Category Archives: PA

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions of livestock systems

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While livestock production levels in developed countries are holding steady, livestock production systems in developing countries, particularly in the emerging economies, are rapidly changing to meet a rapidly growing demand for livestock foods due to those countries’ growing populations, cities and incomes. Some of these fast-evolving livestock production systems are using ever-larger quantities of water and other natural resources and emitting ever-larger amounts of greenhouse gases, which are causing global warming. Many people are questioning whether the increasing demand for meat and milk in developing countries can be met within equitably negotiated and sustainable greenhouse gas emission targets.

The (surprising) answer is ‘yes’. Research tells us that emissions from livestock systems can be reduced significantly through technologies and policies, along with incentives for their implementation.

Livestock and greenhouse gas emissions

Livestock contribute up to 18% of the global greenhouse gas emissions that are ‘anthropogenic’, or generated by human activity. The main greenhouse gases from livestock systems include methane produced by the belching of animals (25 per cent), carbon dioxide (CO2) produced by uses of land that encourage the decomposition of organic substances (32 per cent), and nitrous oxide (N2O), commonly known as ‘laughing gas’, produced by spreading manure and slurry over lands (31 per cent).

As one would expect with such great differences in livestock production systems in different regions of the world, different systems in different regions emit very different amounts and types of greenhouse gases. Overall, most emissions to date have come from industrialized countries practicing factory farming, the least from developing-country family farms. Moreover, two of the most significant contributors to the greenhouse gases produced by livestock systems in the developing world are the rapidly expanding industrial livestock operations in Asia and deforestation in Latin America to make room for livestock grazing and feed crop production.

That said, however, it is also true that the emissions per animal in poor countries tend to be much higher than those per animal in rich countries, for the reason that most livestock in poor countries are maintained on poor diets that reduce the efficiency by which the animals convert their feed to milk and meat. And the increasing human populations, urbanization and demand for livestock foods in developing countries means that future increases in livestock greenhouse gases will come from the South. Livestock researchers at ILRI and elsewhere are helping people to manage trade offs among natural resource use, livestock emissions and livestock productivity. Seven ways to reduce greenhouse gases emitted by livestock Here are seven practical ideas for reducing the greenhouse gases emitted by livestock.

1 Reduce consumption of, and demand for, livestock foods in developed countries

Whereas under-consumption of livestock foods is a main problem in developing countries, over-consumption of livestock foods—including fatty red meat, eggs and full-fat milk and dairy products—damages the health of many people living in affluent societies. The demand for cheap livestock foods in rich countries in many cases is met by imports of livestock products or feed grains from the developing world, the transport and supplies of both of which can lead to environmentally damaging land-use practices and over-use of water and other natural resources, which in turn increase the levels of greenhouse gas emissions in those developing countries. Reducing the relatively high levels of consumption of livestock foods in the developed world would thus not only help improve the health of many people in rich countries but also reduce environmentally damaging livestock production practices in both rich and poor countries, leading to significant reductions in the emissions of carbon dioxide and methane gases.

This point raises another: to ensure that any negotiated emissions targets that may be established are equitable as well as feasible and useful, we shall also have to institute programs to track and account for the greenhouse gases ‘embedded’ in the many livestock and feed products traded worldwide. Such a system would give buyers of livestock products some understanding of the ‘greenness’ of the products they are buying. Common sense can no longer be our guide. Such are the complexities of modern food chains that beef raised on the pampas of Argentina and shipped to the North American Midwest might, for example, have generated lower levels of greenhouse gases than corn-fed beef raised, slaughtered and packaged right there in the Midwest.

2 Improve the diets of ruminants in developing countries

Providing cattle, water buffaloes, sheep, goats and other ruminant animals in developing countries with better quality diets increases their feed-conversion efficiencies and thus reduces the amount of methane generated in the production of a unit of meat or milk. Many small-scale farmers can, for example, improve the diets of their ruminant animals by better managing their grazing lands: they can rotate the pastures they use, plant improved species of pasture grasses, make strategic applications of animal manure, and develop ‘fodder banks’ of planted legumes and other forages. They can make use of more strategic combinations of available feed resources. Many crop-livestock farmers can supplement the poor grass diets of their animals with the residues of their grain crops after harvesting. (Although many cereal residues are of relatively poor nutritional quality, research by ILRI and the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics shows there is considerable potential for improving the nutritional quality of stover.) And some can give their ruminants feed additives that manipulate the microorganisms living in the rumen to quicken microbial fermentation. What’s needed are practical methods to monitor the effectiveness of mitigating greenhouse gases using these practices as well as policy environments to make implementing them cost-effective.

3 Help farmers in developing countries obtain and maintain higher-yielding breeds

Where resources allow and breeding services exist, replacing low-producing local animals of the developing world with fewer and better fed animals of higher yielding breeds would reduce total emissions while maintaining or increasing livestock yields. Such shifts include keeping more productive types of a given breed, such as by crossing local cows with genetically improved dairy cow breeds to produce cross-bred cows that possess traits both for both hardiness and higher milk yields.

