tree crops and forests, but also new ways of serving small farmers, new and more efficient market chains that encourage smallholder participation, and new ways of spurring innovation at all levels, from farms to communities to institutions.

We need an integrated approach to Africa’s special agricultural conditions that follows neither the highly intensified farming systems of the West, which now are also being rethought because of their high human and environmental costs, nor mere incremental improvements to Africa’s traditional subsistence mixed crop, tree, fish and livestock farming systems, which can merely lock people into farm poverty for generations.

Experts reckon that doing these things will require a doubling of current investments in science. Such augmented levels of investments would indeed enable the scientific community to advance developing-country agricultural research. And it still wouldn’t make a difference to most of Africa’s food producers and sellers.

We need a New Deal for African agricultural research that involves every major stakeholder in development of this vast sector. Central to the new deal is adequate support for national and regional research and the farm input services that enable the agricultural sector to perform.

We need to learn how to connect all the dots—how to integrate the work of science groups with that of the many other players in developing-country agriculture in ways that deliver all the given specific pieces needed to support, improve and sustain African farming in specific circumstances. Betting on a single farm component or group of actors, whether a new technology or a world body, to transform Africa’s agricultural sector is not going to work.

We’re not going to banish crises such as the fertilizer crisis, the food crisis, the fuel crisis and now the financial crises that we’ve experienced over the past year, but we can learn to prepare for and manage them faster and better. This will require all research institutions to start talking to development institutions, to start building new kinds of partnerships, and to start taking on some radical new ways of doing business. It’s bound to be a messy process. But a necessary one.

These new partnerships must embrace Africa’s diversity as a strength in revitalizing and reforming Africa’s food systems as a whole—from how we grow food to how we transport and process it to how we cook and eat it. With the era of cheap energy drawing to a close, old approaches will not work as before. We need new thinking, new systems, new diversification, new markets, new policies and new actors to build a 21st-century food system that works.

This will require not so much a new development pathway as an abundance of mix-and-match development pathways suiting Africa’s greatly diverse agro-eco- and socio-economic conditions. We need nuanced and differentiated solutions for Africa’s highly differentiated farming systems and household conditions.

To do this, we’ll need new skills and tools and to determine what options best suit which particular circumstances. Doing this should allow agricultural researchers, for the first time, to make Africa’s diversity and complexity work for Africa, as a wealth of resources, rather than against Africa, as a wealth of problems.

Many agree that major international organizations such as the United Nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund require major overhauls to remain relevant in tackling our current and future global challenges. The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, which supports 15 centres working for sustainable agricultural development in poor countries, has been engaging in this throughout 2008. At its annual meeting, in Maputo, Mozambique, 1–5 December 2008, it furthered the process of reinventing itself by reorganizing its structure and processes to form a cohesive, coherent and—above all—collaborative foundation on which to build anew the international agricultural research for development enterprise.

Carlos Seré
Director General
International Livestock Research Institute

A new approach for safer food in informal markets

Posted on October 23, 2008 by ILRIComms

Women play the major role in food supply in developing countries, but too often their ability to feed their families safely is compromised; one outcome is high levels of foodborne disease.

Millions of smallscale farmers in Africa, mostly women, supply the surging demand for livestock products. Most meat, milk, eggs, and fish is sold in informal markets where food safety regulation and inspection has failed and alternatives have not emerged. The result is high levels of foodborne disease amongst poor consumers and limited access to higher value markets for smallscale producers.

Safer foods benefits both producers and consumers
Safer livestock products can generate both health and wealth for the poor, but attaining safe food and safe food production in developing countries requires a radical change in food safety management. Now you can get quality food online and use coupons and discounts from Raise. International food safety standards are not always appropriate to developing countries due to lack of resources, infrastructure and incentives to encourage and monitor implementation.

In response to the problem of unsafe food in informal markets, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and partners have been conducting research on livestock market chains in urban Uganda, Kenya, and Nigeria to better understanding the benefits and harms of livestock-keeping and how associated health risks can be better managed. A report on work in progress, entitled ‘Participatory risk assessment: a new approach for safer food in vulnerable African communities, was published in a special issue of Development in Practice.

Women are key players in food supply
ILRI epidemiologist, food safety expert and lead author of the paper, Delia Grace says, ‘In rich countries eating out is a sign of wealth, but in developing countries it is often a sign of poverty. Buying ‘street’ food makes sense for the poor since it is often cheaper than buying cooking fuel and raw ingredients. Millions of poor people are dependent on these informal markets, where both raw and cooked animal source foods are prepared and sold.
‘Most of the food sold in these traditional markets is produced and prepared by women. It is a huge market but difficult to quantify or regulate. As a result, it tends to be ignored. But finding new approaches for making foods sold in informal markets safer will benefit both poor producers and poor consumers’ says Grace.

Food safety management needs to be adapted to local contexts
Risk-based approaches that take into account the extent of harm caused by food-borne disease to consumers and the likelihood of its happening are current international best practice. But these approaches are complex and do not work in informal settings in developing countries where most of the poor buy and sell their food.

Recognising the key role women play in food preparation and supply and the need to involve them in developing workable food safety solutions, the researchers developed a gender-sensitive participatory method. Their pro-poor risk-based approach to food safety contrasts with top-down hazard-based approaches that have failed to work in the past. The researchers have called their new approach for assessing and managing health risks associated with livestock ‘participatory risk analysis’.

ILRI economist and co-author, Tom Randolph, says ‘Studies that look for disease in informal markets will inevitably find it; the corollary is an enormous burden of sickness borne by poor consumers, as well as blocked access for poor farmers to emerging higher value outlets such as supermarkets.

‘Risk-based approaches to food safety need to be adapted to the context of informal markets. So we are focusing on the food producers – who are mostly women – and bringing communities and food safety implementers together to analyse local food safety problems and develop workable solutions.

‘We are convinced that integrating risk assessment with participatory methodologies and gender analysis is a promising solution to the problem of unsafe foods in informal markets.

‘And generating credible evidence is critical to better understanding and better managing food safety in developing countries’ concludes Randolph.

Earlier risk-based approach to raw milk management in Kenya

Food borne disease is often dismissed as a mild inconvenience. The symptoms, usually an upset stomach, vomiting and/or diahorrea, are short-lived and people recover quickly and fully. But foodborne illnesses are in fact very serious. Some can cause permanent irreversible damage and others can kill. Children, the elderly and sick are particularly vulnerable. Diahorrea, a common symptom of many foodborne illnesses, is a leading cause of death in children under five in developing countries. Safe food handling and storage practices reduce the risks of food poisoning, while cooking foods at high temperatures can kill bacteria that cause serious food related illnesses. Safer food benefits all consumers, particularly the poorest and most vulnerable.

Brucellosis is a zoonotic disease (transmitted from infected animals to people). It is commonly transmitted by consuming food harbouring brucella organisms, usually raw/unpasteurized milk or products derived from untreated milk including yoghurt and cheese. Women infected with brucellosis can also transfer the bacteria to their babies through breast milk. Symptoms of brucellosis include fever, headache, sweating, joint pain and fatigue. If left untreated, symptoms can last up to a year.

