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Feeding tomorrow’s hungry livestock

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In January 2008 ILRI shipped 4000 samples of tropical fodders and forages to Norway’s Svalbard Global Seed Vault for its offical opening today (26th February). This ‘natural freezer’ will help conserve future feed supplies.
 

Dramatic losses of plant diversity, including fodders and forages that feed livestock, are one of the greatest challenges facing sustainable development today. Soaring human populations are eroding the world’s plant genetic diversity and other natural resources. Increasing demands for human food, along with urbanization, pollution and land degradation, are squeezing out hardy fodder and forage plants that allow half a billion poor people to keep livestock. These fodders and forages are vital today. In future, they may become the only way poor livestock keepers are able to adapt to climate and other changes.

A genebank maintained by ILRI, in Ethiopia, is part of a global effort to help save food and feed plant diversity before it is too late. ILRI is conserving and studying animal feed crops to help ensure future food supplies.

ILRI and other members of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) are storing their vast seed collections in the new Svalbard global seed vault in Norway as a safety backup. This natural freezer, located in the Arctic Circle, will preserve seeds of these plant varieties for many years. This effort is part of a global commitment under the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. The benefits are universal.
ILRI’s forage diversity project leader, Jean Hanson, says, ‘The 18,000 seed and plant samples held in trust in the ILRI genebank are tested to help scientists deliver appropriate fodders and forages for millions of poor milk and meat producers.

‘In January 2008 ILRI shipped 4000 samples of tropical fodders and forages to Norway’s Svalbard Global Seed Vault. These samples duplicate specimens from ILRI’s vast collection of African forages, the largest and most diverse in the world.’

ILRI genebank: A global public good

ILRI maintains both an active and base genebank in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

The active genebank is used for current research and distribution of seeds. Seeds are dried in a dehumidified drying room and packed in laminated aluminium foil bags for storage in the active genebank at 8°C. All seeds in the active collection are freely available in small quantities to bona-fide forage research workers and distributed both directly and through networks.

The base genebank is used for long-term security storage of original germplasm collections. The base genebank acts as a repository of materials that have been reasonably characterized and which may or may not have current interest or use by plant breeders. Collected materials are preserved until such time as there are enough resources available for them to be characterized and evaluated. Materials are stored in the base genebank at -20°C.

ILRI’s director general, Carlos Seré summarizes, ‘We know that weather is set to become more extreme, increasing flooding, soil erosion and salinity, droughts and other causes of land degradation.

‘Climate change will also spread diseases among livestock feed plants as well as crop plants. These changes are already increasing world food prices and threatening lives of the poor.

‘The options scientists are generating through plant genetic diversity research will help small farmers adapt quickly to their changing local environments and markets.’

‘In future, the genes scientists are investigating may provide resistance to drought, disease or salinity, not only in fodder plants but also in maize, rice and other important cereal crops’ concludes Sere.

View film on conserving forage genetic resources

 

 Feeding tomorrow’s hungry livestock: ILRI 3 minute film

Request DVD

Cover image of ILRI’s ‘Managing fodder and forage genetic resources’ DVD

Emai: g.ndungu@cgiar.org to request a copy of this 10 minute film.

Further Information:

ILRI’s forage diversity project leader, Jean Hanson, has been invited to join the International Advisory Council for the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. The council is being established to provide guidance and advice, and will include representatives from FAO, the CGIAR, the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources (ITPGR) and other institutions. 

Forage diversity activities at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI)

Forage diversity as a global public good

For research-related enquiries contact:

Jean Hanson
Forage diversity project leader
International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI)
Addis Ababa, ETHIOPIA
Email: j.hanson@cgiar.org
Telephone: +251 11 617 2000

Moving on: ILRI savanna scientist heads up new Center for Collaborative Conservation

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After 15 years working out of Nairobi for the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), American Robin Reid leaves for Colorado State University.