4 Better match livestock species to environments in all countries

Switching species to find those better suited to particular environments and resources could raise animal productivity levels. In some circumstances, exchanging ruminant animals for pigs, chickens and other monogastrics (which possess single- rather than four-chambered stomachs) could reduce total methane emissions, although high amounts of grain used to feed the monogastrics can offset the methane saved. For this reason, alternative feeds and feeding practices for monogastrics urgently need the attention of the research and development communities.

5 Impose regulatory frameworks for managing manure in all countries

Regulatory frameworks could reduce nitrous oxide emissions from manures, particularly by enforcing better management of excreta in the larger livestock operations in developing countries and applications of slurry and manure in the developed countries. Furthermore, developing ways to monitor and verify reductions would open the door to mitigation payment schemes.

6 Apply land-use policies that forestall cultivation of new lands

Some carbon lost from agricultural ecosystems in the past can be recovered. Any management practice that increases the photosynthetic input of carbon and/or slows the return of stored carbon to carbon dioxide via respiration, fire or erosion will increase carbon reserves, thereby sequestering carbon. We can thus reduce carbon dioxide emissions by applying land-use policies that forestall the cultivation of new lands now under forest, grassland or non-agricultural vegetation.

And rangeland and silvo-pastoral livestock systems would store much greater amounts of soil carbon than they do now if we put in place land use and livestock policies and practices suited to local conditions. Such interventions could serve not only to sequester more carbon but also to provide smallholders farmers and herders with payments for the services their local ecosystems provide the wider community.

7 Provide incentives to adopt mitigation strategies, particularly for poor communities

Finally, successful implementation of livestock mitigation strategies, particularly in poor countries with scarce resources, inadequate rural and peri-urban infrastructure, and inappropriate agricultural policies, will demand a series of smart and equitable incentive systems that encourage people to adopt mitigation strategies and practices. Success in these countries will also depend on developing new kinds of links among institutions that have not formerly worked together, on reforming livestock and agricultural policies, on inventing techniques for monitoring carbon stocks, and on developing appropriate and easy-to-use protocols for verifying greenhouse gas emissions. But the lesson ILRI researchers have learned from their pastoral research may prove to be most relevant here: mitigation activities have the greatest chance of success in poor and hungry communities when they build on traditional institutions and knowledge while building up food security.

This is Chapter three of the ILRI Corporate report 2008–09: Download the full report

Livestock emissions and livestock systems in developing countries

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According to Carlos Seré, Director General of ILRI, the livelihoods of a billion people, particularly in Africa and Asia, are attached to livestock – and consequently to their greenhouse gas emissions. If livestock are removed, many of these people have few other livelihood opportunities. He argues: "improving feeding is one of the key interventions to improve the efficiency of livestock systems, i.e. to produce less methane per kilo of output" – which will relieve pressure on other natural resources like forests. He cautions that aggregating livestock emissions globally misses the big differences between developed and developing countries. It is important to separate the two. "To design policies you really need to clearly separate the problem." In developed countries, livestock production is mainly commercial and there are a number of policies and instruments that can be applied to reduce livestock emissions. In poor countries as well, he states, livestock emissions can be reduced – "but we need to be aware of the stark trade off. We may end up with lots more poor people and hungry children." View the video: [blip.tv ?posts_id=3005208&dest=-1]

Putting livestock on the climate change table

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New options should focus on helping hungry animals and people adapt to climate change while mitigating the greenhouse gas emissions of small-scale livestock production systems.

Farm animals have been providing the world with an uncommon array of benefits since before the dawn of agriculture. Indeed, most small-scale farming even today would be impossible without them. But it is the world’s poorest people—some one billion of them—who depend on cattle, sheep, goats, chickens and other domestic animals the most. Livestock keeping helps them sustain their herding cultures or small-scale farming (e.g., animal manure fertilizes croplands; cattle and buffalo pull ploughs and transport farm produce to markets). Livestock provide them with a rare means of earning and saving an income (people can sell milk, eggs, manure or surplus stock, or they can find jobs in dairy or related businesses). Livestock foods feed hungry people (families can consume the milk, meat and eggs their stock produce or sell these high-quality foods to buy cheaper starchy foods). And livestock are a last hedge to protect households against the shocks common to the rural poor—from drought, flood or disease that destroys food crops in the field, to market distortions that make farm produce worthless, to civil unrest that makes people flee their homes, and, finally now, to a warmer world with increasingly unpredictable weather and extreme weather events.

But the inexorable rise of human populations, along with the aspirations and appetites of their growing middle classes, have led also to global livestock populations of increasing numbers and increasingly intensive livestock production practices. While overconsumption of red meat and other livestock foods is damaging the health of many people of the North, under-consumption of these nourishing foods is hurting, and killing, many people of the South. In terms of the environment, livestock production globally causes up to 18% of the human-generated greenhouse gases that are warming our planet. Livestock do this both directly (methane, for example, is produced in the rumination processes of cud-chewing animals) and indirectly (such as the felling of forests to make room for fodder crops and ranching). The factory farms of industrialized countries not only can treat animals inhumanely but also can pollute air and water and threaten human as well as animal health. The herding and farming families of developing countries, on the other hand, typically maintain their ruminant animals on poor-quality feeds that make conversion of feed to milk and meat inefficient and environmentally damaging—skinny ruminants on poor diets, while not competing with people for grain, produce much more methane per unit of livestock product than do well-fed cattle, sheep and goats.

