The riders of the apocalypse do not ride alone: Plagues need war, famine, destruction–and (often) livestock

Albrecht Dürer

a presentation made last week by Delia Grace, who works at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), in Nairobi. Grace, a Irish veterinary epidemiologist, leads ILRI’s research on food safety in informal markets in developing countries and on ‘zoonoses’—diseases shared by animals and people. Grace also leads a component on agriculturally related diseases of a new multi-centre CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Health and Nutrition, which is headed by John McDermott, former deputy director general-research at ILRI, who is now based at ILRI’s sister CGIAR institute the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), in Washington, DC, USA. Grace is also a partner in another multi-institutional initiative, called Dynamic Drivers of Disease in Africa.

A prolific writer of scientific publications and a scientist of particularly wide research interests, Grace began her ‘big-picture’ talk on zoonoses—on why, and if, they are ‘the lethal gifts of livestock’—with an overview of human health and disease at the beginning of the 21st century.

'livestock live talk' 31 Oct 2012: Delia Grace listens to a question

Regarding diseases, it’s not the past we have to worry about, says ILRI scientist Delia Grace; it’s the diseases we’re picking up and the lifestyle choices we’re making (picture credit: ILRI/Susan MacMillan).

‘At the moment we are 7 billion people and by 2050, we’ll probably be 9 billion.

To date, farming is not doing a very good job of feeding us or looking after our health. We have 1 billion people who are hungry, 2 billion people who suffer from ‘hidden hunger’, or micronutrient deficiencies (iron, vitamins, minerals), and we 1.5 billion people who are overweight or obese. All in some ways functions of a dysfunctional agricultural system.

‘Not only does agriculture have an important role in nutrition, it also has an important role in health. And that’s going to be the main topic of my presentation.

‘But a few facts here just to get us in the mood.

‘Of our 7 billion people, 55 million die each year; 18 million die of infection. That’s preventable—there’s no reason now why anyone should die of an infectious disease. But to put that in perspective, there are lots of other preventable things that also kill people: 1.2 million people die each year in road traffic accidents, 170,000 from fatal agricultural accidents and 22,000 (and rising) from extreme weather events.

‘Of those people who die each year . . . two-thirds live in middle-income countries and most of those people die of lifestyle-associated diseases (cardio-vascular/chronic). About a sixth of those who die each year die in high-income countries, and most of them die from being just too old—they die from things like Alzheimer’s and stroke and cardiac disease, things that often come at the end of a life. And then there are the one-sixth who die in low-income countries, and what they die of are the ‘preventables’, mainly infectious diseases.

So, where do these infectious diseases come from? When we look at diseases as a whole, we can see that most are ‘earned’. The wages of sin may be death but the wages of lifestyle choice is disease.

‘The major causes of disease on this planet are the choices we make or the choices that are forced upon us: degenerative diseases, cardiac diseases, diabetes, stroke, cancer. Allergies and asthmas, which are probably reflections of a lifestyle that was not the way we were evolved to live. Those diseases are not the focus of this discussion.

‘What we are focusing on are the “souvenirs”, the diseases we pick up from other sources. And those sources are pretty much animals. Around 60 per cent of all human diseases are shared with animals, and of the new and emerging diseases, 75 per cent are “zoonotic”, that is, they come from animals. What’s more, of the 18 million people who die of infectious diseases each year, two of the biggest killers are zoonotic, or jumped from animals to people.

‘One thing that distinguishes the “souvenir” diseases is that many of these are diseases that kill people when they are young or in the prime of their life, when they have a future ahead of them.

We’re all going to die—that’s one thing that’s fairly inevitable. If we want to spend scarce resources doing something about making our planet more healthy and productive, it makes sense to invest in the souvenirs, the diseases we’ve acquired rather than these end-of-life diseases, about which nothing much can be done.

‘In fact, some economists argue it’s cheaper to let people die once they’ve reached a certain age than it is to invest in trying to make them better, because they’re not going to contribute much more to society.

The diseases that don’t matter so much we call the ‘legacies’. These are the diseases that have always been with us, the diseases that humans brought with them in their evolution from non-human primates. It’s interesting to see that these diseases (e.g., staph, lice, typhoid) are pretty much conquered. So it’s not the past we have to worry about; it’s what we’re picking up and the choices we’re making.

'livestock live talk' 31 Oct 2012: Richard Bishop asks Delia Grace a question

ILRI scientist Richard Bishop asks Delia Grace a question following her ‘livestock live talk’ on 31 Oct 2012 in Nairobi on the subject of ‘Zoonoses: The lethal gifts of livestock’ (photo credit: ILRI/Susan MacMillan).

‘So, how do these diseases get from animals into people, these 60 per cent of diseases that we share with animals? “Spillover” is the word. Here we see what we call an epidemiological or sylvatic cycle. That’s a little pathogen living in a kind of equilibrium with its wild host. By the usual evolutionary rules, once these pathogens have been living a long time with their hosts, they tend to co-evolve so that they get a little less malignant. Otherwise, if the pathogen kills all its hosts, it’s not good for its long-term survival. So what you tend to get are complex pristine ecosystems with lots of hosts and lots of pathogens, all in an evolutionary race but all staying in a relative status quo.

‘Once you bring in humans, you can get spillover. Once humans start coming into these pristine ecosystems and start messing with them—start killing lots of animals or butchering game meat or doing other things that happen when people invade pristine ecosystems—some of these pathogens can spill over into humans. What tends to happen when they first spill over is that they’re not adapted to humans: they kill them and that’s it. That’s what we tend to see with the ebola and marburg viruses; you’ve heard about these in Uganda. They spill over, they kill, that’s it. But if they get lots and lots of opportunities to spill over to people, evolution starts kicking in, too, and they now have got a new host, a new lease, so they’re going to start being able to be transmitted more readily, from human to human.

‘The other thing that can happen in these sylvatic cycles is the spillover can occur into livestock. This can be expected. Humans have contacts with wild animals, but livestock have many more. So we often see that livestock can act as a sort of bridge to bring these wild animal diseases into people. And that’s what we see with diseases such as the Nipah virus, diseases such as avian influenza and Rift Valley fever. The host is out there somewhere in the wild; often we don’t know where it is. It’s shocking to say: we still aren’t sure where the host for Rift Valley fever is, we just don’t know. But we know it gets into livestock, and from livestock it gets into people. People can be a dead-end host—the virus can get in, sicken and kill and that’s it—or the virus can gradually start adapting to humans.

‘Some of the factors that can help this transition are increasing the densities, increasing the contacts, increasing the amount of pathogen in the environment, but also other things like habitat change, biodiversity, vector density, host density.

I would argue—this is a little bit provocative and not everyone would agree—that spillovers happen all of the time and most of the time just aren’t any big deal. A lot of the present effort to control emerging infectious diseases is perhaps not well directed because we’re dealing with problems that are intrinsically self-limiting. However, when you look back at history, in order for a spillover to become a disaster—in order for a spillover to become a pandemic, a civilization-altering disease—you need something else. I think this missing ingredient is great societal dislocation.

