Amid soaring meat costs, officials from East Africa and Middle East seek plan to keep animal diseases from disrupting livestock trade

Posted on June 13, 2011 by Susan MacMillan

New approach to Rift Valley fever outbreaks aims to ensure food safety as region boosts livestock imports from Africa (photo credit: ILRI/Dolan)

With increased trade in livestock products offering a possible antidote to high food prices, livestock experts from the Middle East and 12 African countries are meeting this week (13-16 June, 2011) in Dubai to develop a strategy that eliminates the need to impose devastating bans on livestock imports from the Horn of Africa, as prevention against the spread of Rift Valley fever. The strategy should expedite the flow of livestock products while increasing safety of the overall livestock trade in the region.

Convened by the African Union’s Interafrican Bureau for Animal Resources (AU-IBAR), the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the workshop will encourage officials and livestock traders to use a simple ‘Decision Support Planning Tool’ to guide and moderate their responses to Rift Valley fever outbreaks.

The ‘decision support tool’ for Rift Valley fever was developed by 30 experts and decisions-makers from across the Horn of Africa with technical assistance from researchers at ILRI, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and other partners. The tool will be used by chief veterinary officers and other national decision-makers. Its framework identifies the sequence of events likely to occur as the risk of a disease outbreak increases.

Rift Valley fever is a mosquito-borne virus found in eastern, western and southern Africa, Yemen and Saudi Arabia. Epidemics emerge periodically with prolonged rains. Climate and land-use changes could make outbreaks more frequent. A study done by ILRI economists Karl Rich and Francis Wanyoike indicated that the Rift Valley fever outbreak in 2007 cost Kenya at least USD32 million.

‘We must avoid unnecessary disruptions in agricultural trade between East Africa and the Middle East,’ said Ahmed El Sawalhy, director of AU-IBAR. ‘Livestock products must be safe and action concerning disease outbreaks must be in line with the actual threat.’ To this end, an animal health certification model suitable for pastoral livestock production systems and that promotes OIE standards has been developed by AU-IBAR in partnership with FAO and the Royal Veterinary College, London. The model is based on risk assessment and involves integration of both upstream animal health inspection and certification at entry points, markets and at the quarantines.

Time is also of critical importance in prevention and control of transboundary animal diseases. ‘In the last Kenyan Rift Valley fever outbreak, control measures were implemented late—not until there were definitive signs of an outbreak,’ said Jeffrey Mariner, an epidemiologist at ILRI. ‘This tool links early warning signs to control measures that can be implemented before animals or people begin falling ill. The new tool could reduce the impact of Rift Valley fever, and maybe even prevent some local outbreaks and has the potential to prevent the spread of Rift Valley fever through trade.’

‘The good news,’ says Bernard Bett, an epidemiologist at ILRI, ‘is that the impact of Rift Valley fever can be mitigated with early action during an outbreak, but veterinary officers and decision-makers need to know what interventions to implement—and when—as the stages of an epidemic unfold.’

Rift Valley fever is best prevented through animal vaccination. But vaccines are expensive and few governments are willing to pay for expensive vaccines unless evidence indicates an epidemic is imminent. Regional cooperation is required to build consensus on managing the disease and to prevent trade disruptions.

Larry Meserve, USAID/EA’s regional mission director commented, ‘President Obama’s Feed the Future initiative aims to increase food security throughout Africa. To succeed, we must all help to improve the capacity of leadership in the Horn of Africa to anticipate potentially disastrous events like disease epidemics so that appropriate preventive or mitigating measures are taken before it is too late. Livestock is a vital staple crop in this part of the world, and both the private and public sectors have to do everything possible to prevent unnecessary disruptions in the trade of livestock and other commodities.’

Visit the official workshop blog site: http://rvfworkshop2011.wordpress.com

In the crosshairs of hunger and climate change: New ILRI-CCAFS study maps the global hotspots

Posted on June 3, 2011 by Susan MacMillan

Please find a corrected and revised statement below, along with a link to download revised maps here: http://ccafs.cgiar.org/resources/climate_hotspots. All edits to the original article posted on this blog are reflected in RED and BOLDFACE below.

Five per cent reduction in crop season sensitivity to change capacity to cope: Corrected 13 Jul 2011 (map credit ILRI/CCAFS/Notenbaert).

A new study out today reveals future ‘hotspots’ of risk for hundreds of millions whose food problems are on a collision course with climate change. The scientists conducting the study warn that disaster looms for parts of Africa and all of India if chronic food insecurity converges with crop-wilting weather. They went on to say that Latin America is also vulnerable.

The red areas in the map above are food-insecure and intensively farmed regions that are highly exposed to a potential five per cent or greater reduction in the length of the growing season. Such a change over the next 40 years could significantly affect food yields and food access for 369 million people—many of them smallholder farmers—already living on the edge. This category includes almost all of India and significant parts of West Africa. While Latin America in general is viewed as having a ‘high capacity’ to cope with such shifts, there are millions of poor people living in this region who very dependent on local crop production to meet their nutritional needs (map credit: ILRI-CCAFS/Notenbaert).

This study matches future climate change ‘hotspots’ with regions already suffering chronic food problems to identify highly-vulnerable populations, chiefly in Africa and South Asia, but potentially in China and Latin America as well, where in fewer than 40 years, the prospect of shorter, hotter or drier growing seasons could imperil hundreds of millions of already-impoverished people.

The report, Mapping Hotspots of Climate Change and Food Insecurity in the Global Tropics, was produced by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). The work was led by a team of scientists at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) responding to an urgent need to focus climate change adaptation efforts on people and places where the potential for harsher growing conditions poses the gravest threat to food production and food security.