After 15 years working out of Nairobi for the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), American Robin Reid leaves for Colorado State University.  Reid has been appointed Director of a new Center for Collaborative Conservation at the Warner College of Natural Resources, part of Colorado State University, in Fort Collins. She started her new job in January 2008.

ILRI’s Deputy General for Research, John McDermott, says ‘Robin is a highly respected scientist at all levels—international, national and community—as well as a leading strategic thinker.

‘She has made outstanding contributions to the genesis and evolution of ILRI’s research on people, livestock and the environment, providing visionary thinking and outstanding leadership’ says McDermott.

Reid is ambivalent about departing ILRI and her East African home: ‘For 14 years I’ve had the privilege of working at a world-class research institute with some inspirational people on some exciting ecological projects in one of the most spectacular places—ecologically and otherwise—on earth. My job here has been one most ecologists can only dream of.’

Among things she’ll greatly miss is her field in the vast wildlife-enriched savannas of East Africa. ‘But most of all’, she says, ‘I’ll miss my colleagues, collaborators and friends. That said, I look forward to creating some exciting new projects and working with many of my old colleagues again.’

Meeting in the middle ground

Reid is passionate about science, teaching, pastoralist peoples and pastoral lands. What matters most to her is making a difference in people’s lives and lands and, through science and education, helping both to develop in sustainable ways. The so-called ‘stakeholders’ in her particular research are a particularly diverse and passionate group, including Maasai and other traditional livestock herders as well as livestock scientists, land owners as well as community leaders, and policymakers as well as conservationists. Reid’s research regularly brought representatives of these groups together to find common ground and common solutions to urgent land-use and related problems now facing East Africa’s traditional pastoralists and the increasingly fragmented fragile ecosystems that support them.

‘If I could have one professional dream, it would be to help local communities build their livelihoods and conserve biodiversity and landscapes in a way that clearly benefits both,’ says Reid.

‘The world is fractured into camps of polarized views about East Africa’s pastoral lands and their people, livestock, and wildlife. Some groups argue passionately for people—for conserving or developing the semi-migratory pastoral ways of life of the Maasai and other livestock peoples here with little consideration of the environment—while others argue just as passionately for conserving the spectacular diverse herds of big mammals that share East Africa’s vast pastoral lands with little concern for people’s livelihoods. ‘We won’t solve any problems here,’ says Reid, ‘until we all meet in the middle ground and work together.’

Reid's work

Highlights from Reid’s work

Reid started work at ILRI in 1992 as a Rockefeller Fellow on ILRAD’s Epidemiology and Economics team, leading a pan-African study on the environmental and economic impacts of controlling the tsetse fly, which transmits human and animal trypanosomosis (known as sleeping sickness in humans). In 1999, Reid and colleagues founded an initiative called Land-Use Change Impacts and Dynamics, or ‘LUCID’, for short. This network of national and international scientists investigates land-use change in East Africa and its impacts on lands, biodiversity and climate change, and makes sure information generated by this research gets in the hands of policy makers. About this time, Reid’s team began focusing on sustaining pastoral lands and livelihoods. From 2001 to 2004, Reid coordinated ILRI’s People, Livestock and Environment Program, and then beginning in 2004, led a project on Sustaining Lands and Livelihoods.  In 2005, Reid was appointed Senior Fellow at Harvard’s Center for Sustainability Science.

Reid has authored and co-authored over 90 scientific publications and 5 books. She has supervised, mentored and advised over 20 MSc and PhD students and raised some USD20 million in grants. Summaries of some of her projects appear below.

LUCID: Getting the facts out about people, wildlife and livestock

The main objective of the LUCID network is to find regional research approaches to stemming losses of East African lands and biodiversity while sustaining the livelihoods of the peoples who depend on them. LUCID has six research sites: in Kenya, the eastern slopes of Mount Kenya and the northern slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro; In Tanzania, the southern slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro; and in Uganda, Sango Bay on Lake Victoria, Lake Mburo National Park and Ntungamo. Reid is proud that LUCID, set up in 1999, is alive and well today. ‘LUCID brings the best of science to policymakers in this region,’ she says. ‘Policymakers of all kinds and at all levels are in urgent need of scientific evidence for their decision-making, which affects the lives of millions of people.’