‘And that’s what history shows. The first big transition was the Neolithic transition. I’m going to come back to that because it’s important. Other examples, from the 13th to the 15th centuries, Europe went through a little Ice Age—we talk about climate change making it hotter today; then, it got colder. People got hungry, people, starved, people moved; you got Black Death and it killed one in three.

‘When they opened up the New World and when people came to the Americas, something like 90 per cent of the population died in the Americas, from smallpox, from measles. This is what we call ‘virgin soil’ epidemics; people who had no immunity; why? because they hadn’t hung out with livestock for long enough, according to some people, so people just died in droves.

‘But it wasn’t just a disease—it was the collapse of their society, the collapse of a highly advanced, highly stable, highly functioning society. It was destroyed from the outside and the disease came in.

The riders of the Apocalypse do not ride alone. Plague by itself needs war, needs famine, needs destruction.

‘We saw the same in the First World War, with the trenches and that massive societal misery, which led to Spanish flu and 40 million dying, and colonialization and urbanization in Africa in the early 20th century leading to HIV.

Disease spillover + societal dislocation = pandemic

Slide from ‘livestock live talk’ by Delia Grace on 31 Oct 2012 (slide by ILRI/Delia Grace).

 

‘Some argue and some spend millions of dollars hearing that we are about to enter a new time of unprecedented societal dislocation. As we get massive population increases, massive climate change, massive global destruction, we’re in for another big plague.

‘Let’s look at the first epidemiological transition, just to take us back to history and to show how domestication leads to disease. The first [animal we domesticated] was the dog [15,000–30,000 BC], and some would argue that the dog domesticated us, and the last was the goose (1,500 BC), and anyone who has been chased around a farm by a goose knows that they are as yet imperfectly domesticated!

But between the dog and the goose, there’s been a long range of domestication and the animals brought disease with them, diseases we tend to think of as human diseases; measles, mumps, diptheria, flu, smallpox, they all jumped from animals, many of them from livestock.

Disease and livestock domestication

Slide from ‘livestock live talk’ by Delia Grace on 31 Oct 2012 (slide by ILRI/Delia Grace).

 

‘And of course this is a dynamic: once they jumped in they can jump back; other diseases jumped from people to livestock, and once they were in the livestock, they came back again.

‘So that was the link between livestock and disease and why livestock play such an important role in human disease.

‘The next question we have to answer is to try and put some details on this, try and put some parameters on it. If disease matters, and if animals play a big role in disease, what disease matters? how much? to whom? what does it cost? what can we do about it? . . .’

This ends part one of this ILRI ‘livestock live talk’ presentation by Delia Grace on ‘The lethal gifts of livestock’. Check back here tomorrow for part two.

Read the invitation to this ILRI ‘livestock live talk’, and sign up here for our RSS feed on ILR’s Clippings Blog to see future invites to this new monthly seminar series.

View the slide presentation: Zoonoses: The lethal gifts of livestock, an ILRI ‘livestock live talk’ by Delia Grace at ILRI’s Nairobi headquarters on 31 Oct 2012.

Making Asian agriculture smarter

cambodia21_lo

A cow feeds on improved CIAT forage grasses, in Kampong Cham, Cambodia (photo credit: Neil Palmer/CIAT).

Last week, coming on the heels of a Planet Under Pressure conference in London, which set out to better define our ‘planetary boundaries’ and to offer scientific inputs to the Rio+20 United Nations sustainable development conference this June, a group of leaders in Asia—comprising agriculture and meteorology chiefs, climate negotiators and specialists, and heads of development agencies—met to hammer out a consensus on ways to make Asian agriculture smarter.

The workshop, Climate-smart agriculture in Asia: Research and development priorities, was held 11–12 April 2012 in Bangkok. It was organized by the Asia-Pacific Association of Agricultural Research Institutes; the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security; and the World Meteorological Organization.

This group set itself three ambitious tasks: To determine the best options (1) for producing food that will generate lower levels of greenhouse gases, which cause global warming; (2) for producing much greater amounts of food, which are needed to feed the region’s rapidly growing and urbanizing population; and (3) for doing all this under a changing climate that, if farming and farm policies don’t change, is expected to reduce agricultural productivity in the region by anywhere from 10 to 50 per cent over the next three decades.

The workshop participants started by reviewing the best practices and technologies now available for making agriculture ‘climate smart’. They then reviewed current understanding of how climate change is likely to impact Asian agriculture. They then agreed on what are the gaps in the solutions now available and which kinds of research and development should be given highest priority to fill those gaps. Finally, they developed a plan for filling the gaps and linking scientific knowledge with policy actions at all levels.

On the second of this two-day workshop, the participants were asked to short-list no more than ten key areas as being of highest priority for Asia’s research and development communities.

This exercise tempted this blogger to suggest ten suitable areas in the livestock sector.

(1) Lower greenhouse gas emissions from livestock through adoption of improved feed supplements (crops residues) that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Contact ILRI animal nutritionist Michael Blümmel, based in Hydrabad, for more information: m.blummel at cgiar.org

(2) Safeguard public health by enhancing Asia’s capacity to detect and control outbreaks of infectious diseases transmitted between animals and people.
Contact ILRI veterinary epidemiologist Jeff Gilbert, based in Vientienne, for more information: j.gilbert at cgiar.org

(3) Improve the efficiency of water used for livestock and forage production.
Contact ILRI rangeland ecologist Don Peden, based in Vancouver, for more information: d.peden at cgiar.org 

(4) Pay livestock keepers for their provision of environmental services.
Contact ILRI ecologist Jan de Leeuw, based in Nairobi, for more information: j.leeuw at cgiar.org

(5) Recommend levels of consumption of meat, milk and eggs appropriate for the health of people, their livelihoods and environments in different regions and communities.
Contact ILRI partner Tara Garnett, who runs the Food Climate Research Network based in Guildford, for more information:  t.garnett at surrey.ac.uk

(6) Design institutional and market mechanisms that support the poorer livestock keepers, women in particular.
Contact ILRI agricultural economist Steve Staal, based in Nairobi, for more information: s.staal at cgiar.org 

(7) Educate publics in the West on the markedly different roles that livestock play in different regions of the world.
Contact ILRI systems analyst Philip Thornton, based in Edinburgh, for more information: p.thornton at cgiar.org

(8) Adopt risk- rather than rule-based approaches to ensuring the safety of livestock foods.
Contact ILRI veterinary epidemiologist Delia Grace, based in Nairobi, for more information: d.grace at cgiar.org 

(9) Focus attention on small-scale, relatively extensive, mixed crop-and-livestock production systems.
Contact ILRI systems analyst Mario Herrero, based in Nairobi, for more information: m.herrero at cgiar.org 

(10) Give livestock-keeping communities relevant and timely climate and other information via mobile technologies.
Contact ILRI knowledge manager Pier-Paolo Ficarelli, based in Delhi, for more information: p.ficarelli at cgiar.org

Do you have a ‘top-ten’ list of what could make Asian agriculture ‘smart agriculture’? Post it in the Comment box, please!