The researchers pinpointed areas of intense vulnerability by examining a variety of climate models and indicators of food problems to create a series of detailed maps. One shows regions around the world at risk of crossing certain ‘climate thresholds’—such as temperatures too hot for maize or beans—that over the next 40 years could diminish food production. Another shows regions that may be sensitive to such climate shifts because in general they have large areas of land devoted to crop and livestock production. And finally, scientists produced maps of regions with a long history of food insecurity.

ILRI scientist Polly Ericksen, lead author of the hotspots study (photo credit: ILRI/MacMillan).

‘When you put these maps together they reveal places around the world where the arrival of stressful growing conditions could be especially disastrous,’ said Polly Ericksen, a senior scientist at ILRI, in Nairobi, Kenya and the study’s lead author. ‘These are areas highly exposed to climate shifts, where survival is strongly linked to the fate of regional crop and livestock yields, and where chronic food problems indicate that farmers are already struggling and they lack the capacity to adapt to new weather patterns.’

‘This is a very troubling combination,’ she added.

For example, in large parts of South Asia, including almost all of India, and parts of sub-Saharan Africa—chiefly West Africa—there are 265 million food-insecure people living in agriculture-intensive areas that are highly exposed to a potential five per cent decrease in the length of the growing period. Such a change over the next 40 years could significantly affect food yields and food access for people—many of them farmers themselves—already living on the edge.

Higher temperatures also could exact a heavy toll. Today, there are 170 million food-insecure and crop-dependent people in parts of West Africa, India and China who live in areas where, by the mid-2050s, maximum daily temperatures during the growing season could exceed 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit). This is close to the maximum temperature that beans can tolerate, while maize and rice yields may suffer when temperatures exceed this level. For example, a study last year in Nature found that even with optimal amounts of rain, African maize yields could decline by one percent for each day spent above 30ºC.

Regional predictions for shifts in temperatures and precipitation going out to 2050 were developed by analyzing the outputs of climate models rooted in the extensive data amassed by the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Researchers identified populations as chronically food-insecure if more than 40 per cent of children under the age of five were ‘stunted’—that is, they fall well below the World Health Organization’s height-for-age standards.

CCAFS staff members Wiebke Foerch, based at ILRI, and Patti Kristjanson, based at the World Agroforestry Centre, hold discussions after ILRI’s Polly Ericksen presents her findings on poverty and climate change hotspots at the World Agroforestry Centre in May 2011 (photo credit: ILRI/MacMillan).

‘We are starting to see much more clearly where the effect of climate change on agriculture could intensify hunger and poverty, but only if we fail to pursue appropriate adaptation strategies,’ said Patti Kristjanson, a research theme leader at CCAFS and former agricultural economist at ILRI. ‘Farmers already adapt to variable weather patterns by changing their planting schedules or moving animals to different grazing areas. What this study suggests is that the speed of climate shifts and the magnitude of the changes required to adapt could be much greater. In some places, farmers might need to consider entirely new crops or new farming systems.’

Crop breeders at CGIAR centres around the world already are focused on developing so-called ‘climate ready’ crop varieties able to produce high yields in more stressful conditions. For some regions, however, that might not be a viable option—in parts of East and Southern Africa, for example, temperatures may become too hot to maintain maize as the staple crop, requiring a shift to other food crops, such as sorghum or cassava, to meet nutrition needs. In addition, farmers who now focus mainly on crop cultivation might need to integrate livestock and agroforestry as a way to maintain and increase food production.

Bruce Campbell, coordinator of the CGIAR program ‘Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS)’, based in Copenhagen, talks with guests at a seminar given about CCAFS by Andy Jarvis at ILRI’s Nairobi campus on 13 May 2011 (photo credit: ILRI/MacMillan).

‘International trade in agriculture commodities is also likely to assume even more importance for all regions as climate change intensifies the existing limits of national agriculture systems to satisfy domestic food needs,’ said Bruce Campbell, director of CCAFS. ‘We have already seen with the food price spikes of 2008 and 2010 that food security is an international phenomenon and climate change is almost certainly going to intensify that interdependence.’

Ericksen and her colleagues note that regions of concern extend beyond those found to be most at risk. For example, in many parts of Latin America, food security is relatively stable at the moment—suggesting that a certain amount of ‘coping capacity’ could be available to deal with future climate stresses that affect agriculture production. Yet there is cause for concern because millions of people in the region are highly dependent on local agricultural production to meet their food needs and they are living in the very crosshairs of climate change.

The researchers found, for example, that by 2050, prime growing conditions are likely to drop below 120 days per season in intensively-farmed regions of northeast Brazil and Mexico.

Growing seasons of at least 120 days are considered critical not only for the maturation of maize and several other staple food crops, but also for vegetation crucial to feeding livestock.

In addition, parts of Latin America are likely to experience temperatures too hot for bean production, a major food staple in the region.

Mario Herrero, another ILRI author of the study, with climate Polly Ericksen and CCAFS staff member Wiebke Forech, all based at ILRI’s Nairobi headquarters, wait to hear a presentation from visiting CCAFS scientist Andy Jarvis at ILRI on 13 May 2011 (photo credit: ILRI/MacMillan).

The study also shows that some areas today have a ‘low sensitivity’ to the effects of climate change only because there is not a lot of land devoted to crop and livestock production. But agriculture intensification would render them more vulnerable, adding a wrinkle, for example, to the massive effort under way to rapidly expand crop cultivation in the so-called ‘bread-basket’ areas of sub-Saharan Africa.

Philip Thornton (white shirt, facing camera), of ILRI and CCAFS, and other ILRI staff following a seminar on CCAFS given by Andy Jarvis at ILRI Nairobi on 13 May 2011 (photo credit: ILRI/MacMillan).

‘Evidence suggests that these specific regions in the tropics may be severely affected by 2050 in terms of their crop production and livestock capacity. The window of opportunity to develop innovative solutions that can effectively overcome these challenges is limited,’ said Philip Thornton, a CCAFS research theme leader and ILRI scientist and one of the paper’s co-authors. ‘Major adaptation efforts are needed now if we are to avoid serious food security and livelihood problems later.’