Earlier smallholder dairy research conducted by ILRI and partners showed that although some raw milk sold by smallscale traders in Kenya did contain brucella, the risk of brucellosis was negligible as it is common practice across Kenya to boil all milk before drinking it. Boiling milk achieves the same results as pasteurization – harmful bacteria commonly found in raw milk, such as brucella and E. coli, are destroyed and the health risk to consumers is low.

This is an example of how focusing on risk (likely harm to the consumer) comes up with a very different conclusion than focusing on hazard (presence of bacteria in milk. By taking cultural/consumer practices into account, ILRI and partners generated evidence about the ‘real’ risks to public health and helped smallscale traders to continue selling their raw milk. The researchers also helped small traders raise their quality and safety standards by providing them with training and support to improve their food hygiene practices (read the food hygiene requirements here) and achieve quality accreditation within the formal market.

If hazard-based food safety standards that look for the presence of pathogens had been applied, raw milk would have been considered a serious health risk. But the alternative pro-poor risk-based approach was a win-win for Kenyan traders dependent on raw milk for their income and poor Kenyan consumers dependent on raw milk as a cheap and nourishing food source.

Further information: http://www.smallholderdairy.org

Citation
D. Grace, T. Randolph, J. Olawoye, M. Dipelou and E. Kang’ethe (2008) Participatory risk assessment: a new approach for safer food in vulnerable African communities. Development in Practice. Vol. 18, No.4, 611-618
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09614520802181731

Further Information Contact:
Delia Grace, Veterinary epidemiologist, ILRI
Email: d.grace@cgiar.org
Telephone: +254 (20) 422 3460

Tom Randolph
Economist, ILRI
Email: t.randolph@cgiar.org
Telephone: +254 (20) 422 3067

Helping Asia’s dairy farmers take advantage of rising demand and prices for dairy products

Posted on October 22, 2008 by ILRIComms

FAO workshop and strategy say fair prices, appropriate policies and strategic investments and partnerships are key for the sector's development.

A report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in April 2008 concludes that policy decisions impinging on the smallholder dairy sector should be taken with a broad understanding of their direct and indirect implications on rural as well as urban populations.

The report indicates that the recent control of milk prices in several Asian countries could be counter-productive to supporting the dairy incomes of smallholders and rural development generally. With prices at record levels for both dairy outputs (milk) and inputs (feeds, energy costs), fixed and administered prices tend to hold back big as well as small dairy producers from responding quickly to the changing price signals.

Price controls particularly hurt dispersed smallholders, who often lack social networks to help them find and sell to milk collectors offering the highest prices. On the other hand, equitable and remunerative prices for farm-gate milk encourages smallholders to adopt improved and sustainable technologies and management systems that improve their milk quality as well as quantity.

The recent and rapid escalation of commodity prices is the perfect environment in which to test what policies are most conducive to the development of the agricultural sector. Low food prices over the past 20 years led to an underinvestment in agriculture, particularly in smallholder dairying, which, unlike rice and other staples of food security, has been a neglected and relatively unsupported area of research and development.

Fair pricing policies, says FAO, are the first step to this sector’s development.

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The sudden rise in dairy prices that took the market by surprise in late 2006 was due to the elimination by the European Union of subsidized dairy exports as well as to drought in many large dairy-product exporting countries and higher feed prices worldwide. Throughout 2007, prices for dairy products rose faster than those for any other agricultural commodity group, finally reaching a plateau in late 2007 and abating only in early 2008.
This recent increase in dairy prices potentially offers an opportunity for hundreds of millions of poor, and in many cases, landless, smallholder dairy producers to benefit from these structural, or permanent, shifts in the global demand and supply of dairy products.

This is particularly true for Asia, where growth in both milk production and consumption has been the strongest in the world; nearly 80% of the 238 million tonnes of milk produced in 2007 was supplied by farmers with 1 to 5 cows.

While developing countries in Asia and elsewhere consume only 40% of global milk production, these countries import nearly three-quarters of global shipments of dairy products, including 80% of milk powder exports from developed countries. With the world’s largest net trade milk deficit, Asia is projected to increase its milk production by 3% a year over the next decade, slower than the previous decade but still double annual global growth rates.

This is supported by expectations that, although dairy product prices have been easing in the first half of 2008, increased prices are here to stay. Commodity projections by both FAO and the Food and Agriculture Policy Research Institute indicate that milk prices over the next decade will remain 50% higher than historical averages.

Smallholder farmers have the capacity to respond quickly to higher milk prices because of their ample scope for rapid yield increases. Current average milk yields in developing countries are just one-fifth that in developed countries because most smallholder farmers feed their dairy animals well below their potential.

With enabling pricing policies and technical support to producers on improved feeding, on-farm management and reducing spoilage, milk yields in poor countries could increase dramatically to meet the rising global demand, bringing millions out of poverty in the process.

How policymakers in region have responded to higher commodity prices
To date, most of the policy responses in Asia to escalating food prices have focused on rice, maize, wheat and other food staples. Some countries, such as India in 2007, briefly limited dairy product exports to ensure domestic price stability. Many importing countries reduced import tariffs on both livestock products and feed inputs and many put in place price caps on milk and other dairy products.

Asian policy responses to escalating food prices

• China imposes price caps on meat, milk, eggs, grain and edible oils (Jan 2008)
• China subsidizes meat consumption for the poor (for 6 months)
• Thailand imposes price controls on dairy products, chicken, eggs, beef and pork.
• Pakistani cities set retail fluid milk prices below the cost of production.
• Thailand reduces the tariff rate for soybean meal from 4 to 0% to reduce the costs of feeding local animals.
• Indonesia eliminates import duties on soybeans (for 6 months).
• Indonesia subsidizes tempe and tofu producers.
• Korea cuts import duties on corn and soybeans.
• China reduces the tariff rate for soybeans from 3 to 1% for 3 months (Oct 2007–Mar 2008).
• Indonesia takes a series of measures to stabilize food prices.
• India abolishes the import duty on corn (Jan–Dec 2007)
• India bans the export of pulses (Jun 2006–Mar 2008).
• Vietnam reduces tariffs on meat, offal, eggs, milk products, vegetable oils and animal feeds by 30–50% and reduces the import tax rate for corn used for animal feed from 5 to 2%.

The different policy responses and the way they are implemented alter economic incentives for the different actors along the dairy marketing chain and have differential impacts on food security in urban and rural areas. Policy responses that seek to ensure food security and access by controlling markets, such as through setting ceiling prices, usually lower prices, preventing potential gains from being realized, and hurt rural livelihoods.

The dairy sector in most developed countries is highly supported through regulated prices and high tariffs to ensure stable and high incomes for dairy producers. This is not the case in developing countries, where dairy policies are less prevalent and price controls are often used to ensure low prices for urban consumers.

A recent FAO review on lessons learned in smallholder dairy development reveals that government interventions in the dairy sector—particularly price policies that create or remove incentives for producers to increase yields—strongly impact rural livelihoods and food security for better or worse, as well as, importantly, the investment climate for the sector.

A key question for policymakers is to what extent the international dairy prices are being transmitted into local economies. FAO’s investigation of price movements in a few countries in Asia identifies some of the factors conditioning the transmission of the prices. Domestic policies influence market signals while the costs of doing business determines the extent to which individual producers respond to those market signals.