Go here for ILRI blogs about the Planet Under Pressure conference.

ILRI in Asia blog

Market incentives–not top-down regulation–needed to help poor farmers take advantage of East Africa’s burgeoning pig industry

Uganda railways assessment 2010

A family of pigs are at home on a section of overgrown railway track near Kumi, Uganda, September 2010 (photo on Flickr by John Hanson/US Army).

Editor’s Correction of 18 Jan 2012
Today we have corrected parts of this story to reflect the following comment from CRP 3.7 director Tom Randolph:

Lessons learned in other smallholder livestock systems—especially smallholder dairying in East Africa and India—is that a typical policy reaction to animal and public health challenges is to seek more regulation. The problem is that such regulation often proves to be toothless (i.e. cannot be effectively enforced by veterinary services) and ultimately anti-poor. We are pursuing alternative approaches that encourage farmers and other value chain actors to improve animal and public health-related practices by creating or exploiting market incentives rather than relying on top-down regulation. This will certainly be our approach as we engage in the Uganda smallholder pig value chain.’ — Tom Randolph, director of CGIAR Research Program on Livestock and Fish (CRP 3.7)

East Africa’s growing human population and rapid urbanization are creating new opportunities for small-scale farmers to make money from pig farming. According to Tom Randolph, an agricultural economist with the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), ‘pig production [in East Africa] is taking off and growing rapidly and there is a rising demand for pork and related products, particularly in Uganda.’ Uganda has more than 3 million pigs and over 1.1 million people across the country (17 per cent of households) are involved in pig rearing and trade in pork products.

Randolph was speaking at the ILRI Nairobi campus during a recent workshop to find ways of diagnosing and controlling the spread of cysticercosis, a disease caused by tapeworms that can cause seizures and epilepsy in people when they consume undercooked pork infected with the tapeworms. Inadequate disease control is one of the biggest challenges facing the informal pig industry in East Africa.

Most of the pork sold in this region is produced by small-scale farmers who keep 1 to 3 animals in ‘backyard systems’, and the rapid growth of urban areas is opening up new opportunities for small-scale producers to intensify their pork production to meet growing demand.

For farmers in the region, pigs are ‘a cash crop of livestock’ because they do not carry cultural and social values like cows and chickens. This means that pig farming, because of its nature as a commercial activity and the shorter production cycles of pigs, can offer significant economic benefits to smallholders. ‘By supporting pig farming, we will be helping women, who are the ones who typically tend to the pigs on these small farms, and families to improve their income and their nutrition,’ said Randolph.

Despite the great potential offered by poor farmers from pig farming, Randolph said ‘the sector remains largely “invisible” and poorly regulated because the region’s governments have not focused on developing it.’

Improvements needed in the sector include providing better breeds and improving marketing systems to capture the ‘value that is currently being leaked out of the system’. Dealing with diseases such as African swine fever and cysticercosis is also critical. ‘Early diagnosis of diseases,’ said Randolph, ‘will give confidence to consumers that the pork they buy is safe.’

See workshop presentation:

CGIAR research coalition approves six programs to boost global food security

CGIAR Research Program 3.7 on livestock and fish

The developing world’s supplies of wheat, livestock, fish, roots, tubers, and bananas, along with the nutrition of its poorer communities and the food policies of its governments, should be enhanced in the coming years by new funding approved by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), the world’s largest international agriculture research coalition.

The CGIAR has approved six new programs, totalling some USD957 million, aimed at improving food security and the sustainable management of the water, soils and biodiversity that underpin agriculture in the world’s poorest countries. The newly created CGIAR Fund is expected to provide USD477.5 million, with the balance of the support needed likely to come from bilateral donors and other sources.

The six programs focus on sustainably increasing production of wheat, meat, milk, fish, roots, tubers and bananas; improving nutrition and food safety; and identifying the policies and institutions necessary for smallholder producers in rural communities, particularly women, to access markets.

The programs are part of the CGIAR’s bold effort to reduce world hunger and poverty while decreasing the environmental footprint of agriculture. They will target regions of the world where recurrent food crises—combined with the global financial meltdown, volatile energy prices, natural resource depletion, and climate change—undercut and threaten the livelihoods of millions of poor people.

‘More and better investment in agriculture is key to lifting the 75 per cent of poor people who live in rural areas out of poverty,’ said Inger Andersen, CGIAR Fund Council chair and World Bank vice-president for sustainable development. ‘Each of these CGIAR research programs addresses issues that are fundamental to the well-being of poor farmers and consumers in developing countries. Supporting such innovations is key to feeding the nearly one billion people who go to bed hungry every night.’ CGIAR Fund members include developing and industrialized country governments, foundations and international and regional organizations.

Each of the research programs, proposed by the Montpellier-based CGIAR Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centers, is working on a global scale by combining the efforts and expertise of multiple members of the CGIAR Consortium and involving some 300–600 partners from national agricultural research systems; advanced research institutes; non-governmental, civil society and farmer organizations; and the private sector. By working in partnership on such a large scale, the CGIAR-plus=partners effort is unprecedented in size, scope of the partnerships and expected impact.

The six new programs, each implemented by a lead centre from the CGIAR Consortium, join five other research endeavours approved by the CGIAR in the past nine months (on rice, climate change, forests, drylands, and maize) as part of the CGIAR’s global focus on reducing poverty, improving food security and nutrition and sustainably managing natural resources. Each of the six programs described below was approved with an initial three-year budget.

CGIAR Research Program 3.7 on livestock and fish

Meat, Milk and Fish (USD119.7m) will increase the productivity and sustainability of small-scale livestock and fish systems to make meat, milk and fish more profitable for poor producers and more available and affordable for poor consumers. Some 600 million rural poor keep livestock while fish—increasingly derived from aquaculture—provide more than 50 per cent of animal protein for 400 million poor people in Africa and South Asia. This program will be led by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), based in Africa.

Agriculture for Improved Nutrition and Health (USD191.4m) is designed to leverage agriculture improvements to deal with problems related to health and nutrition. It is based on the premise that agricultural practices, interventions and policies can be better aligned and redesigned to maximize health and nutrition benefits and reduce health risks. The program will address the stubborn problems of under-nutrition and ill-health that affect millions of poor people in developing countries. Focus areas include improving the nutritional quality and safety of foods in poor countries, developing biofortified foods and generating knowledge and techniques for controlling animal, food and water-borne diseases. This program will be led by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), based in the USA, with the health aspects led by ILRI.