Just one hundred years ago, the principles and practices of animal husbandry were pretty similar across all the regions of the world where it was practiced (which pretty much meant all the regions of the world). But as schisms have opened up between the livestock production systems and peoples of today’s rich and poor worlds, we must now start from a new understanding—an understanding based on decades of livestock and systems research—that ‘local context’ is everything.

In the North, we need to focus on mitigating the impacts of livestock production and consumption on climate change. We already have many workable and alternative ways of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and the environmental and health ‘bads’ of intensive livestock production systems. We need to get them implemented and to begin monitoring our reductions in livestock-produced greenhouse gases as we begin to build more sustainable and healthy food systems.

In the South, where most of the world’s poor live, work and are fed by hundreds of millions of small-scale farmers and herders, the impacts of climate change will be greatest—and typically experienced at first hand. These farmers and herders include the largely rainfed crop-and-livestock farming communities that, unknown to many, have become the world’s biggest source of staple foods for the poor as well as many of the world’s most renowned herding cultures.

In the rural South, there are few ways of making a living other than by producing food from the land. Therefore, while we need to encourage people to mitigate the greenhouse gas emissions generated by their livestock enterprises, we need to focus most urgently on helping these people and communities to adapt their production systems to climate change. New incentives and technology and policy instruments should allow them to continue to provide the foods, jobs, livelihoods and environmental services that their livestock make possible and doing so in increasingly more efficient and sustainable ways.

With a perfect storm of food, water and energy shortages fast approaching—and 1 billion livestock livelihoods at the very centre of a nexus of human, climate and environmental vulnerabilities—the time for helping developing countries and communities to transform their livestock sectors has come.

As we move further into a 21st century characterized by depleted natural resources and the projected ‘human tsunami’ that is expected to peak by mid-century with a population of more than 9 billion, those of us in research for development need to focus our energy and attention on the little- as well as well-known levers that drive big change.

Across the developing regions of Africa, Asia and Latin America, the raising and selling of farm animals, and the increasing consumption of milk, meat and eggs, together represent one of those ‘big-change’ levers. The ubiquitous small-scale livestock enterprises found in every country of the developing world can represent pathways out of poverty and hunger. They can also promote climate change. Livestock researchers are acutely aware that they are working at these critically important crossroads.

This is Chapter One of the ILRI Corporate Report 2008–09: Download the full report

Climate, food and developing-country livestock farmers

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Carlos Sere, Director GeneralLivestock researchers at ILRI believe that rather than trying to rid the world of livestock, it’s preferable to find ways to farm animals more efficiently, profitably and sustainably.

More on livestock and poverty: challenges at the interface

View the film:

[blip.tv ?posts_id=3004778&dest=-1]

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

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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

Putting livestock food on the climate-change table

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It’s time for climate negotiators to put meat on the bones
of the next climate agreement

By Carlos Seré, Director General, ILRI

Mozambique, Tete province, Muchamba village

Worldwide our climate is changing, and livestock, which are vital to food security and to agricultural systems in most marginal regions of the world, must adapt to survive, as must the herders and farmers who keep them.

Livestock systems are a major global asset. They occupy 45% of the earth’s surface, employ at least 1.3 billion people, and are valued at about 1.4 trillion US dollars. They provide 17% of the calories and a third of the protein we consume. According to FAO, milk is the world’s number one agricultural commodity, worth about $144 billion annually, and meat from cows, pigs and chickens rank 3, 4 and 5, respectively.

These statistics, however, hide stark differences in how livestock are raised. In poor countries, most livestock are raised on small farms or herded by pastoralists. Throughout their (usually long) natural lives, they survive largely on grass and other vegetation, including the stalks, leaves and other ‘wastes’ of food crops after the grain has been harvested.

In contrast, most livestock in wealthy countries are ‘factory-farmed’ using industrial processes. These short-lived animals are quickly fattened by feeding them vast quantities of corn and other grains – food that could be eaten by people.

Livestock contribute about 18% of the global greenhouse gas emissions generated by human activity. The vast majority of these emissions come from wealthy countries practicing factory farming. All of Africa’s ruminants combined, for example, account for only 3 percent of the global methane emissions from livestock.

Most farmers in developing countries practice either mixed-crop and-livestock farming or pastoral production on rangelands. These smallholders and herders leave tiny environmental footprints in terms of inputs. Even so, investments that increase their efficiency and productivity in terms of breeding and feeding could remove millions of tons of methane and carbon emissions from the atmosphere.

Livestock play central roles in the lives of the poor. If livestock are lost, households can slip into chronic “poverty traps”. Experts believe that climate change is particularly hurting Africa’s livestock and other food producers and the ecosystems on which they depend. And they predict things are going to get worse on the continent, probably much worse. The productivity of rain-fed cropping systems is likely to drop, and do so dramatically in some areas; water shortages will become more common; and important human, livestock and crop diseases are likely to spread to new regions and become more severe.

Many of the world’s small-scale livestock keepers will have to adapt, for example, by changing the mix of livestock species they keep and the types of crops they grow, or switching to new sources of feed for their animals. Some will probably have to get out of agriculture altogether.