The Mara Count: Counting people, wildlife and livestock

Much of the spectacular wildlife of Kenya’s famous Masai Mara Reserve is disappearing at an alarming rate. The whole of the Greater Serengeti-Mara Ecosystem is of particular concern because nearly 70 per cent of the wildlife here was lost between 1976 to 1996. Pastoral peoples living in the Mara ecosystem have less livestock per person than they did 20 years ago, and about half survive on an income of less than Kenyan shillings (Ksh) 70 (USD1) per day. If these trends continue, it’s probable that the Mara in 20 year’s time will support very little wildlife and very poor pastoral people.

‘Work to conserve the Mara’s priceless wildlife populations and to improve returns from wildlife tourism to its Maasai people is being jeopardized by disjointed efforts, by all stakeholders in the Mara’s development,’ says Reid. ‘The Mara Count in 2002 was one effort to redress this. This project was a joint venture by pastoral peoples, conservationists, private industry, land managers and researchers in the region to create vast scientific datasets that would form the foundation of future decisions to conserve wildlife and develop pastoral peoples livelihoods.’

This project counted wildlife and livestock and much more in the Masai Mara region. Thirty-six local community members, 5 land managers, 6 tourist operators and 15 scientists participated, producing and analyzing 3.4 million data points published in a report and on a website. See http://www.maasaimaracount.org

ILRI Brief: People, Wildlife and Livestock in the Mara: mahider.ilri.org/bitstream/10568/2270/1/PolicyBrief3MaraLandUse.pdf

Reto-o-Reto: Balancing people, wildlife and livestock

People, wildlife and livestock have co-existed and co-evolved on the East African savannas for millennia. But this intermingling has declined greatly in recent decades. Conservation policies have excluded people and livestock from wildlife parks and protected areas. Meantime, growing human populations and expanding cropping and agriculture have excluded wildlife and pastoral use of lands. Thus, in many parts of the region, wildlife populations have declined by nearly half while livestock populations have remained stagnant and human populations have grown. Millions of pastoralists now have no choice but to diversify their livelihoods beyond livestock.

In the Maa language of the Masai ‘Reto-o-Reto’ means ‘I help you; you help me’.  ILRI’s collaborative Reto-o-Reto Project focuses on sustainable development of pastoral landscapes, improving the livelihoods of agro-pastoralists and also protecting the diversity of wildlife species and savanna landscapes.

The Reto-o-Reto Project sites are in Maasailand of Kenya and Tanzania and include the pastoral lands surrounding protected areas in the  Mara/Transmara and Kitengela in Kenya, Amboseli/Longido in Kenya and Tanzania, and Tarangire/Simanjiro in Tanzania. The four sites represent contrasts in land tenure, national policies and degree of land use intensification. Each site has a different set of challenges. See http://www.reto-o-reto.org

A central aim of ILRI’s Reto-o-Reto Project was to involve communities and policymakers in research that would be useful and used by them. Reid and her team created and wrote a large grant to fund a unique communication team that consists of 8 scientists, 5 community facilitators and 1 policy facilitator. This facilitation team formed a critical link between the scientific team and about 50 local communities.

‘The Reto-o-Reto Project has been more effective at helping people than any of us dreamed,’ says Reid. ‘We’ve held over 600 meetings with local communities throughout the region to identify problems, make cross-site visits to other communities and present research results.

‘Working with local media was instrumental in getting the word out. We initiated a local radio program series that reaches thousands of pastoral people on the ground and raised the profile of pastoral issues with national and regional policy makers,’ she said.