Wheat (USD113.6m) will create a global alliance for improving productivity and profitability of wheat in the developing world, where demand is projected to increase by 60 per cent by 2050 even as climate change could diminish production by 20 to 30 per cent. Accounting for a fifth of humanity’s food, wheat is second only to rice as a source of calories for developing-country consumers and is the number one source of protein.

Aquatic Agriculture Systems (USD59.4m) will identify gender-equitable options to improve the lives of 50 million poor and vulnerable people who live in coastal zones and along river floodplains by 2022. More than 700 million people depend on aquatic agricultural systems and some 250 million live on less than USD1.25 per day. The program will explore the interplay between farming, fishing, aquaculture, livestock and forestry with efforts focused on linking farmers to markets for their agricultural commodities.

Policies, Institutions and Markets (USD265.6m) will identify the policies and institutions necessary for smallholder producers in rural communities, particularly women, to increase their income through improved access to and use of markets. Insufficient attention to agricultural markets and the policies and institutions that support them remains a major impediment to alleviating poverty in the developing world, where in most areas farming is the principal source of income. This initiative seeks to produce a body of new knowledge that can be used by decision-makers to shape effective policies and institutions that can reduce poverty and promote sustainable rural development.

Roots, Tubers and Bananas (USD207.3m) is designed to improve the yields of farmers in the developing world who lack high-quality seed and the tools to deal with plant disease, plant pests and environmental challenges. Over 200 million poor farmers in developing countries are dependent on locally grown roots, tubers and bananas for food security and income, which can provide an important hedge against food price shocks. Yet yield potentials are reduced by half due to poor quality seed, limited genetic diversity, plant pests and disease and environmental challenges.

‘These programs mark a new approach to collaborative research for development,’ said Carlos Perez del Castillo, CGIAR Consortium Board Chair. ‘They bring together the broadest possible range of organizations to ensure that research leads to development and real action that improves people’s lives.’

Note: The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) is a global partnership that unites organizations engaged in research for sustainable development with the funders of this work. The funders include developing- and industrialized-country governments, foundations and international and regional organizations. The work they support is carried out by 15 members of a Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centers, in close collaboration with hundreds of partner organizations, including national and regional research institutes, civil society organizations, academia and the private sector.

Seeing the beast whole: When holistic approaches ‘come out of Powerpoints’ for better health

Purvi Mehta, Capacity Strengthening Officer

Head of capacity strengthening ILRI, Purvi Mehta-Bhatt delivered a lively presentation yesterday in New Delhi explaining how capacity building is an ‘impact pathway’ linking agriculture, nutrition and health for human well being (photo credit: ILRI).

Yesterday in New Delhi, Purvi Mehta-Bhatt, head of Capacity Strengthening at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), was one of three speakers to make a presentation during a side session at the international conference ‘Leveraging Agriculture for Improving Nutrition and Health’ being put on this week by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

Saying it was ‘great to be home, in India’, Mehta-Bhatt, who is an Indian national based at ILRI’s Nairobi headquarters, started her 12-minute talk by getting down to basics—the basics of an elephant, that is. She told a ‘small story’ of an elephant that landed in a land where nobody had seen an elephant before. Everyone looked at this new beast in different ways, each seeing only a part of the animal. Even though all were looking at the same object, each interpreted the beast very differently, according to the small part they could see of it and according to their own interpretations. ‘This is pretty much the story of the three sectors we are talking about—agriculture, nutrition and health,’ said Mehta-Bhatt.  ‘We are all in our own silos’, she said, and need to see the beast whole.

Mehta-Bhatt sees capacity strengthening work as an important ‘impact pathway in linking these three sectors together’.

‘A piecemeal approach won’t work,’ she warned.  And although ‘this is nothing new’, she said, we still have limited capacity and understanding in this area, and only a few concrete case studies to show where linking different stakeholders in a health outcome has worked. As someone recently complained to her, it’s all very well talking about bringing all stakeholders together, but when has that ever ‘come out of Powerpoints’?

‘Capacity development is not just about training programs,’ says Mehta-Bhatt; ‘it goes beyond individual capacity building; it brings in systemic cognizance and impinges on institutional architecture, and all this happens in a process of co-learning, where messages are taken both from lab to land and from land to lab.’

Among ongoing ILRI initiatives that make use of multi-national, multi-disciplinary and multi-sectoral capacity building approaches are an ILRI-implemented Participatory Epidemiology Network for Animal and Public Health (PENAPH) with seven partners; a NEPAD-sponsored Biosciences eastern and central Africa Hub facility managed by ILRI in Nairobi and hosting many students from the region; a Stone Mountain Global Capacity Development Group of 11 members that is mapping existing capacities in the field of ‘one-health’ and co-led by the University of Minnesota and ILRI; and an EcoZD project coordinated by ILRI that is taking ecosystem approaches to the better management of zoonotic emerging infectious diseases in six countries of Southeast Asia and helping to set up two regional knowledge resource centres at universities in Indonesia and Thailand.

All of these projects, she explained, have capacity strengthening as a centrepiece; all are working with, and building on, what is already existing at the local and regional levels; and all are being conducted in a process of co-learning.

Mehta-Bhatt finished by finishing her elephant story. Capacity development, and collective action for capacity development, she said, can link the three sectors—agriculture, nutrition and health—allowing them not only ‘to recognize the elephant as a whole but to ride it as well.’

Watch the presentation by Purvi Mehta-Bhatt here:

Placing ecosystems thinking at the heart of global food security

Rajasthan goats (Renoje Village)

Goat herd resting before going out for a day's grazing in Renoje Village, 1.5 hours drive south from Udaipur, in southern Rajasthan. ILRI scientists are conducting case studies on the use of stover and other crop wastes for feeding ruminant farm animals in India and Bangladesh. The residues of grain crops after harvesting, which make up more than half the feed for camels, cattle, buffaloes, goats and sheep, are vital to animal husbandry in these and many other developing countries (photo by ILRI/MacMillan).

Placing ecosystems at the heart of food security efforts can improve the productivity, resiliency and long-term sustainability of food supply systems. This is one of the key messages emerging from a new multidisciplinary collaboration led by the United Nations Environment Programme.

The collaboration brings together organizations working in the fields of livestock, fisheries, environment, water and agriculture to synthesize knowledge into options to alleviate hunger.

Ecosystems provide food both in its natural state (e.g., capture fisheries, forest products) and in more managed landscapes (e.g., crop systems, livestock, aquaculture). Climate change and overexploitation, especially of water resources, threaten the productivity of ecosystems. And because most of the world’s poor are directly dependent on both natural and managed ecosystems for food, they are the most vulnerable to environmental degradation and climate-related shocks.

Ecosystems also provide a host of services fundamental to food and water security. In particular, many ecosystems provide water management functions that are crucial to a stable food supply—these include water storage, purification and regulation functions as well as flood control. Ecosystems also need water to support their functioning, but many countries currently don't consider ecosystems a water user at all, much less a 'privileged' water user.