Areas where average maximum temperatures are expected to exceed 30⁰C by 2050, corrected version (map credit: ILRI-CCAFS/Notenbaert).

Read the whole report: Mapping hotspots of climate change and food insecurity in the global tropics, by Polly Ericksen, Philip Thornton, An Notenbaert, L Cramer, Peter Jones and Mario Herrero 2011. CCAFS Report no. 5 (final version). CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). Copenhagen, Denmark. Also available online at: www.ccafs.cgiar.org.

Click here for the CCAFS online media room with more materials, including corrected versions of the news release in English, Spanish, French and Chinese, and also versions of the two maps shown here in high resolution suitable for print media.

All the maps will be made available online later this year; for more information on the maps, please contact ILRI’s Polly Ericksen at p.ericksen [at] cgiar.org or CCAFS’ Vanessa Meadu at ccafs.comms [at] gmail.com.

Note: This study was led by scientists at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) for the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). CCAFS is a strategic partnership of the CGIAR and the Earth System Science Partnership (ESSP). CCAFS brings together the world’s best researchers in agricultural science, development research, climate science and Earth System science, to identify and address the most important interactions, synergies and tradeoffs between climate change, agriculture and food security. The CGIAR’s Lead Centre for the program is the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) in Cali, Colombia. For more information, visit www.ccafs.cgiar.org.

Numbers of wildlife in Kenya’s famous Mara region have declined by two-thirds or more over last 33 years

Posted on June 1, 2011 by Susan MacMillan

Landscape taken on safari in the Masai Mara, Kenya, July 2009 (photo credit: jschinker‘s Flickr photostream). ‘Sadly, wildlife are apparently being monitored into extinction in the Mara. Without urgent, decisive and resolute actions, more local extinctions may yet occur and the spectacular migration for which the Mara is world famous may continue to dwindle’—Joseph Ogutu.

Some devastating news has just been published in a leading scientific journal about wildlife declines in Kenya.

Scientists have found that wildlife populations in Kenya’s famous Mara region declined progressively after 1977, with few exceptions. Populations of almost all wildlife species have declined to a third or less of their former abundance both in the protected Masai Mara National Reserve and in the adjoining pastoral ranches.

Human influences appeared to be the fundamental cause. Besides reinforced antipoaching patrols, the expansion of cultivation, settlements and fences and livestock stocking levels on the pastoral ranches need to be regulated to avoid further declines in the wildlife resource.

Populations of many wild ungulate species in Africa are in decline largely because of land-use changes and other human activities.

The four authors of this paper, published online last week in the Journal of Zoology (20 May 2011) include lead author Joseph Ogutu, formerly of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and now at the University of Hohenheim, and last author Mohamed Said, of ILRI.

Read a short brief providing background to this new item.

Read the abstract of the paper: Continuing wildlife population declines and range contraction in the Mara region of Kenya during 1977–2009

For more information, please contact:
Joseph Ogutu in Germany at jogutu2007 [at] gmail.com
Mohamed Said at ILRI Nairobi at m.said [at] cgiar.org
Jan de Leeuw, ILRI team leader, at ILRI Nairobi at j.leeuw [at] cgiar.org

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

A regional biosciences hub in and for Africa: One woman’s personal, and institutional, odyssey

Posted on May 4, 2011 by Susan MacMillan

Biosciences eastern and central Africa (BecA) is a regional research platform located in Nairobi, Kenya, that was officially launched by Kenya’s President Mwai Kibaki and other dignitaries in November 2010. The BecA Hub gives scientists and students from across the region access to state-of-the-art facilities in the life sciences.

One woman’s long-term commitment is responsible for much of this achievement. Gabrielle Persley is an eminent Australian plant scientist who directs a Doyle Foundation, named after her late husband, Jack Doyle, who for some two decades served as deputy director general-research of the International Laboratory for Research on Animal Diseases, a predecessor of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya. For the last several years, Persley has served as senior advisor to ILRI’s director general, Carlos Seré.

In this 15-minute ILRI film, Persley describes an eventful, multi-year, and at times seemingly heroic, odyssey as she and others at ILRI, the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, and the Canadian International Development Agency, along with other organizations, nursed the BecA Hub project at ILRI from the drawing board through political deliberations and, finally, into a brand spanking new laboratory complex on ILRI’s campus serving as a regional biosciences resource.

This was Persley’s last seminar at ILRI, before she left to return to her native Australia, where she is continuing her life-long work for international agricultural research for development with Australia’s Crawford Fund and other institutions and initiatives.

For more about the BecA Hub, visit the BecA Hub website.

Or watch this 7-minute ILRI film describing the work being done at the BecA Hub done by young scientists and students.

Or watch this 3-minute ILRI photofilm that, through photographs and quotations, sums up the November 2010 opening of the research facility by Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and other dignitaries.

New initiative to boost food production in eastern Africa’s drylands

Posted on April 27, 2011 by Paul Karaimu

A boy tends cattle in Ethiopia. A new initiative supported by the Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) research program of the CGIAR will boost smallholder farmers’ resilience to drought in the Horn of Africa. (Photo credit: ILRI/Gerard)

A new initiative to help pastoralists and smallholder farmers cope with the twin pressures of drought and climate change was launched recently at the Nairobi, Kenya, headquarters of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).

The initiative, ‘Climate change adaptation and mitigation for communities in dryland regions,’ is conducted by a group of development partners that include the Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) research program of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Vétérinaires San Frontières, Solidarites and Action Aid among others. The initiative will work towards securing the agro-pastoral livelihoods of poor livestock keepers in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia.