When negotiators meet later this year in Copenhagen to finalize the global climate pact, they must pay attention to the many small farmers and herders who are already feeding most of the world’s poor. And they must begin to pay attention explicitly to farm animals that remain neglected by policymakers even as they become increasingly important to food security and raising smallholder incomes. African negotiators in particular need to be champion the cause of small-scale animal agriculture, which remains the backbone of their nations’ economies.

Food security and climate change are inextricably linked. Policymakers must become adept at moving on both fronts simultaneously. And if our climate negotiators hope to address the needs of more than a billion animal keepers n the world, they must begin to provide differentiated policies that support rather than neglect the multifarious small livestock enterprises that make food production possible throughout the developing world.

ILRI 2.0: Web communications update

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Early in October you may have noticed some changes to the ILRI web site – the front page mainly, but also a few other pages.

Apart from some design and layout changes, the biggest change is the way we use dynamic content from different sources to build up these web pages.

This dynamic combining of different content streams is part of what many people call ‘web 2.0’ or the ‘social web’. It is a fundamentally different approach to publishing, sharing and communicating on the Internet. It helps us make all kinds of information and knowledge more accessible. It allows us to ‘decentralize’ the creation and sharing of our information.

We will be making much more use of such tools and approaches as we move towards a new website in the first quarter of 2010.

We are also introducing a lot of other ways to share and communicate our knowledge, including:

  1. RSS Newsfeeds. You will begin to see some small orange icons with the word ‘subscribe’ on our website (and across the web generally). If you click on these buttons, you can sign up to receive automatic alerts each time the service is updated. These alerts can be through email or an newsreader like google or bloglines. This link on our website takes you to some newsfeeds that you can subscribe to: http://bit.ly/8F3vlg.
  2. Photos. All across ILRI, we ahve numerous photos. Until recently, we tried to capture a lot of these in an internal database – that was rather underused.  To try and make the photos more visible – and more used – we have set up an ILRI account at https://www.flickr.com/photos/ilri/sets/.
  3. Presentations. One of the most used, and often most difficult to retrieve output from our work is the powerpoint presentation. Hundreds are created and delivered each year, they usually remain on our laptops or usb sticks. We have started to collect and share some of these at http://www.slideshare.net/ilri – using the possibilities of this specialized tool. In time, we hope to publish all our powerpoints – and posters – here.
  4. Video and audio. We traditionally publish a lot of text, enlivened perhaps with photos. We also made some video and film and recorded audio, but it was costly and technically difficult to share this online. This has all changed and we have many more ways to communicate and publish using online video and audio. You can see some ILRI video at http://ilri.blip.tv (they are also on YouTube); we have also started to produce some audio podcasts at http://ilri.libsyn.com.
  5. Publications and reports. We have begun work on a complete repository of institutional outputs, using Dspace: https://cgspace.cgiar.org/ . In line with institutional and donor requirements that we have a complete inventory of our various research outputs, we aim to index and collect them all in our repository – named Mahider. The strength of the Dspace system is that it allows us not just to collect and index outputs, we can also publish alerts and RSS feeds for use on our other websites and the content is automatically harvested by AGRIS, Google, CABI, etc. The repository is not yet complete. We aim to be complete for 2009 in early January, we will migrate records for older outputs in 2010.
  6. Google Books. For older documents and books, we – and other CGIAR Centers – are working with Google Books to make full text versions of all our reports and publications available. Search the 500 plus online books at http://bit.ly/23sajV.
  7. Calendar of events. We have begun to use Google calendar to track and present upcoming events on our Addis Ababa and Nairobi campuses. We also track relevant events organised by others that are relevant to our work. Our calendars are online (http://bit.ly/4GhfrV) – you can also add our events to your own Google calendar.

A fundamental benefit from using these tools is their openness. Anything we put into them is normally open for all to view. Anything we put in can normally be re-used and embedded back on other web sites. So our photos on Flickr or presentations on slideshare can be part of a blog story or used on a Theme or project web site. The principle we aim to follow is ‘create once, re-use often.’

The end result should be that ILRI – and our partners – can all publish, share, access, and re-use  a wider range of information and knowledge ‘outputs’ from ILRI, in much easier ways than in the past. We will also have a much better insight into how they are being used, and who by.

This work is a joint effort by staff in our knowledge managmenrt and information services and public awareness groups, with strong support from our colleagues in IT.

Story by Peter Ballantyne

Dialogue on Ethiopia’s Agricultural Development honours World Food Prize Laureate Gebisa Ejeta

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Gebisa Ejeta On 12 November 2009, Prof Gebisa Ejeta, winner of the 2009 World Food Prize, contributed to a ‘Dialogue on Agricultural Development in Ethiopia’.

Organized in his honor by the Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Dialogue was opened by H.E. Ato Girma Woldegiorgis, President of Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, with a welcome address from H.E. Ato Teferra Derebew, Minister for Agriculture and Rural Development.

The program included the following presentations.

  • ‘Enhancing Science-based Development in Africa: Where Does Ethiopia Stand? – Prof Gebisa Ejeta
  • ‘Achievements and Challenges in Ethiopian Agriculture’ – H.E. Dr. Abera Deresa, State Minister, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development
  • ‘The Role of Agricultural Institutions of Higher Learning in Producing the Next Generation Agricultural Leaders in Ethiopia – Dr Solomon Assefa, Director General, Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research
  • ‘The Role of Agricultural Universities in Creating the Next Generation of Agricultural Leaders in Ethiopia’ – Prof Belay Kassa, President, Haramaya University

These presentations were followed by a panel discussion with contributions from H. E. Tumusiime Rhoda Peace (African Union Commission), Dr. Mata Chipeta (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations); Dr. Carlos Seré (International Livestock Research Institute); and Dr. Yilma Kebede (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation).