The first determinants of how international prices translate into local prices are exchange rate movements and a country’s net trade position. While world dairy prices have increased substantially in recent years, these have been accompanied and partly caused by a substantial depreciation of the US dollar against many currencies.

The exchange rate factor means domestic prices don’t necessarily rise as much as international prices. The impacts of international prices on local prices are highest in countries with stable currencies, such as Indonesia and Bangladesh. In countries whose currencies have been appreciating, milk importers such as the Philippines have benefited from cheaper imports while milk exporters such as Thailand have suffered from reduced export earnings.

Prices of dairy products throughout Asia have increased over the past two years. From 2006 to 2008, farm gate prices of fluid milk rose from 10% (Malaysia) to 14% (Nepal) to 30% (Vietnam) to 69% (Mongolia). In the Philippines, which, after China, imports more dairy products than any other Asian nation, the government stopped all support for dairy activities two decades ago, deciding to import all its dairy requirements. While the government has accorded the sector more interest in recent years, its low tariffs (1–3%) on dairy imports, instituted to assure adequate supplies of milk products for its urban consumers, encouraged milk imports.

Despite these challenges to Philippino dairy producers, the smallholder sector, comprising some 96% of the dairy farming sector, has managed to compete favourably in the open market, due to its enterprise-focused approach to dairy development and the laissez-faire pricing policy, which allows markets to determine prices. The rise in international milk prices was transferred into the Philippino wholesale market for milk powder with only a slight delay (despite the peso’s appreciating 33% against the value of the US dollar, making imports less expensive). And farm gate prices, ranging from US$0.30–0.33 from 2001 to 2006 have risen to the current range of $0.40–0.49.

Sri Lanka has also kept tariffs low on imports of dairy products to keep milk, considered ‘essential’ for food security and nutrition, affordable. As a result, price trends in international markets are transmitted almost fully to the domestic market. With relatively stable exchange rates and imports making up 72% of domestic consumption, one could assume that high international prices would lead to higher prices for local suppliers.

However, pricing structures largely determined by a state-owned milk processing company mean the higher international prices translated into nearly 50% rises in packages of locally sold whole milk powder but only a 25% increase (US$0.20–0.25 per litre) in farm gate fluid milk prices in 2007.

Sri Lankan milk producers have thus not been given sufficient incentives to invest in their dairying despite the fact that the country’s total milk collection increased by 13% in 2004 due to higher prices being paid then for milk. Also constraining incentives to engage in the Sri Lankan dairy sector are high production costs that mean that a farmer needs to keep at least three cows and produce at least 15 litres a day to earn a reasonable income from dairy.

As Asia’s fifth largest producer, Pakistan accounts for nearly 13% of global production, most of which is sourced from the country’s 8.4 million dairying households owning an average of 1 to 10 cows and most of which is consumed within the country.

Dairy’s contribution to Pakistan domestic product surpasses all the major crops and the sector has grown by more than 3% annually over the past decade, mostly due to expanding numbers of dairy animals producing low yields.

Over 2007, prices for fluid milk rose from US$0.31 to %$0.37 per litre. The price setting, however, which in Pakistan is done at district level, doesn’t take into consideration the rising costs of feed and other imports.

In both Pakistan and Sri Lanka, these prices have risen about 8 to 10% per year. Some municipalities are setting price ceiling below the cost of production. So while official milk prices in Karachi are set at RS32 per litre, black market rates in peak season often reach RS42 per litre. In response, farmers reduce or stop making new investments in their dairying, particularly their purchase of buffalo calves, whose price has risen 30–40%, a fact that may spell shortages of milk and cows in future.

Strategically positioning Asia to benefit from growing opportunities:
The Asian Smallholder Dairy Development Strategy and Investment Plan
To facilitate a timely response to this new and big opportunity for the poor, FAO and the Animal Production and Health Commission for Asia and the Pacific (APHCA), with the financial support of Common Fund for Commodities, initiated development of a regional strategy for dairy development. They started by holding a workshop in Chiang Mai, Thailand, 26–29 February 2008, attended by over 50 key policymakers and senior executives of some of the largest dairy companies in Asia. Participants included regional experts from 18 Asian countries and from the Africa-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).

At a time of record-high international dairy prices, the workshop dairy experts agreed that Asia needs concerted regional collaboration to enable its tens of millions of small dairy producers to derive the full benefits from the dairy value chain through greater productivity, better milk quality and maximum market access.

To help unleash dairy’s potential to transform rural economies in Asia, workshop members and government and private-sector representatives pledged to:
• Strengthen the ability of smallholders, who currently account for 70% of regional milk production, to supply and market quality milk to the region;
• Actively participate in a regional dairy information and exchange network that will be a channel of best practices on smallholder dairy development;
• Support the development of national action plans that would build on the pillars of the regional strategy.

In response to the outcome of the workshop, FAO committed itself, under the umbrella of APHCA, to the immediate development of a knowledge networking system on small-scale dairy development, addressing such issues as production, marketing, and processing. The results of this workshop were further elaborated the following April into an Asian Smallholder Dairy Development Strategy and Investment Plan, which has as its objective: ‘a glass of good-quality, safe Asian milk per day for every Asian child and more efficient, productive and profitable dairy food chains providing dairy producers with higher earnings.’

In November 2008, ILRI’s Markets Theme director, Steve Staal, will participate in a follow-up workshop in Bangkok with about 30 other experts, including policymakers, researchers, private sector agents and global development thinkers on dairy development and chain analysis. This informal expert consultation aims to build a body of practical knowledge on enabling policies for development of smallholder dairy. It will feed into and support the broader objectives of FAO’s regional strategy for smallholder dairy development in Asia, which is to promote investment into Asia’s dairy sector.

FAO has been working in many countries in the region to help develop national training centers for small-scale dairy processing and genetic improvement of dairy cattle. Like FAO, ILRI strongly supports pro-poor dairy policy and development. ILRI has been working to enhance smallholder dairying in Africa and Asia since early 1990s through collaborative R&D projects with national partners. ILRI’s central interest is the traditional ‘raw’, or unpasteurized, milk and dairy markets of these regions, which are huge and booming. Traditional markets make up an extraordinary 98% of total milk sold in Tanzania, 90% in Uganda, and 86% in Kenya; in South Asia, these informal markets constitute 98% of milk sold in Pakistan, 76% in India and 40% in Sri Lanka. The dairy products traded in these informal markets are often liquid raw or soured milk and traditionally processed products such as the ubiquitous milk sweets of India.

ILRI’s collaborative smallholder dairy projects are looking for win-win options that enhance the welfare of small farmers and market agents while improving the nutritional status of poor households and enriching exhausted soils on smallholder mixed crop-and-livestock farms.
A smart way to meet this triple bottom line is to pay scrupulous attention to already vibrant local dairy markets—to what products local people are already selling and buying. As ILRI veterinary researcher Nick Hooten says:

‘What all of us tend to vastly underestimate is the huge and growing size and viability of local dairy markets in developing countries, with their traditional products designed for local preferences rather than Western appetites. These local markets should be our starting point for enlarging dairy pathways out of poverty.’

A collaboration path toward action
Embarking on such an ambitious initiative requires collaboration and cooperation between governments, institutions and other local and regional partners. FAO and ILRI have a long history of working together on smallholder dairy development and a regional umbrella supporting dairy development in Asia necessitates partnerships that focus on merging research results into development action in the field.