The meeting, held on 22 March 2011, brought together donor representatives, regional research and development partners, national research and extension representatives and non-governmental agencies engaged in promoting dryland agriculture. The meeting aimed to create awareness of the challenges facing the drylands and to share information about existing technological and institutional innovations that can address some of their most pressing challenges.

The drylands and other marginal environments of eastern Africa have high population growth and climate variability and few livelihood options other than livestock keeping. Such marginal lands around the world, however, produce about 20% of the world’s food, have rich cultural and social diversity and are inhabited by people whose traditional ways of coping with climate change can be harnessed for improved small-scale agriculture and livelihoods.

The new regional drylands initiative will help increase crop and livestock productivity in the three countries as well as add value to supply chain processes and help build supportive institutional frameworks for enhancing food production and marketing.

The initiative hopes to boost food security and livelihoods by increasing the resilience of vulnerable livestock keepers and is expected to reach about 1.3 million people at a cost of USD15 million in its first phase, which starts this year and will go on until 2013.

‘As a key partner in the project,’ said James Kinyangi, a regional program leader of CCAFS, who is based at ILRI, ‘CCAFS will apply lessons from successful past CGIAR research to intensify agricultural production in marginal environments. This should help eastern Africa’s dryland communities to develop greater resilience to climate change.’

The drylands initiative follows a workshop on dryland farming practices held in 2008 to map strategies for improving farming in eastern Africa’s drylands and identify high-priority crops for adaptation.

For more information about the regional drylands initiative visit: http://typo3.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/drought/docs/Dryland%20Flyer_final.pdf

To find out more about CCAFS visit: http://www.ccafs.cgiar.org/

ILRI livestock insurance scheme wins inaugural Vision 2030 ICT Innovation Award

Posted on April 21, 2011 by Susan MacMillan

Andrew Mude, scientist leading the award-winning Index-Based Livestock Insurance project at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).

A novel livestock insurance scheme for poor pastoral herders in Kenya’s Marsabit District, initiated by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) with private sector and other partners, has won the inaugural Vision 2030 ICT Innovation Award.

‘Eleven companies received a V2030 ICT Innovation Award at a ceremony held on 20 April 2011 in Diani as part of the Kenya ICT Board’s Connected Kenya Summit. The Kenya ICT Board and the Kenya Vision 2030 Delivery Secretariat invited companies that have developed solutions that drive economic growth and social development as outlined in Kenya’s Vision 2030 to participate in the inaugural Vision 2030 ICT Innovation Awards. The Award is proudly co-sponsored by Accenture Development Partnerships (ADP).

‘Over 170 companies participated in the online process. All applications were received on an online platform set up by the Kenya ICT Board that allowed applicants to create an account and fill out their application over time. Of the companies that participated in the Call for Applications, 82 successfully completed the process.

‘The Kenya ICT Board convened a team of seven independent judges representing the ICT private sector, academia, public sector and civil society. The judges began their work on April 13 and reviewed each complete proposal against the criteria outlined in the call for applications. To ensure integrity in the process, Deloitte Consulting are auditing the review process.

‘The winners each get a commemorative trophy, certificate and $1,000 prize money from Accenture. The overall best innovation award was awarded to International Livestock Research Institute for their mobile-ICT based livestock insurance solution. ILRI received an additional $ 5,000 as their award.

‘Index-based livestock insurance (IBLI) is a promising and exciting innovation in insurance design that allows the risk-management benefits of insurance to be made available to poor and remote clients. The IBLI product being piloted in Marsabit District aims to provide compensation to insured pastoralists in the event of livestock losses due to severe forage scarcity. Incorporating remotely-sensed vegetation data in its design, delivered via mobile ICT-based transactions platforms, and with experimental extension methods used to educate the remote pastoral herders, the IBLI product boasts many firsts in product development.’

Read more about the Vision 2030 ICT Innovation Awards on the Connected Kenya website.

IBLI web site

Kenya’s small milk traders benefit from research evidence leading to pro-poor policy change

Posted on April 5, 2011 by Susan MacMillan

Sale of unpasteurized in Nairobi’s informal Dagoretti Market (photo credit: ILRI/Brad Collis).

A case study recently posted on the Research for Development (R4D) website of the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) reviews a policy change in Kenya that has greatly benefitted the country’s many small-scale milk vendors. The ‘raw’ (unpasteurized) milk sold by these milk hawkers has become safer, the poor milk sellers have made more profit, the poor consumers have more affordable milk to buy, and many unskilled people have been able to get jobs in small-scale milk enterprises and trade.

In all, these benefits add up to more than USD33 million every year. The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) worked for a decade with the relevant Kenya Government ministries and the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute to bring about these pro-poor policy changes. This research was supported throughout by DFID and the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research.

‘Evidence-based research by the DFID-funded Smallholder Dairy Project (SDP) revealed the economic and nutritional significance of the informal milk sector and the potential for improved handling and hygiene practices, which would ensure quality and safety of milk from farm to cup. The second phase of the project (2002-2005) involved more active engagement with policymakers to raise awareness of its research findings on the informal milk market, its importance for livelihoods, and to allay public health concerns while simultaneously working with milk vendors to pilot training and certification approaches that effectively improve quality. Updated dairy industry regulations, designed to streamline licence application processes for smallscale milk vendors, were issued by the Ministry of Livestock and Fisheries Development (MoLFD) in September 2004.

‘Total economy-wide gross benefits accruing to the sector from the policy change are estimated at US$33 million per annum, as a result of reduced transaction costs and less milk spoilage due to improved practices by newly-trained vendors. More than half of the benefits accrue to producers (increased incomes) and consumers (lower milk prices). Licensing of smallscale milk traders by the Kenya Dairy Board (KDB) has also led to formation of groups under the umbrella of the Kenya Smallscale Milk Traders Association. A further legacy of the project is the establishment of self-employed business development service providers, who are paid by dairy companies and traders to provide training on milk handling and business development. The lessons learnt from the SDP are being applied across East Africa, particularly Tanzania and Uganda, and also in India.’

