Pathways of the evolution of livestock production systems

Posted on May 7, 2011 by Susan MacMillan

Graphic showing pathways of livestock systems evolution to increase the sustainability of livestock production in selected systems, published in a paper by John McDermott et al, ‘Sustaining intensification of smallholder livestock systems in the tropics, Livestock Science (2010) (illustration credit: ILRI/McDermott).

John McDermott, who serves as deputy director general-research at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), and some of his ILRI colleagues published a paper in Livestock Science that sets out what will be needed to make livestock production a sustainable system for smallholders in the developing world, enhancing both the livelihoods and environmental resources of the poor. The abstract of this ILRI paper follows.

‘Smallholder livestock keepers represent almost 20% of the world population and steward most of the agricultural land in the tropics. Observed and expected increases in future demand for livestock products in developing countries provide unique opportunities for improving livelihoods and linked to that, improving stewardship of the environment.

‘This cannot be a passive process and needs to be supported by enabling policies and pro-poor investments in institutional capacities and technologies. Sustaining intensification of smallholder livestock systems must take into account both social and environmental welfare and be targeted to sectors and areas of most probable positive social welfare returns and where natural resource conditions allow for intensification.

‘Smallholders are competitive in ruminant systems, particularly dairy, because of the availability of family labour and the ability of ruminants to exploit lower quality available roughage. Smallholders compete well in local markets which are important in agriculturally-based or transforming developing countries.

‘However, as production and marketing systems evolve, support to smallholders to provide efficient input services, links to output markets and risk mitigation measures will be important if they are to provide higher value products. Innovative public support and links to the private sector will be required for the poor to adapt and benefit as systems evolve. Likewise targeting is critical to choosing which systems with livestock can be intensified. Some intensive river basin systems have little scope for intensification. More extensive rain-fed systems, particularly in Africa, could intensify with enabling policies and appropriate investments. In more fragile environments, de-intensification is required to avoid irreversible damage to ecosystems.

‘Attention to both social and environmental sustainability are critical to understanding tradeoffs and incentives and to bridging important gaps in the perspectives on livestock production between rich and poor countries and peoples. Two specific examples in which important elements of sustainable intensification can be illustrated, smallholder dairy systems in East Africa and South Asia and small ruminant meat systems in Sub-Saharan Africa, are discussed.’

Read the whole paper, J.J. McDermott, S.J. Staal, H.A. Freeman, M. Herrero and J.A. Van de Steeg, Sustaining intensification of smallholder livestock systems in the tropics, published in Livestock Science, 2010: doi:10.1016/j.livsci.2010.02.014

Livestock and the environment: As the hard trade-offs look to get only get harder, more nuanced approaches to livestock development are needed

Posted on January 27, 2011 by Paul Karaimu

Ramand Ram with goats in his family’s plot in Rajasthan, India. Intensifying mixed crop-and-livestock farming and helping livestock keepers diversify their sources of income can protect livestock livelihoods (photo credit: ILRI/Mann).

Researchers say that poor countries can protect both livestock livelihoods and environments by promoting measures such as sustainably intensifying mixed crop-and-livestock farming, paying livestock keepers for the ecosystem services they provide, helping pastoralists diversify their sources of income and managing the demand for livestock products.

Researchers from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations and the Animal Production Systems Group at Wageningen University, in the Netherlands, report in a proceedings published last November (2010) that there are ‘significant opportunities in livestock systems for improving environment management while also improving the livelihoods of poor people.’

The publication, titled The Role of Livestock in Developing Communities: Enhancing Multifunctionality, was co-published by the University of the Free State South Africa, the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation and ILRI. The authors say that even though livestock production is already harming some environments, with such damage likely to increase in some regions in coming years due to an increasing demand from rapidly expanding populations in the developing world, new research-based options for livestock production can help improve both the livelihoods and environments of hundreds of millions of very poor people who raise farm animals or sell or consume their milk, meat and eggs.

The researchers propose shifting the debate on livestock and environment from one that focuses solely on the negative impacts of livestock production to one that embraces the complexity of livestock ‘goods’ and ‘bads’, particularly in developing countries, where livestock serve as a lifeline to many poor people.