To keep up with food demand, water withdrawals from rivers and lakes will have to increase by an estimated 70–90% by 2050 and large tracts of forest and grassland will have to be converted to agriculture. The ecological fall-out from such a course of action would be catastrophic. Continued decreases in ecosystem services have already begun to hurt agricultural productivity.

Only by treating healthy ecosystems as fundamental to healthy food systems will it be possible to create systems that are not only more sustainable, but also more productive, resilient and diverse.

What this will take
(1) Shift the focus of agricultural development from protecting discrete ecosystems to managing larger landscapes.
Address these larger landscapes as bundles of interlinked services and ecosystems supporting food production. Expand the role of ministries of environment in bringing ecosystem services to the forefront of food security policy and planning.

(2) Ensure water for ecosystems and ecosystems for water.
Adequately value ecosystems services when allocating resources and planning water and land development. Avoid making unintended tradeoffs—particularly those that harm food and water security. Consider quality as well as quantity requirements of different water users to reveal options for reducing fresh-water withdrawals from the environment and getting more benefit per drop.

(3) Do more than improve 'water efficiency' in agriculture.
Without attending to allocation of water 'saved' to downstream ecosystems, improving water efficiency can end up doing more harm than good. Widen the focus on crop-based systems to include forests, livestock and fish. Place greater emphasis on managing water stored in the soil profile.

These three recommendations are described in detail in a forthcoming report, 'Ecosystems for water and food security', whose development was coordinated by the International Water Management Institute. Contributors to the report include: the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Challenge Program on Water and Food, EcoAgriculture Partners, the Interdisciplinary Centre for Environment and Society at the University of Essex, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), the Institute for Land, Water and Society at the Charles Sturt University, the International Soil Reference and Information Centre–World Soil Information, the Participatory Ecological Land Use Management Association, the Stockholm Environment Institute, The Nature Conservancy, the UNEP-DHI Centre for Water and Environment, WorldFish, the Wageningen University and Research Centre.

A flyer with this information, Emerging Thinking on Ecosystems, Water and Food Security, is being distributed at a side event organized for Tuesday, 2 November 2010, 1–3pm, by UNEP and Global Water Partnership—'Green economy: Promote water as a key element for sustainable national development'—at a Global Conference on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change being held in The Hague from 31 October to 5 November 2010.

Other livestock-related side events of interest include the following:
>>> Tue, 2 Nov 2010, 1–3pm: 'Livestock and climate change' organized by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
>>> Wed, 3 Nov 2010, 6–8pm: 'Livestock, climate change and food security' organized by the ETC Foundation, Heifer International and other groups
>>> Fri, 5 Nov 2010, 1–3pm: 'CGIAR Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security' organized by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research

Improving African food security in the face of climate change

ILRI FANRPAN dialog meeting display

Scientists, policymakers and farmers from across Africa are meeting this week in Windhoek, Namibia to discuss how to improve food security in Africa in the face of climate change. (Photo credit: ILRI/Stevie Mann) 

The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) is this week joining over 200 policymakers, farmers, agricultural product dealers, scientists and non-governmental organizations from across Africa in Windhoek, Namibia, in a week-long Regional Food Security Policy Dialogue organized by the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN). This year’s dialogue focuses on African priorities for food security and climate change and the impacts of climate change on agricultural development, natural resource management and rural livelihoods.

ILRI agricultural systems analyst Mario Herrero and Siboniso Moyo, ILRI representative for southern Africa, are attending this conference, which runs from 30 August to 3 September 2010. The participants are examining ways of helping over 265 million people on the continent overcome chronic hunger.

Lindiwe Sibanda, Chief Executive Officer of the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resource Policy Analysis Network and member of ILRI’s Board of Trustees, says, ‘Africa’s challenges include stagnant agricultural productivity; limited access to agricultural inputs, water, markets and knowledge. And increasingly, we must also cope with more extreme and erratic weather (floods and droughts), soil salinity and unpredictable rainfall, and the effects of such climate change on agricultural production.’

Because agriculture, including livestock farming, still holds the greatest potential to boost rural livelihoods, reduce poverty and spur growth in other sectors in the continent, forums such as this are needed to pull together high-quality, evidenced-based, information and knowledge that can benefit Africa’s poorest people, most of whom are women who rely on agriculture for their livelihoods.

With 60 percent of the world's uncultivated arable land, Africa's agricultural sector has potential to feed its own people and grow to a US$880 billion industry if the right production strategies and methods are used to increase production.

‘To achieve this’, said Sibanda, ‘agricultural tools and knowledge must be made accessible to farmers to increase their yields and adapt to new climate scenarios. Africa needs its own agricultural revolution, one built on technology and innovation and facilitated by a conducive policy environment aligned with the needs of African farmers.’

The Food, Agriculture and Natural Resource Policy Analysis Network works in 13 African countries, encouraging government and civil society to work together in support of demand-driven agricultural policy research and analysis.

For more coverage of the 2010 dialogue, visit: 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/katine/katine-chronicles-blog/2010/aug/24/africa-katine-farming and http://www.alertnet.org/db/blogs/66102/2010/07/26-152915-1.htm

To find out more about ILRI's presentation during the meeting (by Mario Herrero) please visit: http://www.slideshare.net/ILRI/fanrpan-policy-meetings-sept-2010 and http://africa.ipsterraviva.net/2010/09/01/agriculture-in-africa-is-changing-rapidly/.

For information about the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resource Policy Analysis Network, see http://www.fanrpan.org/

Small-scale traders in ‘clean milk’ strengthen the milk value chain in urban India

Fresh milk traders in Guwahati, Assam, India

Small- and medium-scale milk traders—not big or even small grocery stores—are what links most dairy farmers and consumers in Guwahati, the capital of Assam. Milk and milk products make up a large part of the most nourishing foods available to millions of poor people in this remote, poverty-stricken state of northeastern India. To promote the business of ‘clean milk’ among smaller scale traders, researchers recently trained more than 90 dealers in improved milk handling technique.

For three weeks this July 2010, courses were conducted on clean and hygienic milk handling and distribution for milk traders and vendors. Participants were trained in such specifics as the causes of milk spoilage and disease, hygienic milk handling and transportation, how to conduct tests for milk quality, and ways to ensure milk containers used in all processes of milk handling are sanitized.

The course trainers and materials were provided by staff of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), who are working to educate and skill up relatively informal milk traders in the production and sales of clean milk and milk products. The benefits of this training are many, including not only cleaner, hygienically handled, milk, but also more milk sales, greater customer satisfaction and improved community health.

The trainings are part of a series that will reach more than 300 traders who collect and sell milk on the outskirts of Guwahati. The five modules that make up each training course are being delivered in 12 batches through October 2010.