Read the full (5-page) case study: Policy change: Milking the benefits for smallscale vendors, DFID and ILRI, 2010.

More information:

Leksmono, C., J. Young, N. Hooton, H. Muriuki, and D. Romney (2006), Informal traders lock horns with the formal milk industry: the role of research in pro-poor dairy policy shift in Kenya, Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and International Livestock Research Institute Working Paper No. 266, London/Nairobi.

CGIAR Science Council, (2008), Changing dairy marketing policy in Kenya: The impact of the Smallholder Dairy Project, Science Council Brief Standing Panel on Impact Assessment No. 28.

Punctuated equilibrium: Pastoralist timelines of past and future

Posted on March 23, 2011 by Susan MacMillan

On the last day (23 March 2011) of a ‘Future of Pastoralism in Africa’ Conference, organized by the Future Agricultures Consortium and the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University and held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), pastoralist experts took the conference participants through timelines that they had drawn up for selected pastoralist areas.

These hand-drawn timelines—with their famous place names and (in)famous droughts, wars and other major events variously, simply and affectingly sketched lightly on flipchart papers pasted to the walls of the conference hall—must have evoked memories, some of them heart-breaking, all of them heartfelt, in all but the youngest academic in the room. This was Africa’s pastoralist past—laid out in its crudest essentials on linear temporal bars punctuated by shorthand notes denoting big, often cataclysmic, events. This was an exercise meant to make room for rethinking the future of African pastoralism.

Examples of the kinds of statements made about the timelines (their baldness often matching the events they described) by the pastoralist ‘gurus’ who stood, one by one, to highlight a handful of major events depicted in each, follow.

Pastoralist Timelines

Niger Delta
‘A Tuareg rebellion arising in colonial times continues to this day. . . . Conflicts are a worse threat than climate change.’

Afar/Middle Awash
‘Critical dry-season grazing lands have been completely taken up by state farms. . . . More than 90,000 hectares of grazing land in Afar has been converted to sugar cane. . . . A 1973/4 drought is called the “gun drought” because the massive stock deaths led to massive sales of guns and other household assets to buy food. . . . Since a 1970s drought, people have begun keeping more goats than camels and cattle, and sugar cane is now taking over.’

Southern Somalia/Northeastern Kenya
‘The 1891 rinderpest calamity started the rural-to-urban migration. . . . Shifta conflicts in the 1960s began to isolate and stigmatize the area. . . . An outbreak of Rift Valley fever in the 1990s crushed the livestock trade. . . . The economic vibrancy in this stateless region outstrips its politics. . . . There is an on-going and robust cross-border boom in livestock and other trade. . . . Garissa is the fastest-growing town in Kenya; livestock remain critically important there. . . . The whole area is a kind of duty-free zone for electronics and other goods. . . . Piracy is a kind of livelihood diversification into the sea.’

Northern Kenya
‘Boundaries were first fixed and herding ranges squeezed in the colonial era. . . . In the post-colonial era, 1960–70, shifta started as legitimate rebels before becoming, and being seen as, bandits. . . . Starting in the 1990s, non-governmental organizations set up permanent offices, around which towns began to grow up. . . . A paved road built from Isiolo to Moyale will drive some pastoralists further away. . . . Land insecurity remains the biggest problem. . . . Roads and education bring with them new opportunities. . . . There is already much anticipation (and business deals being made) about the pipeline and railroad being planned from Lamu through Isiolo to Sudan. . . . Those who have resources have taken over the cattle economy of the area.’

Darfur/Sudan
‘In some areas and periods, there are no droughts because there are no rains at all. . . . Long-term marginalization and militarization have both been rapidly accelerating in recent years. . . . The future looks bleak. . . . The only good news is that there is widespread acknowledgement that international peace processes have failed.’

Southern Kenya/Maasai
‘Considerable inter-Maasai conflicts occurred from 1850 to 1900. . . . Early on, the Maasai ceded much of the Rift Valley to the colonialists. . . . In the 1940s, the colonialists created sectional divisions that remain problematical today. . . . The formation of group ranches led to catastrophic land losses. . . . Droughts of 1984, 1997/8, 2000, 2005, 2008/9; the last affected all areas, with no one escaping. . . . Major non-drought events include the 1945 establishment of national parks and the 1980s establishment of group ranches. . . . Since the 1990s, Christianity has swept across Maasailand, bringing with it great changes.’

Northern Tanzania/Maasailand
‘Kenya and Tanzania took very different paths regarding land and ethnicity. . . . Security of land and resources will be critical over next five years.’

Uganda/Karamajong
‘From colonial times to today, the Karamajong herders are not allowed to move. . . . A challenging national policy environment in Uganda makes promoting pastoralist livelihoods in Karamoja difficult.’

Southern Ethiopia/Borana
‘The 1972 and 1984 droughts were key events. . . . Education and services have both been improving in the region since 1991.’

Timeline keyword commonalities
Conflicts, diseases, droughts, geopolitical influences, land and land-use issues, national policies.

Keywords about the future of pastoralism
International issues, mobile phones, political representation, small towns, terrorism (and its impacts on aid).

Summing Up the Conference
After the timelines were described, some participants were asked to sum up the conference. The following are some of the things they said.

Dorothy Hodgson, Rutgers University, USA
‘Is there really such a thing as “pastoralist systems”? . . . Are we talking about pastoralism as a livelihood or as an identity? . . . Some are saying that pastoral women will drive pastoral futures. . . . We have to stop adding gender as a footnote. . . . It’s time to mainstream gender into pastoralist issues instead of “siloing” gender work’.