The researchers say a good understanding of the environmental impacts of livestock production depends on distinguishing these impacts by region and production system and by addressing environmental problems along with problems of food insecurity and inequity.

The authors, who include ILRI scientists Mario Herrero, Phil Thornton, An Notenbaert, Shirley Tarawali and Delia Grace, recommend making a ‘fundamental shift’ in how demand for livestock products is seen and in adapting production systems to meet this demand. They suggest, for example, that policymakers consider ways of reducing demand for livestock products in (mostly industrialized) countries where (1) people are damaging their health by consuming too much meat, eggs and milk and (2) intensive ‘factory’ farming is damaging the environment.

The scientists also recommend finding ways of improving water management in livestock production. Recent findings show that livestock water use represents 31 per cent of the total water used for agriculture. The authors report that ‘in rangeland systems, water productivity can be improved by better rangeland management, which has the potential to reduce water use in agriculture by 45 per cent by 2050.’ Another promising idea is to begin paying livestock farmers for the rangeland water purification and other ecosystem services they maintain for the good of the wider community.

To reduce greenhouse gases from livestock systems, the authors recommend that efforts be put in place to intensify production systems in developing countries to produce more livestock products per unit of methane gas. ‘We need to provide significant incentives so that the marginal rangeland areas, often rich in biodiversity, can be protected for the benefit of farmers.’ Other options for reducing livestock-associated greenhouse gasses include improving animal diets, controlling animal numbers and shifting the kinds of breeds kept.

Although diseases transmitted between livestock and people also need to be addressed by research, the book notes that the ‘net effects of livestock on human health are positive,’ particularly due to livestock’s role in providing nourishing food for the poor and the contribution livestock herders make to regulating vast rangeland ecosystems, with their wildlife populations, which often helps prevent animals diseases from spilling over to human populations. Better use of disease control methodologies and investments will also help prevent the spread of these diseases.

The authors acknowledge that such changes in the way that livestock production is viewed will require a ‘subtle balancing act’ and commitments by a wide range of players in the scientific, development and policymaking communities. But without a more nuanced understanding of livestock production in the face of hard trade-offs between livestock and the environment, we could jeopardize the livestock livelihoods of many of the world’s ‘bottom billion’.

—

This article is summary of the chapter ‘The Way Forward for Livestock and the Environment’ in the The Role of Livestock in Developing Communities: Enhancing Multifunctionality.

Download the full text

For more information read this related ILRI News article.

Borlaug Symposium recommends stronger linkages between crop and livestock production to empower Africa’s smallholders

Posted on September 15, 2010 by Paul Karaimu

Women and livestock shelter from rain in Malawi. Livestock production can empower Africa's small-scale producers (photo ILRI/Mann)

Over 100 government leaders, academicians, donors, farmers and politicians meeting in the Borlaug Symposium, a senior-level gathering of global agricultural decision makers, held in Addis Ababa this past July, recommend that agricultural programs in Africa use linkage opportunities offered by livestock production alongside food crop farming to enhance the productivity and value addition of Africa’s agricultural sector.

Among other recommendations, the Symposium calls for greater support to address the extension needs of pastoralists to help them develop and maintain their livestock-based systems saying that well-coordinated livestock and food crop production programs are essential if Africa is to achieve a ‘green revolution’ of its agricultural sector.

Many households in Africa largely depend on mixed farming systems that grow crops and keep livestock to meet food and income needs. Livestock play an especially important role for Africa’s pastoralist populations, most of who are dealing with the effects of climate change while relying on livestock to sustain their livelihoods. Strengthening livestock development has a direct impact on many of these pastoralist households and other smallholder households in mixed farming systems.

‘Livestock is such an important source of income, actual and potential, for smallholders that we cannot ignore ways to improve the linkages between crops and livestock,’ said Christopher Dowswell, the Executive Director – Programs, of the Sasakawa Africa Association.

The Sasakawa Africa Association is a Japan-founded group that seeks to apply green revolution principles to meet the changing needs of extension and the constraints to improving smallholder productivity in Africa. The association organized the Borlaug Symposium from 13-14 July in Ethiopia and brought together ministers of agriculture from 10 countries, academicians from African agricultural universities,representatives of bilateral donor agencies, private foundations, agribusinesses farmers and politicians. Carlos Seré the Director General of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) attended this year's event.