Led by the Directorate of Dairy Development in Assam, the training program is supported by the Assam Agricultural Competitiveness Project under an initiative of the Joint Coordination & Monitoring Committee, which is bringing together organizations such as Dairy Development, the Veterinary Department, the public health departments in Assam, the Guwahati Municipal Corporation, the Assam Rural Infrastructure & Agricultural Services Society, and ILRI.

ILRI’s participation in this initiative is part of a project, ‘Improvement of the traditional dairy value chains in Assam’, partly funded by the UK Department for International Development’s Research-into-Use program. The project aims to increase demand for locally produced, good-quality milk in Assam and the capacity to supply it. Project members are supporting agents involved in the entire peri-urban traditional dairy value chain, from production, to distribution to the sales of safe, high-quality milk and dairy products.

ILRI dairy project office in Guwahati, Assam, India

ILRI has helped the Directorate of Dairy Development to mobilize Assamese dairy producers, suppliers and processors in the traditional sector as well as policymakers to improve the quality of milk delivered to consumers and to strengthen the dairy sector in general. ILRI is a member of a team strengthening the capacity of the local milk producer & milk traders/vendors association and will work with the Directorate of Dairy Development on a Joint Coordination and Monitoring Committee to monitor the ways that the lessons imparted to the milk traders are implemented and adapted.

Asif Bin Qutub, a project coordinator with ILRI in India and one of the trainers in this course, said that: ‘This training addresses trader needs identified after a baseline survey conducted by ILRI showed that most of the traders had lost potential customers as a result of selling inferior milk due to not following proper milk handling procedures.’

‘The training aims to address other issues as well,’ Qutub said. ‘It provides dealers with information on milk prices and good business practices—information likely to motivate them to improve the quality of the milk they supply to their customers.’

Those trained said their newly acquired knowledge would help them as well as farmers to increase their milk sales, and at higher prices, to reduce their losses from spoilage, and to protect their health and that of their families. They also mentioned that they looked forward to gaining greater approval for their businesses as well as new opportunities.

Sagar Dhakal, vice president of Guwahati’s Milk Suppliers Association, said he and his colleagues had agreed to keep the training materials on display in their offices and to share their training more widely with others in the business.

Those participating in the courses will receive certificates from Assam’s Directorate of Dairy Development and Joint Coordination and Monitoring Committee.

Farming extensively: A ‘third way’ for agriculture?

Joyce Ledson

Not to be missed is an inspired, and inspiring, 20-minute TED Talk by one of America's most famous cooks, New York's Dan Barber.

How I Fell in Love with a Fish is a presentation not for the 'self-righteous goody-two-shoes foodie,' says Barber (although he immediately confesses that, as a passionate chef and environmentalist, he is one). Rather, this is an instructive tale of how he fell out of love with one fish and into love with another, and the reasons for that, plus much else about our food systems.

His second (fishy) love affair takes place in Veta La Palma, a 27,000-acre totally self-sustaining fish farm in southwestern Spain that had formerly been a beef ranch and before that a wetlands. The owners of this fish farm reflooded the land, restoring the wetlands ecosystem, and began operating in radically sustainable ways. This farm doesn't feed its animals (fish); it measures its success not by how much fish it produces but rather by the health of its predators (birds); and, as a spill-over benefit, it serves the region as a water purification plant.

This fish farm / love story is, says Barber, a recipe for the future of good food. 'What we need,' says Barber, 'is a radically new conception of agriculture, one in which the food actually tastes good.'

Jacobo Filiasi

And for those of you who may be wondering about where he stands on global food security, Barber does get to the question (which he admits he 'doesn't love'): 'But how we can feed the world'.

'Our current agro-business business plan is one in liquidation,' he cautions, because it is a business 'that is quickly eroding the ecological capital that makes that very production possible. . . . Our breadbaskets are threatened today not because of diminishing supply but because of diminishing resources.'

Barber answers the question 'How can we feed the world' with another, 'How can we create conditions for every community feeding itself?'

Elestina Kamponza

He answers, 'To do that, don't look at the agro-business model for the future. It's really old and its tired. It's high on capital, chemistry and machines. And it's never produced anything really good to eat. Look to farms that restore instead of deplete. Farms that farm extensively instead of just intensively. Farmers that are not just producers but are experts in relationships.'

To that end, we might look to many of the world's billion-plus small-scale farmers in developing countries who are ambitious to practice neither the unhealthy factory-farming of the rich nor the grinding subsistence farming of the poor.

Saulosi Tchinga

This is what scientists at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and its research, development and agricultural partners are calling a 'third way' for the future of animal agriculture and mixed crop-and-livestock farming. This is an agriculture that would manage to feed the world while helping the world's 'bottom billion' climb out of hunger and poverty. Such a 'third way' of agriculture would feed both human nutrition and ambition in ways that build their livestock and other assets while conserving, not merely extracting, the Earth's remaining, land, water, air and other natural resources.

Demetria Solomon

More . . . ('No simple solutions to livestock and climate change', opinion piece by ILRI Director General Carlos Seré published in SciDevNet, 10 November 2009)

Milk–the perfect food: South-South East Africa-South Asia symposium


A South-South Symposium to Improve Safety and Distribution in the Dairy Sector
1 – 4 December 2009, Nairobi, Kenya

South to South

In both India and East Africa some 80-90% of milk is handled by the informal, un-organized dairy sector. We usually associate milk with cattle, but domesticated ungulates such as sheep, goats, yaks, water buffalo, horses, and camels are other primary milk producers in developing countries. The largest producer and consumer of cattle’s milk in the world is India.

Milk provides the primary source of nutrition for young mammals before they are able to digest other types of food, and carries the mother’s antibodies to the baby. It can reduce the risk of many diseases in the baby. The exact components of raw milk varies by species, but it contains significant amounts of saturated fat, protein and calcium as well as vitamin C.

The food value of an animal killed for meat can be matched by perhaps one year’s worth of milk from the same animal, which will keep producing milk—in convenient daily portions—for years.

Despite the importance of this simple, opaque liquid, there has been little education in the handling of such an important nutritional substance nor to the organization of its distribution.

In Kenya, which has the largest dairy herd in Africa, including South Africa, about 1.6 million rural smallholder households depend on dairy production for their main livelihood, and dairy is the largest agricultural subsector by contribution to GDP, larger than horticulture, tea or coffee. Again, the large majority of these producers depend on the informal sector market, which employs over 30,000 people along the supply chain. Despite their immense contribution to livelihoods, informal milk marketing systems have historically suffered neglect and opposition from decision-makers and development agents, often because of concerns over quality and safety.

In East Africa, key players have been meeting regularly over the last three years to share lessons on these issues under an association formed to facilitate exchange of new approaches and to harmonize policies, the East Africa Dairy Regulators Association Council (EADRAC). With the nascent development of awareness in India of possibilities for upgrading informal markets, an event to allow the sharing of lessons with key players in East Africa engaged in similar milk marketing systems would be of immense benefit to both sides and the researchers involved.