The Dialogue closed with remarks by Dr. Connie Freeman (International Development Research Centre), Dr. Bashir Jama (Alliance for a Green Revolution for Africa), and Dr. Berhane Gebre Kidan.

Support for the Dialogue honouring Prof Ejeta was provided by the Ethiopian Government as well as the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, the Canadian International Development Agency, the International Development Research Centre (Canada), the International Livestock Research Institute, the Japanese International Cooperation Agency, OXFAM America, OXFAM Great Britain and the United States Agency for International Development.

For more information about Prof Gebisa Ejeta, this year’s World Food Prize Laureate, please go to: World Food Prize Laureate.

See presentations and photos from the dialogue.

New study warns that climate change could create agricultural winners and losers in East Africa

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While predicting highly variable impacts on agriculture by 2050, experts show that with adequate investment the region can still achieve food security for all

Forage Diversity field on ILRI Addis campus

As African leaders prepare to present an ambitious proposal to industrialized countries for coping with climate change in the part of the world that is most vulnerable to its impacts, a new study points to where and how some of this money should be spent. Published in the peer-reviewed journal Agricultural Systems, the study projects that climate change will have highly variable impacts on East Africa’s vital maize and bean harvests over the next two to four decades, presenting growers and livestock keepers with both threats and opportunities.

Previous estimates by the study’s authors projected moderate declines in the production of staple foods by 2050 for the region as a whole but also suggested that the overall picture disguises large differences within and between countries. The new findings provide a more detailed picture than before of variable climate change impacts in East Africa, assessing them according to broadly defined agricultural areas.

‘Even though these types of projections involve much uncertainty, they leave no room for complacency about East Africa’s food security in the coming decades,’ said the lead author of the new study, Philip Thornton of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), which is supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). ‘Countries need to act boldly if they’re to seize opportunities for intensified farming in favored locations, while cushioning the blow that will fall on rural people in more vulnerable areas.’

The researchers simulated likely shifts in cropping, using a combination of two climate change models and two scenarios for greenhouse gas emissions, together with state-of-the-art models for maize and beans, two of the region’s primary staple foods.

In the mixed crop-livestock systems of the tropical highlands, the study shows that rising temperatures may actually favor food crops, helping boost output of maize by about half in highland ‘breadbasket’ areas of Kenya and beans to much the same degree in similar parts of Tanzania. Meanwhile, harvests of maize and beans could decrease in some of the more humid areas, under the climate scenarios used in the study. Across the entire region, production of both crops is projected to decline significantly in drylands, particularly in Tanzania.

‘The emerging scenario of climate-change winners and losers is not inevitable,’ said ILRI director general Carlos Seré. ‘Despite an expected three-fold increase in food demand by 2050, East Africa can still deliver food security for all through a smart approach that carefully matches policies and technologies to the needs and opportunities of particular farming areas.’

At the Seventh World Forum on Sustainable Development, held recently in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, African leaders announced a plan to ask the industrialized world to pay developing countries USD67 billion a year as part of the continent’s common negotiating position for December’s climate talks in Copenhagen.

The ILRI study analyzes various means by which governments and rural households can respond to climate change impacts at different locations. In Kenya, for example, the authors suggest that shifting bean production more to the cooler highland areas might offset some of the losses expected in other systems.

Similarly, Tanzania and Uganda could compensate for projected deficits in both maize and beans through increased regional trade. In the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), maize trade is already worth more than USD1 billion, but only 10 percent of it occurs within the region. As grain prices continue to rise in global markets, several East African countries will be well positioned to expand output of maize and beans for regional markets, thus reducing reliance on imports and boosting rural incomes.

Where crop yields are expected to decline only moderately because of climate change, past experience suggests that rural households can respond effectively by adopting new technologies to intensify crop and livestock production, many of which are being developed by various CGIAR-supported centres and their national partners.

Drought-tolerant maize varieties, for example, have the potential to generate benefits for farmers estimated at USD863 million or more in 13 African countries over the next 6 years, according to a new study carried out by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA). Meanwhile, new heat-tolerant varieties of productive climbing beans, which are traditionally grown in highlands, are permitting their adoption at lower elevations, where they yield more than twice as much grain as the bush-type beans grown currently, according to Robin Buruchara of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT).

In areas that face drastic reductions in maize and bean yields, farmers may need to resort to more radical options, such as changing the types of crops they grow (replacing maize, for example, with sorghum or millet), keeping more livestock or abandoning crops altogether to embrace new alternatives, such as the provision of environmental services, including carbon sequestration.

This latter option could become a reality under COMESA’s Africa Biocarbon Initiative, which is designed to tap the huge potential of the region’s diverse farmlands and other rural landscapes, ranging from dry grasslands to humid tropical forests, for storing millions of tons of carbon. The initiative offers African negotiators an appealing option in their efforts to influence a future climate change agreement.