The Symposium also recommends efforts to address the challenge of smallholder’s access to commercial markets to enable them to profit from agriculture by, for example, organizing them into farmer organizations or as outgrowers to larger private agribusinesses specialized in export crops.

‘The value chain examples [shared in this symposium] illustrate that there is considerable scope for smallholder farmers to capture more of the total value added, after production, than they have before,’ said Dowswell.

The meeting also highlighted the need to reach women farmers with productivity-enhancing technologies, and to incorporate them in appropriate research and extension programs while at the same time seeking to correct the disadvantaged position women in Africa face that restricts their access to land and other production resources. It also encourages greater stakeholder participation in mechanizing smallholder agriculture, agricultural education and for more economic investment in the agricultural sector.

The Symposium was held to honour the life and achievements of Dr Norman E Borlaug, who died in September 2009 and was a co-founder of the Sasakawa Africa Association. It was attended by among others former US President Jimmy Carter who, with Dr Borlaug and Ryoichi Sasakawa, helped to establish the Sasakawa-Global 2000 program in 1985 to strengthen Africa’s agriculture. The symposium also launched the Sasakawa Fund for Extension Education in Africa and highlighted some key agricultural developments in the continent.

You can read more about the Borlaug Symposium 2010 and its recommendations at: http://saa-borlaug-symposium.org/?page_id=54.

More information about the Sasakawa African Association can be found on: http://www.saa-tokyo.org/english/

Breadbaskets without livestock are ‘an unbalanced diet’ warn experts at the African Green Revolution Forum

Posted on September 10, 2010 by Susan MacMillan

A dairy cow looks out from her stall in a village in central Malawi (Photo by ILRI / Mann).

Agricultural experts argue that a 'breadbasket approach' to development without livestock is 'an unbalanced diet' and that capacity building from the halls of parliament to the milking shed is key to the success of highly competitive African agriculture.

Over 800 agricultural experts, government officials, private sector leaders, and farmers gathered in Accra last week to promote investment and policy support for driving agricultural productivity and income growth for African farmers.

Participants at the African Green Revolution Forum agreed to pool efforts and resources to scale up investments in the 'breadbasket' approach and in agricultural growth corridors. At the end of the three-day conference, the Forum issued a detailed plan of action to the delegates, which included the need to make better and wider use of 'mixed' crop-livestock farming systems.

ILRI Director General Carlos Seré led a dynamic and informative panel session on livestock systems at the Forum, drawing participants from all facets of the agricultural community—from a Mozambican farmer interested in applying the 'best-bet' tactics of the East Africa Dairy Development Project in his own country, to 2009 World Food Prize Laureate Gebisa Ejeta.

'A "breadbasket" approach without livestock is an unbalanced diet,' said Moses Nyabila, Regional Director of East African Dairy Development Project, during the panel session.

Nyabila went on to stress the crucial role of the smallholder farmer to the success of EADD. 'We cannot replace our people with tractors and other things. We need to work with them. The East African Dairy Development Project model is a very important platform going forward, and it is one that can be repeated in other African countries.'

The panel participants called for mixed crop-livestock systems to be integrated into the corridor and breadbasket development strategies to increase the income of the smallholder farmer and improve his or her resilience to market fluctuations, climate change, and other challenges.

Livestock demand is already a major driver of economic growth for the continent, and this demand is rapidly growing driven by rising incomes and urbanization. Capacity-building from the halls of parliament to the milking shed is key to the success of highly competitive African agriculture, panelists said. The policy environment must also be conducive to the specific conditions in which small-scale farmers are operating and good governance must be built into the producer organizations.

'The key breakthrough here is organizing smallholder farmers to make service delivery efficient and to attract partnerships. Once these livestock farmers are organized, opportunities for investment and synergies with other agriculture sectors—seeds, fertilizer, etc—come flowing in,' Seré said.

The panelists also agreed that to boost the competitiveness and viability of livestock systems, the public sector must support rapid learning and results-driven research on markets, technologies and resource management. Examples include finding new ways of providing livestock insurance and financing the development and distribution of vaccines that reduce risks to farmers.