To this end, a symposium is proposed that would bring together the key researchers and decision-makers from East Africa and northeast India concerning the informal dairy sector. Key outputs will be shared experiences and demonstrations of innovation through structured field visits and presentations of approaches and evidence. This will support the dissemination of new approaches for managing the informal sector that will improve the livelihoods of millions working in the informal dairy sectors of both regions, as well as consumers of milk and dairy products.

Case studies on these topics will be presented and specific strategies and recommendations developed. Participants will be dairy decision-makers and researchers from India and East Africa. The symposium will be linked to a regional EADRAC meeting to be held in East Africa and is provisionally planned for 1 – 4 Dec 2009 in Nairobi, Kenya. The symposium is being organized by the International Livestock Research Institute and the Association (ILRI) for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa.

Programme:
Days 1-2: Representatives from EADRAC, India, ASARECA and ILRI will share and discuss case study presentations.
Day 3: Synthesis of lessons
Day 4: Field tour

African meat for global tables

Mozambique, Maputo

As new channels for African exports become increasingly available, economists and policy makers are focusing more attention on how best to match producers to buyers in Europe and elsewhere, including Africa itself. A recent paper explores the potential and pitfalls of exporting African livestock products.

‘What can Africa contribute to global meat demand?’ recently appeared in Outlook on Agriculture (Vol 38 No 3, pp. 223-233, September 2009). It is authored by Karl M Rich, who works with both the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the American University in Cairo, and will move to the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) in Oslo, Norway, in February 2010.

Observing that global demand and prices for meat are currently at unprecedented highs, Rich cites International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) data that project that annual per capita meat demand in Africa will double to 22 kg by 2050. This increase will necessitate corresponding rises in demand for cereals as well as livestock. Estimates from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) suggest similar increases in demand throughout the developing world.

These increases bring new opportunities for alternative sources of supply. At first glance, it would seem that Africa would have a distinct advantage in meeting the increasing demand within the continent. However, Africa’s ability to compete with Europe, Asia and the Americas has historically been constrained by low productivity, prevalence of animal diseases and the difficulty of meeting high global standards for health and safety. These constraints must be addressed before Africa can become a major player, and Rich’s paper examines the possibilities of bringing this happy situation about.

Rich begins with an overview of Africa’s role in the global meat trade, both imports and exports. His efforts in this regard are nothing less than heroic. The data from each of Africa’s fifty-odd countries are accumulated in enormously different ways, and the most recent data for some countries are several years old. Nonetheless, the figures are important, and to date no other author has made comparable efforts to get a handle on the situation. Rich does not express a great deal of optimism for the short or medium term. He estimates, for example, that at present Africa provides only about 1% of global meat exports for beef, pork and chicken.

A comparison of regional export shares is even more daunting. Table 1, which presents FAO data, indicates that the overwhelming majority of products come from southern Africa, notably South Africa, Botswana and Namibia, while goat and pig products are sourced predominantly from East Africa. Sheep products come mainly from North Africa (mainly Sudan). Meat exports from the rest of Africa, especially Central and Western Africa, are miniscule. Eight other tables and five figures in the paper provide detailed information of the variety and amount of meat imports and exports among African countries. In the case of exports, information is provided concerning the countries importing African meat products.

Among significant competitor nations are the emerging giant economies of the developing world, especially Brazil and India. These two countries account for a huge slice of the African market, constituting the main source of beef imports—both frozen and fresh—to seven of the largest African customer countries.

Rich points out that one important advantage that India, Brazil and other Latin American countries (Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay) have over Africa is scale. According to the most recent data from FAO (2006), the total stock of cattle in Africa is about 232 million head. By contrast, Brazil alone has over 207 million head, while India has 180 million as well as nearly 100 million head of buffalo. The African countries with the largest stocks are Ethiopia and Sudan, but neither comes close to those of Brazil or India, and both have fewer head than Argentina.

While African exporters will not be able to compete with Brazil or India in the short to medium term, inroads to foreign markets have been made by some southern African countries to the European Union (EU). This trade is driven by preferential access to the EU brought about through the Cotonou Agreement which provides tariff reductions for African and other developing economies. But even with such international agreements in place, African countries have been unable to fill the quotas provided, largely because of the rigourous standards for compliance with EU sanitary regulations. To retain access to European markets, for example, Botswana and Namibia have had to set aside areas free from foot and mouth disease (FMD)—an expensive arrangement that precludes raising cattle by traditional African husbandry methods. Furthermore, without these preferences it is unlikely that southern African producers could compete with the likes of Brazil.

Rich concludes his paper with a section entitled The road ahead: where and how can Africa contribute to global meat demand?  Before discussing the most likely methods for improving Africa’s competiveness with other meat-exporting nations, however, he cautions that ultimately, significant improvements in productivity, breeding, infrastructure and marketing will be required over and above the options he identifies.

The author identifies five options.

  1. Commodity-based trade. Diseases such as FMD persist in developing countries, limiting market access from developing markets to lucrative ones in the developed world. Commodity-based approaches focus on attributes of a product such as quality and safety rather than the disease status of its place of origin. It is argued that deboned and properly matured beef, for example, poses virtually no threat of transmission of diseases such as FMD. While commodity-based approaches could pave the way for increased trade from Africa, a number of gaps remain. In particular, will African countries be the major winners? If not, what further constrains Africa’s market access? A recent report by Karl Rich and Brian Perry to the UK Department for International Development explores this option further.
  2. Certification programs and disease-free compartments. Africa can raise its profile in global markets by demonstrating compliance with SPS standards. A compartment is a network of micro-level disease-free areas linked to each other and maintained through high levels of monitoring. A good example of this option is discussed in the paper mentioned in the box item above, a USAID-funded program currently under way in Ethiopia.
  3. Branded niche products. This option focuses on the strengths that Africa can offer global buyers by building and encouraging trade associations and marketing organizations. The author cites several examples—Farmer’s Choice of Kenya, Farm Assured Namibian Meat, the Kalahari Kid Corporation, the Namibian Meat Board, the South African Meat Industry Company and the National Emergent Red Meat Producers Organisation. These associations promote local products, engage in branding and quality assurance and build the capacity of emerging farmers.
  4. Regional integration and trade. Rich points out that despite the existence of regional cooperation agreements, barriers between member countries continue to hamper trade. Reducing these barriers will be crucial if Africa is to develop and harness the scale necessary to compete in international markets and lower costs. Investments in marketing and promotion among regional partners will be required for countries to enter and sustain effective trading in high-value markets.
  5. Domestic markets. Both formal and informal channels for meat products have been developed within each African country over the past several years. Because domestic prices in fact frequently exceed international prices, finding ways to deliver local products at competitive prices is an option with good potential, though these products will increasingly compete with low-cost imports. Competing effectively on price will be crucial for African producers to be successful in such channels.

The abstract of the paper can be accessed online.
For additional information, contact Karl Rich at k.rich@cgiar.org.