A recent ILRI/FAO publication, Dairy Development for the Resource Poor—A Comparison of Dairy Policies and Development in South Asia and East Africa—outlines an agenda for pro-poor dairy policy and development. The authors suggest that, generally speaking, dairy development policies that build on traditional production systems, with a particular focus on employment generation and food safety and quality, are likely to be pro-poor. Solid knowledge of policies and their impacts on the structure of the dairy sector throughout the region will provide the stage for future initiatives.

ILRI and FAO look forward to collaborating with interested partners in the region to further the goal of ensuring that every day Asian children have access to at least one glass of Asian milk.

Related Information:
Proceedings of an FAO/APHCA/CFC-FUNDED workshop on:
Developing an Asian Regional Strategy for Sustainable Smallholder Dairy Development

Strategy and Investment Plan for Smallholder Dairy Development in Asia

Asia Pacific Dairy Strategy Project information

APHCA Brief: Dairy prices, policies and potential opportunities for smallholders in Asia, April 2008, by Nancy Morgan, Livestock Policy Officer, FAO Regional Office in Bangkok, Asia-Pacific Dairy Strategy Project

ILRI’s presentation to the workshop, ‘Dairy development for the resource poor: Lessons for policy and planning strategies’, by Nick Hooten, 27 February 2008.

Further Information Contact:
Nancy Morgan,
Livestock Policy Officer, FAO Regional Office in Bangkok
Asia-Pacific Dairy Strategy Project
Email: Nancy.Morgan@fao.org

Steve Staal
Director of Enhancing Market Opportunities Theme
ILRI-Nairobi
Email: s.taal@cgiar.org

Evolution of Uganda’s dairy systems: Popular zero-grazing dairying does not suit all

Posted on October 17, 2008 by ILRIComms

What’s needed is to make better use of cow manure to fertilize the country’s impoverished soils.

Is Uganda outgrowing its popular zero-grazing dairy model? Reports from a recent research study suggest that Ugandan policymakers may want to revisit their policies supporting the country’s booming dairy sector to sustain increasing yields of smallholder mixed crop-and-dairy production over the long term.

Before the 1980s, milk production in Uganda occurred largely in two contrasting production systems. There were the large, mostly government-owned, commercial dairy farms located in the wetter parts of the country on which exotic and cross-bred dairy cattle were kept and grazed on natural pastures. Then there were the pastoralists, who kept large numbers of local cattle under traditional management systems in the drier eastern and northeastern parts of the country.

From the mid-1980s, development agencies in Uganda began introducing zero-grazing systems, in which high-yielding genetically improved cows (pure or cross-bred with local cattle) are kept in stalls and fed with fodder cut and carried to them daily. These more ‘intensive’ dairy systems were promoted among Ugandan farmers along with training on managing dairy breeds and growing fodder. This gave many smallholders an incentive to buy exotic dairy cows or to upgrade their indigenous cows by cross-breeding them with exotic stock. Some of Uganda’s small farmers adopted strict zero-grazing practices while others combined grazing paddocks with stall feeding, a hybrid dairy production system that came to be known as ‘semi-intensive’.

As a result, there has been a steady increase over the last two decades in the numbers of improved dairy cows in Uganda’s national herd with concomitant increases in national milk production yields, smallholder contributions to national milk production, dairy’s contribution to the national economy, and per capita milk consumption.

Ugandan dairy support
Sixteen years ago, in 1992, the government launched a ‘Milk Master Plan’ to improve (simultaneously) rural incomes, farm living standards, national self-sufficiency in milk production, and yields of surplus milk for export. With the liberation of the sub-sector in 1993, when the government’s monopoly on milk processing was broken, many medium and small-scale private milk processors emerged on the scene. To realize the objectives of its ‘Milk Master Plan’, Uganda in 1998 established a Dairy Development Authority.

With the rapid rise of dairying among smallholder farmers, people began to question whether intensification was the best option for Ugandan farmers and whether these mixed dairy-crop production systems could be sustained.

To respond to these concerns, an in-depth study funded by the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA) was carried out between 2001 and 2005 by the Ugandan National Agriculture Research Organization (NARO), Makerere University, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the Danish Institute of Agricultural Sciences (DIAS).

The study, focusing on dairy economics and nutrient cycling, was carried out in three districts—Mbarara, in southwestern of Uganda; Masaka, in southern Uganda; and Jinja, in the southeast, which is much smaller than the other two districts but with the highest human population.

Results of the research study indicate that Uganda may be ‘outgrowing’ its successful, and ever popular, zero-grazing model. The results show that Uganda’s booming dairy farming is profitable regardless of the level of ‘intensification’ that farmers employ through use of feeds and other inputs. This finding suggests is that a high-input / highly intensified production system like Uganda’s popular and heavily policy-supported ‘zero grazing’ system is not necessarily the best option for all of the country’s small-scale crop-and-dairy farmers. Even the country’s most progressive dairy farmers, who have adopted zero-grazing en masse, may want to revisit their choice of production system to sustain their crop as well as dairy production over the long term.

Another finding of the study is that all of Uganda’s dairy farmers, whether intensive, semi-intensive or agro-pastoral, tend to under-use their animal manure as organic fertilizer for their crop fields. The study found the quality of the soils on Uganda’s mixed dairy-crop farms already below a level considered critical for crop production and continuing to drop. This deteriorating situation is fast eroding the long-term sustainability of these farming systems; if nothing is done, food insecurity and poverty in the country are likely to worsen. This is despite these farmers having adequate amounts of manure from their dairy cows to use as fertilizing soil amendments. It is likely that Uganda’s dairy farmers are under-using their livestock manure to fertilize their crop soils because they lack the labour needed to save, transport and apply the manure.

RESEARCH RECOMMENDATION:• This study revealed how surprisingly little research can yet tell us about the advantages and disadvantages of African farmers applying livestock manure as fertilizer on their mixed-production farms. We still lack, for example, sufficient comparative data on its effects on small-farm economics, nutrient cycling, practicability, and labour trade-offs.

• We don’t yet know enough about these matters to recommend best-practice manure management and application methods for Uganda’s many small dairy producers. We ought to. We need to research manure management in the context of Africa’s complex small farming systems so that we can offer the continent’s farmers recommendations validated by research.

Download the Research Report: http://hdl.handle.net/10568/257

Download the Research Brief: http://hdl.handle.net/10568/3808

Partners:

Ugandan National Agriculture Oragnization (NARO)
Makerere University
Danish Institute of Agricultural Sciences (DIAS)

Further Information Contact:
Isabelle Baltenweck
Scientist
International Livestock Research Institute
Nairobi, Kenya
Email: i.baltenweck@cgiar.org
Telephone: +254 (20) 422 3000

Sarah Mubiru
National Agricultural Research Organization (NARO)
Kampala, Uganda
Email: smubiru@naro-ug.org

Research paper casts doubt on claims for pre-Colombian Chilean chickens

Posted on October 13, 2008 by ILRIComms

But ancient chicken DNA obtained from Easter Island may represent a genetic signature of an early Polynesian dispersal of chickens.

Did some native Amerindian breeds of chicken pre-date the arrival in the Americas of European chickens with the Spanish in the 15th century?