Seré presented the main outcomes and action steps from the livestock panel discussion to all Forum participants on the last day of the conference, pointing to mixed crop-livestock systems as the backbone of African agriculture. 'When you look at African agriculture, you see that mixed crop-livestock systems are eminent,' he said. 'Livestock is absolutely a motor of the agricultural economy.'

Kofi Annan, Chairman of the Forum, also acknowledged the outcomes of the livestock panel at the closing plenary on Saturday, stating that 'livestock is key to food security in Africa, and [an African green revolution] must include mixed crop-livestock systems.'

This article was contributed by Megan Dold, of Burness Communications, who attended the African Green Revolution Forum in Accra, Ghana, 2–4 September 2010.

Read more about the outcomes of the African Green Revolution Forum, media releases and a summary of the African Green Revolution parallel sessions here and in an earlier blogpost by ILRI.

Hands on the plough: Kofi Annan and Forum promise to pool resources for African ‘agricultural growth corridors’ combining crops and livestock

Posted on September 7, 2010 by Susan MacMillan

Kofi Annan speaking at the African Green Revolution Forum held in Accra, Ghana, September 2010 (photo credit: AGRF).

An inaugural African Green Revolution Forum has moved Africa forward in its quest to transform agriculture and tackle food security.

Closing the Forum in Accra, Ghana, on 4 September 2010, the Forum's chair, Kofi Annan, praised efforts to accelerate a green revolution in Africa. The Forum's executive co-producer, Akin Adesina, said the meetings kick-started a new phase in an African green revolution. The Forum agreed to pool efforts and resources to scale up breadbasket project plans and investment blueprints for agricultural growth corridors. Ghanaian Minister for Agriculture, Kwasi Ahwoi, invited new partners to join the Ghana breadbasket initiative. The Prime Minister of Tanzania, H.E. Mizengo Pinda, agreed to finalise a blueprint for the Tanzania Southern Corridor by January 2011.

The Forum participants specifically agreed on the following actions:
· empower women by accelerating their access to technologies, finances and markets
· scale up farmer and agri-business access to finances
· invest in science, technology and research for food and nutritional security
· increase access to improved seed via plant breeding, seed companies and seed distribution systems
· improve fertilizer supply systems and build more efficient fertilizer value chains
· link agri-business to commercial farms and smallholder farmers
· manage water resources better
· make better and wider use of 'mixed' farming systems that raise animals as well as grow crops

The director general of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Uruguayan agricultural economist Carlos Seré, participated in the Forum and led a panel session of livestock development. A report on that livestock session will be posted here later this week.

The African Green Revolution Forum issued a detailed plan of action to the delegates. Government and development groups, including the African Union and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, will conduct peer review assessments.

'We pledge ourselves to work with all other key partners to ensure that capacity is not a limiting factor in the green revolution,' said Namanga Ngongi, President of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, the organization that founded the Forum alongside Yara.

Mr Annan thanked the government leaders, including H.E. Mizengo Pinda, H.E. Olusegun Obasanjo, former President of Nigeria, and the Hon. John Dramani Mahama, Vice President of Ghana, who had taken part in the African Green Revolution Forum. 'These gracious, impassioned leaders threw their political weight behind this shining moment of transformation for Africa,' said Mr Annan.

And he urged governments and parliamentarians to help eradicate poverty and realise the dream of a green revolution. 'The time for action is now. For as you leave this forum, you are carrying upon your shoulders the vibrant hopes of a generation and a continent. We will not dash the dream of the African farmer,' said Mr Annan. 'With our hands on the plough, we will till this beautiful land’s soil together, and help Africa reap a bountiful harvest.'

About the Forum
The African Green Revolution Forum brings together African heads of state, ministers, farmers, private agribusiness firms, financial institutions, non-governmental organizations, civil society and scientists to an African-led forum to promote investments and policy support for driving agricultural productivity and income growth for African farmers in an environmentally sustainable way.

This public-private network it is a catalyst for the African Green Revolution called for by former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in 2004. The Forum gathered momentum during three successful African Green Revolution conferences in Oslo, Norway. This year it was held 2–4 September 2010 in Accra, Ghana, co-chaired by Kofi Annan. The African Green Revolution Forum is supported by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, Yara, the Rockefeller Foundation, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the New Partnership for Africa's Development, the African Development Bank and Standard Bank.