Peter Little, Emory University, USA
‘Population matters, politics matter, education matters to the future of pastoralism. . . . Diversification of pastoral livelihoods matter—especially as key resources are rapidly being lost. . . .Ecology matters as pastoral orbits become increasingly restricted. . . . And language matters—we should keep the word “innovation”, for example, about innovations.’

Orto Tumal, Pastoralist Shade Initiative, Kenya
‘Our future challenges are great. . . . We will, and must, march on.’

Paul Goldsmith, Develop Management Policy Forum, Kenya
‘Pastoralism has produced some very seductive literature.’

Luka Deng, Government of Sudan
‘There is a huge amount of information on pastoralists, but the real question is about what to do with it.’

Acknowledgements
Two of the conference organizers then closed the proceedings by making some acknowledgements, of which the following were included.

Andy Catley, Tufts University
‘In the early 1980s, pastoral groups were weak and arguments for pastoral rights appeared nostalgic in tone and character. . . . A tremendous intellectual contribution to pastoralism in the years since has helped to transform pastoralist discourse at all levels. . . . Some of the “masters” of this discourse are here in this room today. . . . Stephen Sandford (private), Jeremy Swift (freelance), Ian Scoones (Future Agricultures Consortium) and Roy Behnke (Odessa Centre) have altered the intellectual foundations of our understanding of pastoralism. . . .

‘The central importance of livestock disease, particularly the great rinderpest epidemic in East Africa at the turn of the 20th century, was mentioned by several of our timeline developers. . . . The global eradication of rinderpest was announced earlier this year. . . . Three of those who contributed significantly to this great achievement (only the human disease smallpox has been similarly eradicated from the face of the earth) are in this room and I take the privilege of acknowledging them now: Solomom Hailemarium, African Union; Darlington Akabwai, Tufts University; and Berhanu Admassu, Tufts University.’

Ian Scoones, Future Agricultures Consortium
‘As we have heard this week, there is not one but multiple futures of pastoralism in Africa. . . . We have a new generation of African scholars contributing to African pastoralism. . . . We have an extraordinary body of scholarship now coming from this new generation. . . .’

See previous postings on the ILRI News Blog:

The future of pastoralism in Africa debated in Addis: Irreversible decline or vibrant future?, 21 March 2011.

Climate change impacts on pastoralists in the Horn: Transforming the ‘crisis narrative’, 22 March 2011.

The case for index-based livestock insurance and cash payments for northern Kenya’s pastoralists, 23 March 2011

Or visit the Future Agricultures Consortium website conference page or blog.

The case for index-based livestock insurance and cash payments for northern Kenya’s pastoralists

Posted on March 22, 2011 by Susan MacMillan

ILRI is working with insurance companies to train livestock herders in Kenya’s northern drylands in the benefits and costs of a new index-based livestock insurance first made available in Marsabit District in 2010 (photo credit: ILRI/Mude).

On the second day of a ‘Future of Pastoralism in Africa’ Conference, being held this week (21–23 March 2011) in Addis Ababa at the campus of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), a panel session focused on new approaches for strengthening pastoralist livelihoods and social protection.

With decades of food aid delivery having demonstrably failed to significantly improve the livelihood prospects of Africa’s poorer pastoralists, aid agencies and governments alike are rethinking their approaches to ways of delivering aid to pastoralists. But do safety net schemes serve as life-savers or do they lock destitute pastoralists into unsustainable livelihoods? Should donors and governments help destitute pastoralists exit pastoral livelihoods? Should they help provide livestock insurance schemes?

Andrew Mude, an ILRI scientist, spoke about an index-based livestock insurance innovation that has been instituted, in partnership with UAP Insurance and Equity Bank, for pastoral herders in Marsabit District, in northern Kenya’s great drylands. This is the first insurance ever offered the Samburu, Gabra, Rendille, Borana, Turkana and other traditional herders here, who cope with variable weather by traditionally moving their stock to find new grazing when the grass in a given area is finished.

The risk covered by this insurance is periodic drought that dries up the natural rangeland vegetation, which supplies most of the feed for the pastoral cattle, sheep, goats and camels of the region, leading to many livestock deaths. Insurance payouts are made, to those who have bought annual insurance contracts, when the available forage in Marsabit District in that year drops below a level at which more than 15 per cent of the livestock would be expected to perish from starvation.

Before the ILRI team could convince commercial companies that this is a viable product, they had to convince the prospective pastoralist clients of that. So ILRI researchers invented insurance games that help livestock herders understand what the insurance covers, and what it does not, and when insurance payouts will be made, and when they will not.

Asked whether livestock insurance isn’t just another popular idea likely to fail, Mude said, ‘I wouldn’t stake my professional reputation on index livestock insurance working, but I would stake my reputation on the processes we are using to monitor the effectiveness and impacts of this new product. In fact, my team has put a “pause” on expanding livestock insurance in Kenya while we see how it goes, although we are introducing livestock insurance in Ethiopia so as to see how it does here, under different conditions.’

In the meantime, Mude’s team is monitoring the effectiveness and impacts of livestock insurance in Marsabit by following 900 households, which they first interviewed in 2009 and then again last year; they’ll continue to monitor these households over the next four years to determine if the product should be made more widely available.

The next expert to speak was Stephen Devereux, who leads a pilot Hunger Safety Net Program providing cash transfers to the people in northern Kenya’s chronically food insecure areas of Mandera, Marsabit, Turkana, Wajir districts. The payments are designed to meet basic subsistence needs. The program uses the local private sector—banks and shops—to deliver the cash to the local people.

The Hunger Safety Net Program aims to provide social assistance, insurance and justice. The first thing Devereux’s team had to consider was whether the program’s social protection should address poverty or vulnerability. The conventional way to define poverty is lack of resources, while vulnerability is characterized by uninsured risk and marginalization is a matter of lacking a voice in decision-making.