Many would like to think so. Such evidence is used to support ancient trading contact between Polynesian and South American Indians. Some have passionately argued the case for pre-Colombian chickens, citing in particular the unusual Chilean Araucana and Passion Fowl breeds.

The Araucana breed, for example, thought to be descended from indigenous Amerindian chickens, lays blue/green-shelled eggs and has distinctive plumage. Because features of its plumage are also found among Asian rather than Mediterranean chickens, it’s been hypothesized that the Araucana breed might have an Asian origin. A similar origin has been posited for Chile’s Passion Fowl. It is thought by some that these historic Chilean breeds could have arrived with early Polynesian or Dutch traders on the Pacific Coast of South America.

But a recent scientific paper published in the prestigious USA Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (29 July 2008) says that molecular evidence counters such an early introduction via Polynesia. Results of this research investigation into the putative ancient Polynesian lineage of Chile’s native chickens indicate an Indo-European genetic origin. This paper has generated a lively debate that is still on-going. (See, for example, the subsequent Letter to the Editor of PNAS from Storey.)
Other recent research suggests that there were multiple centres of origin for the domestication of the chicken across both Southeast Asia and the Indian sub-continent. The high genetic similarity between European and Indian sub-continent mitochondrial DNA sequences suggests that the latter was the main source for chickens introduced into Europe.

This molecular evolutionary genetic analysis of the origin of Chile’s native chickens was carried out by scientists working in nine institutes across the globe. Animal geneticists and archaeologists at four universities in Australia (Sydney, Adelaide, Queensland and the Australian National University) worked with archaeologists from the University of Durham (UK), medical biochemists and microbiologists from Uppsala University (Sweden), geneticists from Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile (which extracted the DNA samples) and livestock geneticists working at the Nairobi-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and a Beijing Joint Laboratory on Livestock and Forage Genetic Resources (JLLFGR) run jointly by ILRI and China’s Institute of Animal Sciences. ILRI and JLLFGR did the PCR and DNA sequencing work for this study. Researchers working in ILRI’s labs in Nairobi and Beijing are working to improve understanding of the diversity in backyard chicken populations and production systems so as to reduce chicken diseases and subsequent poverty in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.

Interestingly, although this molecular evolutionary detective work provides no support for a pre-Colombian Polynesian introduction of chickens to South America, DNA sequences from ancient chicken remains obtained from two archaeological sites on Easter Island represent a genetic signature of an early Polynesian, rather than 15th century Spanish, introduction of chickens to the island.
Lying far off the coast of Chile and named by Dutch sailors who landed there on Easter Sunday in 1722, Easter Island is famous for the more than 800 iconic stone statues, called moai, of giant heads that dot its landscape. The ancient chicken specimens from Easter Island are clearly pre-European, indicating that they form part of an original ‘Polynesian/Pacific’ chicken dispersal possibly subsequently erased across the western Polynesian islands.

The lineages of domestic plants and animals are often replaced by later introductions of the same domestic species with a different genetic heritage, thus erasing evidence of the initial dispersal. It is thus possible that the Indo-European chicken haplotypes found in Chile may have formed a more recent wave of dispersals, overwriting and removing earlier Indonesian sequences across western Polynesia but failing to do the same on distant Easter Island.

But at present, there is no evidence to support an ancient Asia Pacific route for the introduction of Indo-European chickens into Chile.

More research is needed to resolve the timing and nature of introductions, modern diversity and regional adaptation of local chicken breeds in South America, Easter Island and Southeast Asia. Of particular interest will be chickens kept by some indigenous communities in the Amazon forest, the origins of which remain a mystery.

‘The origin of South America’s first chickens remains debatable today,’ says Han Jianlin, an author of this paper, who heads the ILRI-Chinese Joint Lab in Beijing. ‘But I predict that we will have the definitive answer within the next five years. That’s how fast this molecular detective work is moving.’

‘What is remarkable about this work,’ says Olivier Hanotte, another ILRI author of the paper, who leads an ILRI project to characterize indigenous animal genetic resources of the developing world, ‘is that it is allowing us to tackle major questions about human history that we would not have been able even to ask just 20 years ago.’

‘We didn’t set out in this research,’ says Hanotte, ‘to advance understanding of the history of the world’s farming societies. But that’s just where this research—conducted to characterize chicken genetic resources of and for the poor—has led us.~

Further Information Contact:
Olivier Hanotte
Molecular Biologist, ILRI
Nairobi, KENYA
Email: o.hanotte@cgiar.org
Telephone: +254 (20) 422 3000

Han Jianlin
Scientist & Head, ILRI-Chinese Joint Lab in Beijing
Beijing, CHINA
Email: h.jianlin@cgiar.org

Indian Council of Agricultural Research awards dairy project

Posted on October 10, 2008 by ILRIComms

'Team research for the Biennium 2005-6'

On 16 July 2008, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) in New Delhi awarded its ‘Team Research for the Biennium (2005–6)’ to Abraham K Joseph (left) and his colleagues at ‘Capitalisation of Livestock Programme Experiences India’. CALPI is a program of Intercooperation, a Swiss development organization funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.

The award was presented by the Hon. Union Minister for Agriculture, Mr Sharad Pawar (who is also the president of ICAR) and the Hon. Minister of State for Agriculture, Shri Kanti Lal Bhuria. It was bestowed on CALPI’s ‘Action Research to Improve the Traditional Milk Sector’.

ICAR’s ‘National Award for Outstanding Interdisciplinary Team Research in Agriculture and Allied Sciences for the Biennium 2005–6’ was bestowed on Intercooperation / CALPI for the significant contribution it has made to understanding the structure, functioning and dynamics of India’s traditional dairy value chain and identifying and implementing critically important interventions to help improve it.

The ministers said that this project helped dairy producers, consumers and market intermediaries alike to assimilate and adopt innovative ideas on how to organize producer groups and vendor associations. CALPI’s action research demonstrated that, given the right recognition and support in the form of technology, infrastructure, management and capacity building, India’s traditional dairy enterprises are viable, are operating within the nation’s food laws, and are contributing immensely to socially inclusive and regionally balanced economic growth.

Capitalisation of Livestock Programme Experiences India (CALPI)

The overall goal of CALPI is to capitalize on experiences, competence, credibility, reputation and demand to influence conditions in the livestock sector so that these address the top priorities and challenges of rural Indian livelihoods.

CALPI works in livestock policy development, livestock service delivery systems, veterinary and animal husbandry education, livestock-environment interactions, knowledge networks and research partnerships, livestock products marketing, and human and institutional development.

The programme supports projects and partners at macro-, meso- and, to a lesser extent, micro-levels largely through action research, networking, pilot activities, workshops and advocacy. The programme is implemented through Intercooperation.

See CALPI fact sheet: http://www.intercooperation.org.in/km/pdf/calpi/CALPI%20Fact%20sheet.pdf

This winning project to improve the traditional milk sector, one of 17 projects CALPI implements and supports, was conducted in the Khammam and Vijayawada districts of Andhra Pradesh, India. Although India’s vast traditional milk sector comprises an estimated 46 million dairy producing households and 111 million dairy consuming households, this sector remains one of the country’s least studied.

ILRI’s Regional Representative for Asia, Iain Wright (left)
with the CALPI team, Shefali Misra, A K Joseph and V Padmakumar.