Read more about the outcomes of the African Green Revolution Forum, media releases and a summary of the African Green Revolution parallel sessions here.

New paper quantifies the global role of livestock as a nutrient source for the first time

Posted on April 12, 2010 by Susan MacMillan

Mario Herrero, systems analyst at the Africa-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), is co-author of a paper to be published today in the prestigious US Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The paper quantifies the role of livestock as a nutrient source globally for the first time. The paper, ‘A high-resolution assessment on global nitrogen flows in cropland’, reports results of an investigation of the sources of nitrogen for crop production globally. ‘We quantified the role of manure in different continents and in different agricultural production systems,’ says Herrero. ‘We found large differences in manure levels. In large parts of Africa and South Asia, which have the greatest numbers of poor people in the world, most of whom make a living by farming, manure can represent 35-40% of the nitrogen needed for growing crops, making it a major source of needed nutrients in these regions,’ Herrero. Elsewhere, he explained, where farmers have ready access to chemical fertilizers, manure plays a less important role in crop production. The paper shows that livestock manure is as important a nutrient contributor as (and in some regions, is even more important than) the stalks, leaves and other wastes of crops after harvesting, which are often fed back into soils to help enrich them for the next cropping season. But those crop residues are becoming increasingly scarce due to their competitive uses. And one of the biggest competitive uses is as animal feed. Many farmers are loath to put their crop residues back into their soils because they need them to feed their animals. In South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, crop wastes represent between 40 and 60% of all the feed for the cattle, sheep, goats and other ruminant animals raised. ‘Crop residues are a hugely important resource,’ says Herrero. ‘And needing to keep these resources to feed their animals stops many farmers from adopting conservation agriculture, which requires putting the residues back into the ground.’ Of course, the animals consuming crop residues deposit their manure on the ground. This analysis by Hererro and colleagues suggests that, globally speaking, livestock manure and crop residues make similar levels of contributions to nutrient levels. ‘In developing countries,’ he says, ‘the best solution is often for a farmer to feed her crop residues to her ruminant animals and then fertilize her soils with the manure they produce.’ That’s because these farm animals provide poor farmers with many other essentials as well, including highly nourishing animal-source foods for the household, much-needed year-round cash incomes, and draught power, transport and other inputs for successful cropping. ‘The bad news,’ says Herrero, ‘is that the amount of manure we have in Africa and South Asia is not nearly enough to increase levels of crop production. And to feed the world’s growing human populations, we’re going to have to increase the amount of nutrients we’re providing the soils in these regions.’

Animal agriculture can help sustain the new ‘food frontiers’ that should feed the world’s growing populations

Posted on February 23, 2010 by Susan MacMillan

Voice of America reported yesterday (‘Regulation Can’t Keep Pace with Livestock’, 22 Feb 2010) that the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says that ‘livestock production is growing faster than our capacity to safely manage it’. A new FAO report, The State of Food and Agriculture, underscores the importance of supporting the world’s one billion poor people who depend on livestock to make their living.

What poor animal keepers need, say scientists at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), is a ‘third way’ of producing milk, meat and eggs that copies neither harmful industrial-scale factory farming of animals in rich countries nor inefficient subsistence-level practices currently used to wrest a living off marginal lands in poor countries. ILRI staff argue, most recently in the world’s leading science journal, Science (‘Smart Investments in Sustainable Food Production: Revisiting Mixed Crop-Livestock Systems’, 12 Feb 2010), that more sustainable animal agriculture is particularly needed in developing countries, where livestock production is growing fast, natural resources are being degraded and lost, and small-scale mixed crop-and-livestock farmers are already feeding most of the world’s poor people. The authors of the Science paper, who come from ILRI and other centres of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), also see this ‘third way’ of livestock production as particularly vital for the new ‘food frontiers’ of the world. These, they say, are the many farmlands currently being used to raise animals as well as to produce maize, rice and other major food crops that lie between the high- and low-potential agricultural lands of developing countries.