‘If included in emissions payment schemes, this initiative could create new sources of income for African farmers and enhance their resilience to climate change,’ said Peter Akong Minang, global coordinator of the Alternatives to Slash-and-Burn (ASB) Programme at the World Agroforestry Centre. ‘Its broad landscape approach would open the door for many African countries to actively participate in, and benefit from, global carbon markets.’

‘Rural people manage their livelihoods and land in an integrated way that encompasses many activities,’ said Bruce Campbell, director of the CGIAR’s Challenge Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security. ‘That’s why they need integrated options to cope with climate change, consisting of diverse innovations, such as drought-tolerant crops, better management of livestock, provision of environmental services and so forth.’

How rapidly and successfully East African nations and rural households can take advantage of such measures will depend on aggressive new investments in agriculture, CGIAR researchers argue. According to a recent study by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), it will take about USD7 billion annually, invested mainly in rural roads, better water management and increased agricultural research, to avert the dire implications of climate change for child nutrition worldwide.

About 40 per cent of that investment would address the needs of sub-Saharan Africa, where modest reductions projected for maize yields in the region as a whole are expected to translate into a dramatic rise in the number of malnourished children by 2050. Thornton’s projections probably underestimate the impacts on crop production, because they reflect increasing temperatures and rainfall changes only and not greater variability in the weather and growing pressure from stresses like drought and insect pests.

‘Farmers and pastoralists in East Africa have a long history of dealing with the vagaries of the weather,’ said Seré. ‘But climate change will stretch their adaptive capacity beyond its limits, as recent severe drought in the region has made abundantly clear. Let’s not leave rural people to fend for themselves but rather invest significantly in helping them build a more viable future.’

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About ILRI:
The Africa-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) works at the crossroads of livestock and poverty, bringing high-quality science and capacity-building to bear on poverty reduction and sustainable development. ILRI is one of 15 centers supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). It has its headquarters in Kenya and a principal campus in Ethiopia. It also has teams working out of offices in Nigeria, Mali, Mozambique, India, Thailand, Indonesia, Laos, Vietnam and China. www.ilri.org.

About the CGIAR: The CGIAR, established in 1971, is a strategic partnership of countries, international and regional organizations and private foundations supporting the work of 15 international Centers. In collaboration with national agricultural research systems, civil society and the private sector, the CGIAR fosters sustainable agricultural growth through high-quality science aimed at benefiting the poor through stronger food security, better human nutrition and health, higher incomes and improved management of natural resources. www.cgiar.org

Khulungira: Harvesting hope in an African village

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Ireland’s Minister of State for Overseas Development, Mr. Peter Power, T.D., has launched an exhibition highlighting the potential of science for Africa’s smallholder farmers at the Irish Aid Volunteering and Information Centre in Dublin.

Minister of State for Overseas Development Peter Power launches ‘Khulungira: Harvesting Hope in an African village’.


Ireland’s Minister of State for Overseas Development, Mr. Peter Power, T.D., has launched an exhibition highlighting the potential of science for Africa’s smallholder farmers at the Irish Aid Volunteering and Information Centre in Dublin.

The multimedia exhibition features videos, posters, photographs and soundscapes that introduce visitors to the people of Khulungira, a village in Malawi that has benefited from advances in agricultural research.

IrishExhibit Poster

www.cgiarkhulungiraexhibit.org

“At present, one in six people worldwide go to bed hungry each night and many more cannot afford a healthy diet,” Mr. Power said. “If we do not do all in our power to reverse the rise in food insecurity and hunger, we will be failing in our basic human obligations, and accepting a scandalous situation which we have the capacity to change.”

The exhibition presents the people behind the grim statistics. The villagers of Khulungira are typical of millions of Africans who depend on smallholder farming for food and income. The challenges they face are daunting: If the rains are late, or crops are infested with a pest or disease, people can starve. If conditions are good, they may have a little extra to sell for income, enabling them to send their children to school. In this sort of scenario, even the smallest improvement in productivity can make a huge difference.

Thanks in part to research undertaken by the members of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), farmers in Khulungira and other villages across Malawi have begun to plant new varieties of potatoes, sweet potatoes, groundnuts and trees. Others are improving the composition of soil and expanding their livestock holdings.

In each case, the change has increased production, improved diets and reduced vulnerability to catastrophic loses.

The CGIAR, established in 1971, is a strategic partnership of countries, international and regional organizations and private foundations dedicated to mobilizing agricultural science to reduce poverty, promote agricultural growth and protect the environment. The CGIAR supports an alliance of 15 international agricultural research centres.

Minister of State for Overseas Development Peter Power launches

The exhibition in Dublin features the work of four CGIAR centers: the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), International Potato Center (CIP), and International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT). The creative development of the joint venture was led by ILRI at the request of Irish Aid . Support was also provided by the MDG Centre, East & Southern Africa and Irish Aid, the Government of Ireland’s programme for overseas development.

In 2009, Irish Aid has provided funding of almost €7 million to the CGIAR. “Continued investment in agricultural research is essential to success in transforming African agriculture into a highly-productive, sustainable system that can assure food security, keep children in school and lift millions out of poverty,” Minister Power said.

The exhibition is free and open to the public at the Irish Aid Volunteering and Information Centre, 27-31 Upper O’Connell St, Dublin 1 (corner of Cathal Brugha Street). It is scheduled to run through the end of 2009.