This action research was implemented by a group of organizations, including Catalyst Management Services and the National Dairy Research Institute, in Bangalore; two NGOs, SECURE and ACTIVE, located at Khammam; and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), based in Nairobi. The research was steered by a multi-stakeholder Research Reference Group made up of representatives of each of these partners, including ILRI, and chaired by the Dairy Development Commissioner of Andhra Pradesh State.

This project has jointly published several publications with ILRI. These will be further used in a new project—‘Knowledge to Action: Enhancing Traditional Dairy Value Chains’—launched by ILRI and local partners in Guwahati, the capitol of India’s northeastern Assam Province, on 29 September 2008. This new project will work with Assam’s traditional milk sector to improve its marketing efficiencies, building on ILRI’s collaborative smallholder dairy work in East Africa as well as other parts of India. The Assam dairy project is funded by the UK Department for International Development through their ‘Research-into-Use Programme’.

As livestock professionals grapple with new challenges on account of rapid rises in the consumption and production of dairy and meat products in the South; the rapid spread of livestock diseases, some of them transmissible to people; and the anticipated damage climate change will cause South Asia’s agriculture, CALPI and ILRI are jointly organizing a South Asia knowledge-sharing workshop in Delhi 13–15 October 2008 on ‘Livestock and Development in a Changing Context’. The aim of the workshop is to understand the knowledge and information needs of those with a stake in livestock production where it interfaces livelihoods and environments of the poor. The 40-odd participants of the workshop will also identify ways to share the large body of applied knowledge that could be useful to livestock professionals in the region.

Traditional milk market (CALPI)

ILRI Top Story: 22 September 2008
When policies support-rather than harass-the informal markets of poor countries

ILRI Top Story: 06 June 2008
Pig marketing opportunities in Assam and Nagaland

Further Information Contact:
Iain Wright
Regional Representative,
ILRI, South Asia
Email: i.wright@cgiar.org
Telephone: +91 (11) 2560 3653

When worlds collide: Those who eat too much meat – and those who eat too little

Posted on October 9, 2008 by ILRIComms

Our concern for the environment is proper – and needn’t override concern for the livestock livelihoods of a billion poor people.

In late 2006, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported that livestock production is one of the major causes of the world’s most pressing environmental problems, including global warming. A study it had conducted, ‘Livestock’s Long Shadow’, estimated that livestock are responsible for 18% of all the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, a bigger share than that of all the world’s transport.

Animal rights groups grabbed this news and promoted it widely, saying that that keeping a cow was more damaging to the environment than running a sports utility vehicle (SUV) and that the answer was for the world to become vegetarian. Since then, several world leaders have repeated that livestock production is a major culprit in human as well as environmental ill health. Most people would agree that it is improper that a gas-guzzling SUV – a symbol of the rich – is considered a legitimate need, while a cow – a critical income and food source for a billion poor people – is not.

Of course, many people who eat too many animals products have a lot to gain from reducing their consumption of such high cholesterol foods. Unhealthy diets overloaded with fatty meat and dairy products is a leading cause of obesity, diabetes and circulatory disease, mostly in rich countries. But for one billion of the world’s poorest people today, eating less of something you don’t have any access to in the first place is not an option. We cannot fairly equate the problem of heart disease resulting from consuming too much cholesterol with the problem of the malnourishment and resulting death of millions of children under two years old due to their consumption of too little cholesterol. And we shouldn’t try. The health of everyone matters. What tends to get lost in these arguments is science-based evidence that we can work towards one health for all.

For example, all of Africa’s ruminants put together account for just 3% of the world’s methane emissions. So while it may make sense to reduce the number of livestock in rich countries, getting rid of Africa’s livestock populations would make little difference to global warming but would have catastrophic impacts on livelihoods and national economies. That’s because most of the world’s "bottom billion" rely on cows and other farm animals to earn income; without their farm animals, their livelihoods would disappear. And most poor livestock-dependent families don’t actually eat meat – they can’t afford to. They sell it to wealthier consumers and use the money they’ve earned to buy cheaper food.

Ultimately, we need a balanced approach to solving complex environmental problems, one that does not hurt the many people who depend on livestock for food and livelihoods. Asking a person in New York or London or Tokyo to reduce their meat consumption for the good of their health and that of the planet is one thing. It’s quite another to ask a household subsisting on a daily diet of maize meal porridge to do without any animal protein or any livestock income with which to buy more nourishing food.

Having said that, we do need solutions to environmental problems, including global warming, caused by the industrial production of livestock in rich countries. And we do need new livestock feeding systems that meet the needs and circumstances of the world’s small farmers—systems that would allow their farm animals to convert feed to meat and milk more efficiently, and with less emission of methane.

But to join up all our fragmented knowledge, we’re going to need a common currency with which to assess the costs and benefits of different activities and processes. This goes beyond simplistic solutions such as stopping the world from eating meat and dairy. We need fairer ways to look at carbon emissions and perhaps start looking at individuals’ carbon footprints. For example, Stephen Pacala says we should ‘follow the money to find the big emitters’ and he highlights that the richest 500 million people in the world (7% of the world’s population) is responsible for emitting half of the world’s total carbon dioxide. In comparison, the ‘bottom billion’ emits practically nothing. He proposes a cap on personal emissions.

These are the kinds of differentiated solutions we could be exploring and discussing. And with the help of science and equitable and evidence-based policymaking, we can tackle our concerns for the earth and all its people. It’s time our health—the health of the planet and the health of its people—were treated as a single health issue. Different solutions will be needed for different situations. This is within our powers. All we have to give up is the idea that one solution for one group must come at the expense of another.

When charity is not enough

Posted on October 7, 2008 by ILRIComms

Support for Ethiopia’s 85 million smallholder farmers.

Across much of Ethiopia today, the grass and crop fields are green, the oxen and chickens fat and sleek, and the goats and cows roaming outside the traditional round mud huts, called ‘tukuls’, where smoke rises from cooking fires inside, healthy.

The first of the year’s crop harvests are just now coming in—too late to save the most vulnerable. Livelihoods have been seriously effected in parts of Ethiopia’s Afar, Amhara, Oromiya, SNNP (Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples), Somali and Tigray regions with the failure of seasonal crops, large losses of livestock and skyrocketing market prices.

The situation is beginning to improve in some areas where rainfall has been received. However, the full recovery of lost assets and future agricultural productivity will require sustained support from government and humanitarian partners in the areas of seed support, supply of veterinary drugs and training of veterinary staff. The rate of livestock sickness in Somali Region has reached critical levels in pastoral communities. NGOs in the region are carrying out small-scale slaughter destocking exercises to improve access to water and pasture for core breeding stock.

Ethiopia’s State Minister for Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr Abera Deresa, says drought emergencies like this one, which the Ethiopian Government and United Nations agencies agree are affecting pockets of Ethiopia’s most vulnerable peoples and marginal farming areas, are a common, recurrent phenomenon in Ethiopia.

‘What is being under-reported’, says the minister, ‘is that Ethiopia’s farm production has recently been increasing by a healthy 10% every year. Unfortunately, this doesn’t necessarily mean that demand and supply are compatible. Thus we have the current food crisis in Ethiopia, which is caused (as in the rest of the world) by climate change (drought), the international shift of food crops to biofuel, and incompatibility of demand and supply.’