In December 2006, the Reto-o-Reto collaboration with the Kitengela Ilparakuo Landowners Association (KILA) won an international award from the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). While this award focused on the ILRI-KILA link, this link was supported by and enriched by efforts of many collaborative organizations.  This award for innovative partnerships between research institutes and civil society organizations came with a cash prize of USD 30,000 for use in further collaborative work. Below is a link to a photo-essay on the Reto-o-Reto Project at Kitengela, a fast-changing wildlife-enriched pastoral community lying on the outskirts of Kenya’s booming capital of Nairobi, which describes the challenges facing this pastoral community and some of the solutions being implemented by researchers, the local community, landowners and policymakers.

ILRI brief: Saving Lands and Livelihoods in Kitengela: https://cgspace.cgiar.org/bitstream/10568/2273/1/ILRI%20Photo%20essay%20SavingLandsAndLivelihoodsInKitengela%202006.pdf

Further Information

Robin Reid
Director, Center for Collaborative Conservation
Warner College of Natural Resources, Corolado State University
Email: robin.reid@colostate.edu

Livestock research in Asia: Strategy and action plan launched in Beijing

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The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and partners have launched a new strategy and action plan for livestock research in Asia to ensure research has an impact on poverty reduction.

Livestock Research in Asia

‘Livestock Asia: A strategy and action plan for research for poverty reduction’ was launched at the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) Annual General Meeting in Beijing on 3 December 2007. The strategy and plan, which focuses on South Asia, South East Asia, and China, was created by over 50 organizations and individuals, during a five-month consultative process, facilitated by ILRI. The strategy contains a five-point action plan designed to ensure that livestock research ultimately has an impact on poverty reduction.

‘We hope that it will be of value to all those interested in reducing poverty through livestock research and development in South and South-East Asia, and China,’ explained Iain Wright, ILRI’s Regional Representative for Asia.

‘In particular, we hope that it will be used by researchers, policymakers, aid specialists and development practitioners to guide the development of their policies, programs, and projects’ said Wright.

300 million people depend on livestock in Asia

Three hundred million poor people in South Asia and another 100 million in South-East Asia and China, depend to some extent on livestock for their livelihoods. Rapidly growing economies and changing patterns of food consumption are driving increased demands for livestock products. This presents unique opportunities to reduce poverty through livestock production and marketing. The opportunities will only be realized if the poor can respond by generating marketable surpluses and accessing the market. Research towards poverty reduction through livestock can contribute to achieving this goal.

There are a number of key drivers changing the livestock landscape in Asia. These include a growing gap in income between urban and rural areas, rapidly growing demand and rising prices for livestock products, and changes in the way food is retailed, linked to changes in the supply chain. Trade liberalization is opening up new markets, but endemic and emerging diseases such as Avian Influenza can threaten access. Livestock production can have both positive and negative environmental impacts, and production systems are changing with intensification and competition for crops for human and animal feed and biofuels.

New roles emerging
There are evolving policy needs and new roles for the public and private sectors. This is taking place against a background of new communication technologies that are opening up new ways of sharing knowledge. There are, however, major challenges on how to manage knowledge effectively.

Creating the research agenda
The strategy recognizes that the poor are particularly vulnerable to external shocks because of their small asset base. It also recognizes that research is only one small but critical component in the process of improving pro-poor animal agriculture and market development.

According to Carlos Seré, Director General of ILRI, ‘No single organization can ensure that the research that it carries out will reduce poverty. This requires the collaboration of many groups of stakeholders that extend way beyond the traditional research community.’

‘To ensure that research is relevant to the needs of the poor and that research outputs result in action, new partnerships will need to be formed’ he said.

‘National and international researchers, extension services, donors, development organizations, government at all levels, the private sector, regional organizations, representatives of local groups and farmers, producer organization and consumers need to work together to create the research agenda. This will ensure that research methodologies are appropriate and that research outputs make a real difference on the ground.’