‘It is these relatively extensive medium-potential mixed-production farmlands that have been neglected until now,’ says lead author and ILRI scientist Mario Herrero, ‘that should now be the focus of agricultural development policymakers and aid agencies. These are the lands that are key to feeding the world’s extra 3 billion people over the next 4 decades. Click here for the Voice of America news item about the FAO study. Click here to read the Science paper by ILRI and other CGIAR researchers on the import of mixed and extensive crop-livestock farming for food security.

ILRI study published today in Science special issue on food security

Posted on February 12, 2010 by Susan MacMillan

A paper written by several centres of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), Smart Investments in Sustainable Food Production: Revisiting Mixed Crop-Livestock Systems, is published in the current issue (12 February 2010: Vol. 327. no. 5967, pp. 822–825) of Science magazine. The paper argues that the world's small-scale mixed crop-and-livestock farmers are the farmers feeding most of the world's poor today, are the farmers likely to feed most of the world's growing poor populations tomorrow, and are the farmers most neglected by current investments and policies worldwide. Lead author Mario Herrero, an agricultural systems analyst at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), says that with the right investments and policy support, the 'relatively extensive' mixed crop-livestock farming systems – located in most tropical developing regions of the world between intensively farmed fertile highlands and semi-arid low rangelands – could be the future breadbaskets of the developing world. The abstract of the paper follows. Smart Investments in Sustainable Food Production: Revisiting Mixed Crop-Livestock Systems M. Herrero P. K. Thornton, A. M. Notenbaert, S. Wood, S. Msangi, H. A. Freeman, D. Bossio, J. Dixon, M. Peters, J. van de Steeg, J. Lynam, P. Parthasarathy Rao, S. Macmillan, B. Gerard, J. McDermott, C. Seré, M. Rosegrant Farmers in mixed crop-livestock systems produce about half of the world’s food. In small holdings around the world, livestock are reared mostly on grass, browse, and nonfood biomass from maize, millet, rice and sorghum crops, and in their turn supply manure and traction for future crops. Animals act as insurance against hard times and supply farmers with a source of regular income from sales of milk, eggs and other products. Thus, faced with population growth and climate change, small-holder farmers should be the first target for policies to intensify production by carefully managed inputs of fertilizer, water and feed to minimize waste and environmental impact, supported by improved access to markets, new varieties and technologies. Read the full text

Improving the performance of crop-livestock systems

Posted on December 7, 2009 by ILRIComms

Last week, the CGIAR System-wide Livestock Programme (SLP) held its annual planning meeting in Addis Ababa.

In this short video, John McDermott, ILRI Deputy Director General for Research introduces the SLP. He argues that its focus on the intensification of crop-livestock systems is critical: More than a billion people in developing countries are involved in these smallholder systems.

The SLP brings together 12 CGIAR centers, and, he mentions, “one of the key things we’ve been struggling with is how to improve the performance of these [crop-livestock] systems” – so people can get more income and more benefits from them; also so the systems can be more sustainable.

Reflecting on the just-completed SLP meeting in Addis Ababa, he highlights one of the major issues under discussion: how the crop biomass from these systems can be used more effectively – as food, as animal feed, and as fuel. Furthermore, how the crop residues can be fed back into the soil.

“Now we are turning our attention more to this tradeoff between whether you actually feed these residues to animals or whether some of them should stay with the soil.”

Watch the video:

[blip.tv ?posts_id=2966773&dest=-1]

Feeding livestock, sustaining soils: Crop-livestock tradeoffs focus of SLP discussions

Posted on December 1, 2009 by ILRIComms

This week, ILRI Addis Ababa hosted a meeting of the Livestock Programme Group that steers the CGIAR’s Systemwide Livestock Programme (SLP). The Programme builds synergies between crop research and livestock research across the CGIAR.

A major discussion point at the meeting is the “pressure on biomass use in systems.”

Bruno Gerard, SLP Coordinator, explains that the group will look especially at tradeoffs in the use of crop residues – between feeding livestock or sustaining soils.

View his video:

[blip.tv ?posts_id=2967023&dest=-1]

New dual-purpose sorghum: Food for people and livestock

Posted on December 18, 2008 by ILRIComms

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

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

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

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

Partners in the sorghum food-feed collaboration

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on October 17, 2008 by ILRIComms

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Partners:

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

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

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

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