The Ethiopian government has been working closely with humanitarian organizations to mobilize timely humanitarian support for the worst-affected regions and peoples. In this work, Abera said, Ethiopia relied on an Early Warning System set up within the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

Hunger is hitting other countries here in the Horn of Africa, which are reeling from the triple blows of drought and soaring food and fuel prices. The United Nations estimates that more than 14 million people urgently need food aid, including 2.6 million in Somalia, more than 1 million in Kenya, and 6.4 million in Ethiopia (the latter up from 4.6 million estimated earlier).

Aid programs are responding to this and other crises. The United States, for example, will this year give Ethiopia more than US$800 million—$460 million for food, $350 million for HIV/AIDS treatment, and just $7 million for agricultural development. No one wants a repeat of the great Ethiopian famine of 1984/5, which killed a million people.

‘We need to help countries like Ethiopia to create and sustain livelihoods as well as to save lives, says Carlos Seré, director general of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), which has a principal campus in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa. ‘That requires something longer term than food aid. It requires helping the country build skills, infrastructure and policy instruments that support equitable development of smallholder agriculture, the backbone of the Ethiopia’s economy. Pastoralists and small-scale farmers should to be able to feed their families while building assets for the future.’

The Ethiopian Government agrees. Realizing that humanitarian support is not a long-term solution to the country’s food security problems, it is working to help its farmers improve and sustain their food production by, for example, improved ways of managing the country’s heavy clay Vertisol soils and controlling invasive weeds and termites in crop fields. The Government is also supporting market-oriented development of smallholder farmers at all levels, in recent years training some 60,000 extension workers who work directly with farmers.

‘The Government works closely with a wide variety of partners,’ says the minister. ‘One good example is the IPMS Project.’

Improving productivity and market success

Seré and Abera agree that development work should be homegrown wherever possible. That’s why in 2005 ILRI teamed up with the Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and the Ethiopian Agricultural Research System and other centres of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) to implement an action-oriented research project to “Improving the Productivity and Market Success” (IPMS) of Ethiopian Farmers. This 5-year project, funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), works on market-led agricultural development in ten pilot learning districts as well as at regional and federal levels.

(http://www.ipms-ethiopia.org/)

This initiative works to help smallholder farmers transform their subsistence-based farming
practices into market-oriented agricultural systems. The IPMS project works with farmers, cooperatives, private-sector market agents, credit agencies and public-sector service providers to develop such a new system through a process of testing and learning.

Knowledge management, innovation capacity development and participatory commodity development approaches are cornerstones of the strategy. Both crop and livestock commodities are considered in the project’s 10 pilot learning districts,

The rising price of food
While the food price index of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, which captures trends in major food commodities, rose by 56 per cent between March 2007 and March 2008, it increased only 39% in Ethiopia, 20% in Burundi and Kenya, and just 11% in Tanzania. In several other countries in the region, including Madagascar, Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia, the increase was less than 10%. Experts consider that this is because of the varied “food baskets” in the region, with teff being a staple in Ethiopia, local maize in Kenya, plantain in Uganda and beans in Rwanda. Even so, the UN World Food Programme estimates that in some places in Ethiopia, the price of maize increased 83 per cent, sorghum 89 per cent and wheat 54 per cent between September 2007 and February 2008.

Livestock owners these days are getting higher prices for their livestock commodities. That would appear to be a good thing for the poor, because the higher prices for livestock commodities should be benefiting households that are net sellers rather than buyers of food. But contrary to conventional wisdom, most poor households in this region, including those in rural areas, are net buyers rather than net sellers of food, and thus are, at least initially, hurt rather than helped by rising livestock and other food price rises.

Can poor farmers benefit from rising prices?
In many circumstances, higher livestock prices should, over the longer term, help more than hurt poor livestock producers, and that is why ILRI is encouraging subsistence farmers in Ethiopia and its neighbouring countries to take a more market-oriented approach to their production systems.

Even so, ILRI and its Ethiopian partners are well aware that not all small farmers will benefit from the rising prices of livestock commodities, that not all small farmers will enter the market economy—or should try, and that provision in policies should be made for those farmers who for various reasons will continue their subsistence production methods and those who will drop out of farming altogether.

The IPMS project is testing different ways of providing market information on the price and quality of livestock products, introducing small-scale processing of dairy and other livestock products, and new ways to link livestock producers and sellers. Use is made of a credit innovation fund to encourage existing credit institutions to develop new financial products, such as lending/repayment procedures that include collateral requirements to support the introduction of these interventions. ILRI and other research institutions supply the project with knowledge, help it build indigenous capacity in agricultural development, and provide technical advice and documentation of lessons learned. The livelihoods of many of Ethiopia’s small farmers have already been greatly enhanced by their adopting the practice of short-term fattening of large and small ruminants.

Earlier this year, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister H.E. Meles Zenawi presented the IPMS project with a Development Hero Certificate from the government of the Regional State of Tigray.

The livestock development efforts of IPMS focus on sales of meat or live animals and milk and other dairy products.

The project tests market-oriented production interventions:

• improved housing for farm animals
• (supplementary) feeding systems
• Improved use of crop residues
• planted forage species
• community-based grazing and control of ‘sleeping sickness’ (trypanosomosis)
• community-based breeding and insurance schemes for short-term fattening
• input supply/service interventions
• private bull stations
• decentralized artificial insemination service
• use of synchronization to improve the efficiency of artificial insemination
• private-sector involvement in feed and forage seed supply
• development of a ‘paravet’ animal health system

Related Information:
Cattle have been getting some bad press lately. Western editorials report the consumption of
too much fatty red meat leading to increased heart disease, the inefficient use of grain as feed
for livestock and the production of methane gases by cattle, a factor in global warming.
Elsewhere in the world, cattle receive songs of praise.

Collective action on food crisis

Posted on October 6, 2008 by ILRIComms

“Food Needs to Move!” Especially across national borders.

“The levers to solve this problem are in our own hands.”—Joseph Karugia

New research showing how the global food price crisis is playing out in 17 countries of eastern and central Africa was presented at a roundtable discussion in Nairobi 22 July 2008.

The research results show that the regional food situation differs significantly from the global one, largely because of this region’s exceptional diversity. That regional diversity provides these countries with opportunities to turn the volatile global and local food situations to their advantage.

By integrating markets and simplifying trade within the region, policymakers can efficiently link areas with food deficits to areas with food surpluses. This integration will help the region’s small farmers get better prices for their crops and livestock while also helping the region’s urban consumers get reliable year-round access to staple food items.

The July Roundtable on the Global Food Crisis was organized by the Kenya country offices of the World Bank and World Food Program and the Nairobi-headquartered International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). Fifty key decision-makers in agricultural and rural development met on ILRI’s campus to discuss interventions that governments, development agencies, research organizations and nongovernmental organizations could make to help poor people cope with the rising prices of staple foods.

Joseph Karugia, a Kenyan agricultural economist, provided an overview of the regional food situation. Karugia coordinates a Regional Strategic Analysis and Knowledge Support System for Eastern and Central Africa (ReSAKSS-ECA). His review was based on a study led by the region’s leading agricultural research group, the Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa (ASARECA). Under pressure by policymakers needing to take action to address the food price crisis, a team of 26 researchers within ASARECA and several centres supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) that work in this region, including ILRI, with study activities coordinated by ReSAKSS-ECA, conceived and executed the study together and with speed.