Smallholder dairy tool box

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This CD by ILRI and on Smallholder dairy tool box was released on 7 July, 2009.

This CD: a new ‘tool box’ has been developed to make it easier for organizations to provide easy-to-understand information to anyone involved in smallholder dairy production. Known as the Smallholder Dairy Tool Box (SDTB), its software allows users to access useful information and provide it in formats that are appropriate to a whole range of stakeholders – from farmers and delivery agents to planners and policy makers. The tool box is intended to overcome the fact that the training and information materials currently available are often inadequate and difficult to access – especially for farmers and extension workers who have very little spare time.

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Klimawandelmodellen zufolge stehen Mais, Hirse und andere Nutzpflanzen auf einer Million Quadratkilometern afrikanischen Ackerlands vor dem Aus

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Neue Studie: Bei immer wärmerem Wetter und sich verändernden Niederschlagsmustern könnte der Viehbestand für die afrikanische Landwirtschaft überlebenswichtig werden

Einer neuen Studie von Forschern des International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Nairobi sowie der britischen Waen Associates zufolge könnten wärmere klimatische Bedingungen im Verein mit sich verändernden Niederschlagsmustern bis zum Jahr 2050 dazu führen, dass 500 0000 bis eine Million Quadratkilometer marginaler afrikanischer Anbauflächen nicht mehr in der Lage sein werden, die Produktion einer für den eigenen Lebensunterhalt ausreichenden Menge von Feldfrüchten zu unterstützen. Das Land, auf dem derzeit etwa 20 bis 35 Millionen Menschen leben, kann allerdings nach wie vor der Viehzucht dienen.

Für Millionen armer Landwirte in ganz Afrika könnte die Verstärkung der Viehproduktion eine attraktive Alternative bieten. In den kommenden Jahrzehnten werden sie möglicherweise feststellen, dass sich ihr Land aufgrund des Klimawandels zwar nicht mehr für den Ackerbau verwenden lässt, aber immer noch für die Aufzucht von Tieren geeignet ist. Das ergab eine Studie, die in dieser Woche in einer Sonderausgabe der Zeitschrift Environmental Science and Policy erscheint.

„Tiere, vor allem solche, die bekanntermaßen Hitze und Dürre gut vertragen, können in Bedingungen überleben, die für Feldfrüchte viel zu hart sind“, sagte ILRI-Wissenschaftler Philip Thornton, einer der Autoren des Beitrags. „Viehbestände können arme Haushalte vor den Risiken des Klimawandels schützen, und sie ermöglichen ihnen, von der wachsenden Nachfrage nach Tierprodukten in Afrika zu profitieren.“

„Der Viehbestand muss nachhaltig gesteigert werden“, sagte Carlos Seré, Generaldirektor des ILRI, eines der 15 von der Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (Beratungsgruppe für internationale Agrarforschung, CGIAR) geförderten Forschungszentren. „Unsere Forschungen haben ergeben, dass in zahlreichen Gebieten Afrikas während der kommenden Jahrzehnte klimatische Anfälligkeiten im Verein mit der Marktnachfrage nach Tierprodukten viele Agrargemeinschaften dazu bringen werden, den Viehbestand ihrer Landwirtschaft zu vergrößern. Auf diesen zwangsläufigen Umstand müssen wir uns bereits heute vorbereiten.”

Die Untersuchung gehört zu einer in der Zeitschrift veröffentlichten Studienreihe, die aus einer Konferenz an der Oxford University über Nahrungsmittelsicherheit und Umweltwandel im April 2008 hervorging. Ihre Veröffentlichung fällt mit einer Konferenz zusammen, die in dieser Woche in Bonn stattfindet. Dort werden Experten aus der ganzen Welt erörtern, wie ein neues, weltweites Klimawandel-Abkommen der armen Landbevölkerung Anpassungsstrategien zur Verfügung stellen kann.

Thornton und sein Kollege Peter Jones von den britischen Waen Associates ermittelten zunächst, welche von der Landwirtschaft abhängigen Gebiete Afrikas am anfälligsten für die Auswirkungen des Klimawandels sind. Ihr Hauptaugenmerk legten sie dabei auf so genannte marginale Anbauflächen – trockene und halbtrockene Regionen West-, Ost- und Südafrikas, wo beispielsweise karge Niederschläge bereits jetzt regelmäßig in einer von sechs (oder
weniger) Anbauperioden zu Ernteausfällen führen.

Sodann untersuchten die Forscher die Auswirkungen des Klimawandels in diesen Regionen. Sie fanden heraus, dass selbst dann, wenn der Klimawandel durch weltweit reduzierte Kohlenstoffemissionen etwas gemäßigt wird, höchstwahrscheinlich immer noch eine große Zahl von Landwirten mit einer Verschlechterung der Anbaubedingungen rechnen muss. Maßgeblich war dabei in erster Linie die Frage, ob der Klimawandel gemäß zwei weit verbreiteten Klimamodellen – mit Vorhersagen auf der Grundlage von Szenarien hoher und niedriger Treibhausgasemissionen – dazu führen kann, dass die Anzahl der „sicheren Anbautage“ in den Jahren 2000 bis 2050 auf unter 90 sinkt.