The rates of both poverty and hunger in these districts are high. Only the rich eat three times a day. Middle-income families eat just twice a day, the poor only once a day, and the very poor sometimes do not eat at all in 24 hours.

Food aid is the conventional response to prolonged drought in these as well as other pastoral areas. But food aid is not enough, and tends to be diluted through sharing. The nutritional status of children in drought-afflicted districts, moreover, was found to be alarming in 2006, for example, a full year following a drought and despite massive injections of food aid.

Among the design challenges of this social assistance is how to best target those to receive this aid: are women, for example, more responsible as well as more vulnerable? Conflicts occurring between pastoralist communities in this region are a great problem, and the food price crisis is also hurting the efficacy of this program, which can no longer provide sufficient cash to maintain adequate nutritional levels. Another worry is that the program may be trapping people in unviable livelihoods while they wait to receive benefits (some families might be better off exiting pastoralism altogether).

Complementary interventions—so-called ‘cash plus’ systems—are needed to help build resilience in these communities, said Devereux. ‘A useful integrated approach would combine cash payments with services such as livestock insurance, as is being done by ILRI and its partners in Marsabit.’

For more information, see previous postings on the ILRI News Blog:

The future of pastoralism in Africa debated in Addis: Irreversible decline or vibrant future?, 21 March 2011.

Climate change impacts on pastoralists in the Horn: Transforming the ‘crisis narrative’, 22 March 2011.

Or visit the Future Agricultures Consortium website conference page or blog.

Climate change impacts on pastoralists in the Horn: Transforming the ‘crisis narrative’

Posted on March 22, 2011 by Susan MacMillan

Shiferaw Teklemariam, Ethiopian Minister of Federal Affairs, opened a ‘Future of Pastoralism in Africa’ Conference yesterday (21 March 2011), which is organized by Tufts University and Future Agricultures Consortium and being held on the Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, campus of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). The Minister’s talk was followed by that of Abebe Haile Gabriel, director of the African Union Department of Rural Economy and Agriculture who reminded his audience that ‘Pastoralism is nothing new but is continually forgotten.’

Ian Scoones, of the Future Agricultures Consortium and the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University, then set the scene for the conference with remarks such as the following. ‘There is a moment now, with renewed interest in pastoralism in the Africa Union, regional bodies and national governments, for evidence-based research to inform policy. Even a decade ago, we would have been urging governments and the Africa Union to give pastoralism attention. They are now taking pastoralism seriously, as a driver of growth. . . . This meeting comes in a long lineage of meetings discussing the future of pastoralism in Africa. (A meeting in 1951 in Niamey was an early one.) But recently, there has been massive change and dynamism in this continent’s pastoral areas. . . . Popular reports on pastoralism are dominated by crisis narratives. While the popular discourse continues with doom and gloom scenarios, we see dynamic change with growth—as in the livestock trade booms in the borderlands—with both winners and losers. . . .

‘The research on pastoralism in Africa has a rich tradition. Among the more classic works are the optimism displayed in the 1960s and 1970s about the transformation of pastoralism; 1980s work done by ILRI’s predecessor, ILCA (International Livestock Centre for Africa), on the Borana pastoralists of Ethiopia; the 1990s’ focus on land tenure issues and ‘disequilibrium’ in rangelands; the attention given by CRSP (Collaborative Research Support Program) and others to pastoralist poverty and livelihoods; recent emphasis on the marketing and commercialization of pastoralist livestock products; and today’s attention to the impacts of climate change, conflict and insecurity on pastoral communities. . . .

‘We want in this workshop to build on this huge body of work, to reflect on it, and to judge how robust were those findings. We want to know what new insights are suggested by today’s research and what they suggest for policymaking. . . . We want to offer possible scenarios for pastoralist areas and to do so we want to try out a simple approach. This simplistic diagram categorizes pastoralists according to whether their access to markets and resources is good or poor, as in the following.

Where pastoralist access to both markets and resources is good, there is potential for commercialization and export trade.
Where pastoralist access to both markets and resources is poor, communities should seek alternative livelihood strategies and ways to exit pastoralism.
Where pastoralist access to resources is good but to markets is poor, traditional mobile pastoralism should continue to dominate.
And where pastoralist access to markets is good but to resources is poor, ways of diversifying livelihoods and adding value to livestock products is needed.’

Impacts of climate change on pastoralist communities
Several ILRI scientists participated in a session after lunch on the impacts of climate change on pastoralism. These included Polly Ericksen, who made a presentation, Shirley Tarawali, Jan de Leeuw, Andrew Mude and David Nkedianye. The latter, a Maasai who worked with ILRI while doing his doctoral research, also made a presentation.

Polly Ericksen, of ILRI, reminded her audience that managing climate variability and climate risk is at the very heart of pastoralism. The consequences and implications of climate change are therefore of paramount importance to pastoral livelihoods, production systems and landscapes. The paper developed by Ericksen—along with her ILRI colleagues Phil Thornton, Augustine Ayantunde, Mario Herrero, Mohamed Said and Jan de Leeuw—explores what we do and do not know about how climate change will unfold in pastoral areas of sub-Saharan Africa. And it stresses the importance of successful strategies for adapting to climate change at local as well as higher governance levels for the future of pastoralism.

Among other remarks from Ericksen were the following. ‘Pastoralists of course manage well the considerable changes in climate that they experience. Pastoralism is a supreme adaption to managing climatic variability. . . . The 2009 drought in Kenya killed up to 80% of the livestock kept by the country’s pastoralists. . . . Many crop farmers in Africa’s drying regions will start to incorporate more livestock, a trend that has been occurring in West Africa for the last 2 to 3 decades. . . . New research shows that, contrary to IPCC estimates, the Kenya highlands have been getting drier and are likely to continue to dry. There is fundamental uncertainty regarding the impacts of climate change—not least because we don’t even know how we humans will manage ourselves in the face of climate change.’