Nine myths about livestock: One conclusion

The Journal of Animal Science this month features an invited review by ILRI and partners highlighting how livestock benefit the health and nutrition of poor people and dispelling some common, and dangerous, livestock myths.
 

Myths about livestock in developing countries abound. The authors of this invited review, ‘Role of livestock in human nutrition and health for poverty reduction in developing countries’, published in the Journal of Animal Science (JAS) (November 2007), and also featured in the JAS editorial, outline the links between livestock-keeping and the physical well-being of the poor and de-bunk a few commonly held misconceptions. The authors argue that these limit livestock development and the potential of livestock to reduce poverty. They conclude that the benefits of livestock on health and nutrition of poor people have largely been ignored even though they offer big opportunities for improving welfare and wellbeing.

Livestock contributions being hampered by myths
ILRI agricultural economist and lead author of the paper, Tom Randolph, says: ‘Livestock are well positioned to contribute to economic progress and social transformation as a strategic asset of the poor, but several misconceptions about livestock are misguiding policy and hampering development interventions. Too many opportunities are being lost due to misinformation and myths.

‘We have to take developing-country contexts into account and recognize the complex role livestock play in the livelihoods of the poor.
‘We argue that for poor people in low-income countries the nutritionally related health risks of animal-source foods are relatively small, as are the negative environmental impacts of livestock production, when compared to the much larger benefits of livestock-keeping to livelihoods and human well-being for poverty reduction.’

 Editorial: The role of livestock in developing countries
‘The purpose [of this invited review] was to highlight the importance of livestock in the global effort to alleviate poverty and promote human health, for those involved in livestock research, for policymakers, and those who are the beneficiaries of these efforts. We also wanted to provide a scholarly analysis of the facts as well as some of the misconceptions concerning the contribution of livestock to the health and economic progress of developing countries.

‘In fact, as Dr Randolph and colleagues observe in their review, “Animal-source foods are particularly appropriate for combating malnutrition and a range of nutritional deficiencies,” and, “livestock clearly offer the most efficient utilization of resources that would otherwise go unexploited. . .,” and thereby contribute to economic development as well. Thus, “livestock keeping” has been, and will continue to be, integral to improving the well-being of people in developing countries, both from a health and nutrition perspective and from a socioeconomic one. However, as pointed out by Randolph and co-authors, there is a critical need for objective, scientifically sound studies on the role of, and methods to promote, improved livestock production in developing countries.’

— MA Mirando, Symposia Editor and LP Reynolds, Editor-in-Chief. Editorial: The role of livestock in developing countries. Journal of Animal Science. American Society of Animal Science. Vol 85. No 11. November 2007.

Livestock keeping is critical and highly complex
This review summarizes how livestock help reduce poverty through better human nutrition and health; it also captures the complexity of the livelihood strategies used by the poor, the role of livestock and their links to human nutrition and health. The authors, from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Swiss Tropical Institute, Cornell University, National Institute of Public Health (Cuernavaca), University of Toronto, the International Potato Centre (CIP), University of California, and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), incorporate perspectives from multiple disciplines including animal science, economics, epidemiology and public health, to provide a comprehensive review.

 The role of livestock in livelihood strategies of the poor
Livestock keeping is critical for many of the poor in the developing world, serving many livelihood objectives and providing several pathways out of poverty. Livestock keeping also affects an indispensable asset of the poor –their own nutrition and health.

The many reasons poor people keep livestock — for food, income, manure, traction, status, and as bank accounts — mean that the role that animals play in household well-being is highly complex.

Myths about livestock in developing countries
A key objective of the invited review was to explore misconceptions hampering efforts to capitalize on the nutritional and health benefits that livestock can provide poor people who live largely on starchy diets.

Co-author, food safety specialist and veterinary scientist on joint appointment with ILRI and Cornell University Delia Grace says: ‘As we were undertaking this review, we realized that there were a number of common and dangerous myths about the role of livestock in developing countries that we needed to explore. 

‘From a public health perspective, we address both health determinants, for example poverty and inequality, and specific health risks, including animal-to-human transmitted diseases and food-borne diseases.

‘We have emphasized a “harm reduction” approach, which is more appropriate, as opposed to the unrealistic and unachievable goal of and “zero risk”.

Nine Myths About Livestock in Developing Countries
Myth 1: More livestock and eating more animal products are bad for poor countries.
Reality:  Animal products are uniquely suited to combat malnutrition and micronutrient deficiency in poor countries.

Myth 2: Livestock keepers are livestock eaters.
Reality: Most production is sold off-farm and the added income does not necessarily translate into significant improvements (or equitable improvements) in household nutrition.

Myth 3: Livestock keeping is an inefficient strategy for feeding the poor.
Reality: There is negligible competition between livestock and people for food resources given use by poor farmers of marginal lands and crops for livestock feed.

Myth 4: The state alone is the best manager of zoonoses and food-borne diseases.
Reality: Alternative systems involving the private sector and communities can deliver sustainable and affordable disease control measures.

Myth 5: Medical and veterinary disciplines operate best independently in controlling zoonotic diseases.
Reality: The divided responsibility for zoonoses control leads to under-estimating its importance and the benefits from its control.

Myth 6: We know which zoonoses matter to the poor.
Reality: With a dearth of information on the priority of different diseases, resources are being allocated irrationally.

Myth 7: Quantity, not quality, of food is what matters to poor countries.
Reality: Biological contamination causes 2 billion illnesses annually and food safety scares hit consumers and producers hard even in the poorest countries.

Myth 8: Food safety standards are blocking poor farmers from the big market opportunities.
Reality: The poorest don’t sell or buy in supermarkets and have little prospect of entering international trade.

Myth 9: Food safety systems should aim for zero risk to the public.
Reality: Zero risk is both impossible and unaffordable and the appropriate level of risk in poor countries is not necessarily the same as that for rich countries.

Download Brief: Nine Myths About Livestock in Developing Countries

Co-author and epidemiologist with ILRI and the Swiss Tropical Institute Esther Schelling concludes:
‘Dismantling the myths raises awareness that conventional services and traditional approaches usually only reach some parts of the population. They tend to miss remote communities or vulnerable groups such as women and children.

‘More equitable solutions can be devised by thinking outside the box. There are already some examples of promising new approaches. We now need to examine them for their potential to be scaled up in sustainable ways.

For more information contact:

Tom RandolphTom Randolph
Agricultural Economist, International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI)
Nairobi, Kenya
Email: t.randolph@cgiar.org
Telephone: +254 (20) 422 3067

OR

Delia Grace
Veterinary Epidemiologist, International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI)
Nairobi, Kenya

Email: d.grace@cgiar.org
Telephone: +254 (20) 422 3070

OR

Esther Schelling
Veterinary Epidemiologist, International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI)
Nairobi, Kenya
Email: e.schelling@cgiar.org

Telephone: +254 (20) 422 3069