Die Forscher kamen zu dem Schluss, dass bei Szenarien mit unverändert hohen Kohlenstoffemissionen die Anzahl der sicheren Anbautage für fast eine Million Quadratkilometer marginaler Anbauflächen in Afrika auf unter 90 sinken würde. Auf der Grundlage eines „niedrigeren Emissionsszenarios“ sagen sie voraus, dass etwa 500 000 Quadratkilometer die 90-Tage-Marke verfehlen würden.

Die Forscher warnen davor, dass dann, wenn in diesen Gebieten die Dauer der sicheren Anbauperioden auf unter 90 Tage sinkt, „der jetzt bereits marginale Maisanbau als normale landwirtschaftliche Tätigkeit im Grunde genommen nicht mehr möglich sein wird.“ An einigen Stellen könne der Regen so knapp werden, dass „selbst dürrebeständige Feldfrüchte wie Hirse“ schwer anzubauen sein werden. Unter diesen Bedingungen könne das Vieh für die
Ernährung ebenso entscheidend werden wie für die Erzielung von Einkünften.

Der Studie zufolge ermöglicht der Viehbestand insbesondere jenen auf marginalen Anbauflächen ums Überleben kämpfenden Landwirten eine erhebliche Einkommenssteigerung, die nicht weiter als eine Tagesreise von einer der afrikanischen Städte entfernt sind. Dort könnte eine wachsende Nachfrage nach Fleisch und Milchprodukten lukrative Märkte eröffnen.

Thornton und Jones wiesen darauf hin, dass es keine neue Idee ist, das Vieh als Bollwerk gegen schwierige klimatische Bedingungen zu betrachten. In ganz Afrika, so merken sie an, „erwies sich das Vieh als wichtiger Bewältigungsmechanismus für Arme, die unter schwierigen Umweltbedingungen versuchen, ihr Auskommen zu sichern.“

Nach Aussage Thorntons besteht das Ziel der Forschungsarbeit letztlich darin, anhand von Klimawandel-Vorhersagen bestimmte, möglicherweise relativ kleine Gebiete in Afrika auszumachen, wo es sich lohnt, den Besitz von Vieh auf Kleinbauernhöfen zu fördern und den Landwirten beim Umgang mit den damit einhergehenden Risiken zu helfen. Diese Art von Forschung könne allerdings, sollte sie zur Beeinflussung politischer Entscheidungen herangezogen werden, in hohem Maße von der Erhebung besserer Daten profitieren. Hierzu zählen Daten, mit denen mögliche Ortstemperaturen und Niederschlagsmuster in der Zukunft vorhergesagt werden können.

Wie er und Jones allerdings einräumen, „herrscht derzeit ein Missverhältnis zwischen jener dringend erforderlichen Art von lokalisierten Informationen über Klimawandelauswirkungen und dem, was objektiv zur Verfügung steht.“

So bestehe etwa ein Konsens darüber, dass die Temperaturen signifikant ansteigen werden. Doch stimmten in großem, regionalem Maßstab verschiedene Klimamodelle nicht immer darin überein, in welchem Ausmaß der Klimawandel Regenmengen und Niederschlagsmuster in einigen Teilen Afrikas beeinflussen könnte. Investitionen zur Beschaffung derartiger Angaben böten jedoch mit Sicherheit die Möglichkeit, Hilfsprogramme zur Linderung der Armut unter der armen Landbevölkerung Afrikas, deren Ernährung und Einkommen meistens von Kleinbauernhöfen abhängt, mit einem neuen Maß an Präzision und Effizienz auszustatten.

Wie die Forscher außerdem anmerken, werden bessere Daten unausweichlich eine Tatsache offenbaren, die manche nicht wahr haben wollen, der man aber dennoch ins Auge blicken muss: In einigen Teilen Afrikas, wo die Anbaubedingungen jetzt bereits schwierig sind, stoßen die Bemühungen, den Landwirten bei der Anpassung an den Klimawandel zu
helfen, ganz einfach an ihre Grenzen. So hart diese Tatsache sein mag – laut Thornton und Jones müssen Entwicklungsagenturen und Regierungen eines verstehen: Bei zunehmend unwirtlichen klimatischen Bedingungen für die Landwirtschaft wird an einigen Orten möglicherweise „ein Punkt erreicht, an dem Haushalte und Agrarbetriebe so stark unter Druck geraten, dass es zu einer Aufgabe der Landwirtschaft nur wenig Alternativen gibt.“

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Ãœber International Livestock Research Institute

Das in Afrika beheimatete International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) arbeitet an den Schnittstellen zwischen Tierhaltung und Armut und trägt durch hochqualifizierte wissenschaftliche Arbeit und Fortbildungsmaßnahmen zur Bekämpfung von Armut und zur nachhaltigen Entwicklungsförderung bei. ILRI ist eines von 15 durch die Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (Beratungsgruppe für internationale Agrarforschung, CGIAR) unterstützen Zentren. Die Hauptverwaltung ist in Kenia; ein Hauptcampus befindet sich in Äthiopien. Vor Ort sind außerdem Teams in Nigeria, Mali, Mosambik, Indien, Thailand, Indonesien, Laos, Vietnam und China im Einsatz. Weitere Informationen finden Sie unter www.ilri.org.