“Our regional food prices have generally risen much slower than global ones,” Karugia said. Even the countries within the region are being affected differently by the global food prices, largely because of their different “food baskets”. Kenya’s main staple is maize, but in Uganda it’s plantain, in Ethiopia it’s teff and in Rwanda it’s beans. Those countries that deal in non-traded commodities are buffered from the rising prices of globally traded staples. “Rice and wheat,” Karugia said, “two hugely important staples globally, are relatively trivial in this region. Moreover, most of the region’s maize needs are met outside the global markets because most people in the region obtain their maize in locally, in informal as well as formal markets.”

One result is that while the food price index (FPI) of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which captures trends in major food commodities, rose by 56% between March 2007 and March 2008, the FPI increases in this region were all below 40% and in most cases significantly lower. The FPI increased by 39% in Ethiopia, 20% in Burundi and Kenya, and just 11% in Tanzania. In several other countries in the region, including Madagascar, Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia, the increase was less than 10%.

It’s not only the staples of these neighbouring countries that differ. Their climate and rainfall patterns differ, and consequently their planting and harvest times differ, too.

These within-region variations give policymakers a powerful lever for transforming a global food crisis into a regional opportunity for farm producers and urban consumers alike.

“The spatial and temporal distribution of production and staggered harvesting
in the countries of eastern and southern Africa offer large opportunities for trade.”

By integrating the region’s food markets and simplifying its food trade regulations, Karugia said, the region could link up food-deficit to food-surplus areas and thus provide its citizens with staples in an given season. A truly integrated regional market would provide farmers with remunerative prices and alternative reliable markets for their produce while also providing urban consumers and rural net buyers of food with a variety of reasonably priced food staples throughout the year.

Most of the trade in food in this region is informal. It is wasteful not because it is informal but rather because of the many obstacles the informal traders have to face. Karugia explains: “At the border between Kenya and Uganda, trucks laden with sacks of grain and other food staples are unloaded, reloaded onto bicycles, bicycled across the border to be reloaded onto trucks on the other side. This is not an efficient way to move food!”

It would be a shame, Karugia said, quoting the economist Paul Romer, for the eastern and southern Africa region “to waste a good crisis”. “This global food price crisis provides the 19 countries of eastern and southern Africa with a golden opportunity to promote agricultural-led development through increased domestic production, regional trade and integration.”

The ASARECA research presented at this roundtable discussion was a demonstration of this new networked science. Diverse scientists from ReSAKSS-ECA, ASARECA and the CGIAR worked together for months amassing data from country and regional organizations and consulting with key experts and partners within governments, policy think tanks, research institutions, emergency relief agencies and the private sector. Although their individual perspectives on, and interpretations of, the data they collected vary considerably, the research group reached consensus on several points.

• The poor in this region are spending 40 to 70% of their income on buying food.
• The poor are being hit hardest by the rise in food prices, especially the rural net buyers of food.
• Contrary to popular belief, most of the farming households in the rural areas are net buyers rather than net producers of food if price rather than volume of food is considered. Poverty forces them to sell their grain and other crops at harvest time, when prices are at their lowest, and to buy grain again, several months later, when the households run out of the staple, often at two to three times the price at which they sold their grain.
• Prices of agricultural inputs are increasing across the 17 countries of the region. (The price of fertilizer rose 200% in Kenya in the last year.)
• Yields of staple food crops are stagnating or decreasing in 17 of the 19 countries of Eastern and Central Africa (only Egypt and Mauritius are increasing their yields) because farming is moving onto increasingly marginal agricultural lands, causing yield aggregates to fall.

One other salient fact leaped out of the data—the region cannot continue to spend less than 10% (and in some cases as low as 2%) of its national budgets in a sector that provides 25% of the region’s gross domestic product, 75% of its citizen’s livelihoods, and food for 100% of its people. ‘We have neglected our agriculture, our farmers and our food markets for decades,” says Karugia. “This is the result.”

Karugia and his many colleagues in this multi-institutional, multi-disciplinary, and multi-commodity project asked themselves one central question: What levers can we pull to take advantage of the higher food prices? The two conventional answers—increase farm production and control consumer demand—were deemed by the group to be too slow to be useful. This regional group of scientists concluded that a regional strategy for exploiting the food price hikes offered the best opportunities for the most numbers of people: “Exploit the regional diversity by facilitating regional trade”.

Priority actions for such a regional strategy would include the following:
• Markets: Remove export bans, eliminate non-trade barriers, simplify trade regulations and upgrade infrastructure along the region’s main trade corridors.
• Farmers: Reduce the high cost of fertilizer and other agricultural inputs and facilitate their trade, widen use of best-bet agricultural technologies, pilot innovative risk-management strategies such as index-based insurance schemes.
• Institutions: Strengthen market information and intelligence as well as frameworks for preparedness, response and learning.

Addressing these issues in these ways, with evidence-based policy options, is thus feasible, say the study team, and should lead to lowering the prices of food staples while also raising farm productivity and agricultural livelihoods.

In summing up the day’s roundtable discussion, host Carlos Seré, who is ILRI’s director general, said that it’s not only food we should be moving within the region but also the agricultural technologies that allow greater and more sustainable food production. The current food price crisis also has that silver lining: “When you have high food prices, you can move those technologies for improved food production. And you can get attention for neglected alternative crops, such as cassava chips for livestock feed. Which become viable as the price of grain staples rise.”

“This is something happening now,” Seré said. “We need smart interventions that target the region’s poor consumers and farmers alike. We need to get fertilizers into the region’s high potential farming areas. The key thing is to work with markets—to arbitrage across countries and across the region. We must reduce trade barriers within the region, which will greatly improve the efficiency of its markets.”

“We must also think through new crop portfolios for this region,” he continued. “How, for example, could we continue to support maize production in Kenya without penalizing those farmers pursuing a more diversified system that includes sorghum or millet?”

Seré concluded: “Climate and other fast-evolving changes affecting developing-country food production will make our problems worse in future. Finding the institutional frameworks for addressing these problems in collective action is our challenge.”

Welcome address by ILRI director general Carlos Seré

In welcoming participants to the roundtable forum, ILRI director general Carlos Seré said: “Global analysis of the food situation is relatively simple. We need to bring the discussion and analysis down to regional levels to increase the specificity, the granularity, of our information.” . . . Read more
Read profile of Carlos Seré

Interview with Ravi Prabhu, a member of the study team and coordinator of a CGIAR initiative called Collective Action for Eastern and Southern Africa

Let’s take a look at what we heard today from Joseph Karugia and his ASARECA, ReSAKSS-ECG and CGIAR team.

We heard that have opportunities to exploit regional food heterogeneity, capacities and systems that we are not doing a good job of exploiting . . . Read more

The latest version of the ASARECA Food Crisis Report is available: http://www.asareca.org/resources/reports/resp2food_pr_main.pdf

Further Information Contact:

Joseph Karugia
Coordinater, ReSAKSS-ECA
International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI)
Nairobi, KENYA
Email: j.karugia@cgiar.org
Telephone: +254 (20) 422 3016

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