Remarks by Gufu Oba, of the Norwegian University of Life Sciences: ‘The variability of Africa’s drylands—season to season, year to year, place to place—makes nonsense of theories of “carrying capacity”. . . . Pastoralists do not run away from risks: they face them straight on. And communities and individuals differ greatly in how they cope with threats. . . . Pastoralism will be less mobile in future, but pastoralism will survive: herders will not exchange their lava rocks and other dryland features for anything.’

David Nkedianye, heading a non-governmental organization called ‘Reto-o-Reto’ (‘I help you, you help me’ in the Maa language) in Kenya’s Kitengela rangeland region, in his presentation said that lack of land tenure and land use policies, increasing demographic pressure, growing rural-to-urban migration, insecurity and lack of a cross-bornder migration framework are some of the key issues to be tackled soon if pastoralism is to survive into the future. Lessons from southern Kenya indicate that trends in land fragmentation and radical policies on land use have been difficult to change. Going by the going rates and direction, pastoralism is headed for harder times in the future. Nkedianye also said the following: ‘Lands in Kajiado are being privatized and fragmented much faster than those in Narok, with huge land speculation going on. . . . In Kajiado in the great drought of 2008/9, only herders able to move to the wetter north were able to save some of their stock. . . .

‘The irony is that as we open up more and more rangelands by providing roads and other basic infrastructure, more people will move in, which will reduce pastoral mobility even more. . . . We need to be consistent and relentless in our policy messages and to promote our women and our adolescents. Two things that are making a big difference in my part of Kenyan Maasailand [Kajiado] are education and Christianity. . . . Pastoralists have “exited” pastoral livelihoods since time immemorial but the present inability of many herders who have lost their animals to go back into pastoral ways of life once they have rebuilt their herds is perhaps new. . . . We have to come to terms with longer term pressures, particularly demographic. . . . Cell phones have changed pastoralism a lot. But more important are that rich people have richer connections.’

Terry McCabe, of the University of Colorado, reminded the group that the biggest shock to East Africa’s pastoralists in more than one hundred years was not climate change but disease—specifically the great rinderpest plague of the end of the 19th and beginning of 20th centuries, which killed whole populations of wild and domesticated animals and led to the starvation of many herding communities.’

The Future Agricultures Consortium and the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University jointly organized this conference to assess ongoing change and innovation in Africa’s pastoral areas. Researchers, policymakers, field practitioners and donor representatives at this conference are assessing the present and future challenges to African pastoralism to define new research and policy agendas.

View the presentation of Polly Ericksen

For more information, visit the Future Agricultures Consortium website conference page or blog and revisit this ILRI News blog.

The future of pastoralism in Africa debated in Addis: Irreversible decline or vibrant future?

Posted on March 21, 2011 by Susan MacMillan

A Maasai man takes his goats out in the early morning for a day’s grazing in northern Tanzania (photo credit: ILRI/Mann).

An international conference deliberating the future of pastoralists in Africa is taking place this week (21–23 March 2011) at the Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, campus of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).

Big changes are occurring in, and to, Africa’s vast pastoral regions. Livestock herders’ access to resources, options for mobility and opportunities for marketing are all evolving fast. Is there, the organizers of this conference ask, opportunity for a productive, vibrant, market-oriented livelihood system or will pastoralist areas remain a backwater of underdevelopment, marginalization and severe poverty?

The Future Agricultures Consortium, an alliance of agricultural development researchers and practitioners that facilitates policy dialogues and debates on the role of agriculture in broad-based African growth, and the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University, which also has a mixed staff of development researchers and practitioners, have jointly organized this conference to share new learning about ongoing change and innovation in Africa’s pastoral areas.

One of the aims of the conference organizers is to shift the crisis narrative that so often dominates news and discussions of pastoralists in Africa. As noted on the Future Agricultures Consortium website: ‘Frequently depicted as in crisis, pastoralists are changing the way they live and work in response to new opportunities and threats revealing the resilience that pastoralists have demonstrated for millennia. Accessing new markets and innovating solutions to safeguard incomes, this often misunderstood and marginalised community is re-positioning itself to make the most of the East African economy. . . .

‘The pastoralist way of life—synonymous with irreversible decline, ‘crises’ and aid rescues—is poorly understood. And whilst the words ‘pastoralism’ and ‘crisis’ have become fused in the minds of many, there are positive signs of vibrant pastoralist livelihoods that debunk the usual reportage of pastoralists depicted as insecure, vulnerable and destitute. . . .

‘Failed by generations of unsuccessful state development plans and aid strategies, pastoralists have been let down because the real problems and issues they face have not been taken into account. A more accurate understanding of the processes of change happening within pastoralist areas, which are significant and complex, has been obscured by the perpetuated myths of pastoralism in crisis.

‘Understanding the complexity and potential for pastoralism is crucial to informing policies for securing the future of this age-old and resilient sector in sub-Saharan Africa.’

Hot topics
The new research and practical experiences being shared at this conference are on the following hot topics in academic and development research.
• Regional pastoralist policies (and the politics of pastoralist policy)
• Mobility and the sustainability of pastoralist production systems
• Impacts of climate change on pastoralism
• Commercializing pastoralism through better markets and trade
• Delivering basic health, education and veterinary services to pastoralists
• New approaches for strengthening pastoralist livelihoods and social protection systems
• Alternative livelihoods and exit strategies for pastoralists
• Pastoralist views of land grabbing and land tenure
• Pastoralist innovations
• How conflicts are affecting pastoralist development in the Horn of Africa
• The place, and potential, of youth and women in pastoralist societies

Researchers, policymakers, field practitioners and donor representatives at this conference are assessing the present and future challenges to African pastoralism so as to begin to define new research and policy agendas.