Focus on process: The ‘how’ rather than the ‘what’
In recognition of the need for stakeholders to be involved in the development of the research agenda, the Livestock Asia Strategy and Plan does not identify priority research topics. It concentrates on how research for poverty reduction through livestock could be approached and conducted, rather than what research should be conducted. If the appropriate ways of working can be defined, if relevant partnerships can be developed, and if the appropriate skills can be brought to bear, then the establishment of research priorities and topics should be a logical consequence of that process.

The Executive Secretary of APAARI (Asia Pacific Association of Agricultural Research Institutes), Dr Raj Paroda, welcomed the launch of the plan. Speaking at the launch in Beijing, he said ‘APAARI is delighted with this initiative to create a strategic plan for pro-poor animal agricultural research in Asia.  It is timely, and we will certainly be a willing partner in taking this important initiative forward.’

Action points
Five key actions have been identified for implementation in the short term to improve the effectiveness of pro-poor livestock research in South and South-East Asia, and China, and the plan outlines how these action points will be taken forward:
1. Raising awareness and promoting the need for livestock research for poverty reduction
2. Developing a livestock knowledge resource for Asia
3. Defining regional research issues
4. Working in partnership
5. Capacity strengthening

Download Livestock Asia: A strategy and action plan for research for poverty reduction

Development and launch of the Livestock Asia Strategy and Plan

This strategy and plan focuses on the tropical and semi-tropical agricultural regions of South and South-East Asia, and China, regions dominated by smallholder, mixed crop–livestock systems with smaller populations of pastoralists, especially in South Asia. This plan has been produced by a large group of stakeholders in a process facilitated by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). The steps in the process were:

1.  In August 2007, a Challenge Dialogue Paper was produced, following discussions with a small group of stakeholders in South and South-East Asia. The discussion paper, which set out certain assumptions, assertions, and questions, was sent to over 150 individuals representing a wide group of stakeholders from the research and development communities in the public and private sectors. They were invited to respond and provide ideas and suggestions. Forty-eight responses were received.

2. In September, the responses were summarized and synthesized in a Progress Report, which was sent to 150 stakeholders for further comment.

3. In October, two follow-up workshops were held in Bangkok and Kathmandu with stakeholders from South-East and South Asia respectively. The task was to validate the responses to the Challenge Dialogue paper, to clarify and further develop some of the ideas received, to check for gaps in information, and to identify specific activities that could be undertaken in pursuit of a pro-poor livestock research and development agenda.

4. In November, the strategy and plan was drafted. Input and comments were received from representatives from 12 countries within the region, as well as from individuals and organizations outside Asia with an interest in the region. Over 50 organisations – representing international, national and regional interests – participated in the creation of the strategy and action plan.

5. In December 2007, the strategy and action plan was launched at the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) Annual General Meeting in Beijing.

The time is now: Safeguarding livestock diversity

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ILRI’s Annual Report: ‘The Time is Now: Safeguarding livestock diversity’ has just been released. The report on 2006 work focuses on how research is helping to characterize, use and conserve the world’s rapidly diminishing livestock genetic diversity.

The mission of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) is to help people in developing countries move out of poverty. The challenge is to do so while conserving the natural resources on which the poor directly depend. Among the natural resources important to the world’s poor are the ‘living assets’ people accumulate in the form of their farm animals.

ILRI works with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and many other partners to improve management of livestock genetic resources in developing countries. This year, FAO produced the world’s first inventory on animal genetic resources ‘The State of the World’s Animal Genetic Resources’, highlighting that many breeds of livestock are at risk of extinction, with the loss of an average of one livestock breed every month. The FAO report estimates that 70% of the entire world’s remaining unique livestock breeds are found in developing countries.

ILRI’s Director General Carlos Seré says: ‘Although our information on the world’s remaining livestock genetic resources is imperfect, experts agree that we need to take action now rather than wait for substantially better information to become available.

‘The accelerating threats to livestock diversity in recent years demand that we act now before a substantial proportion of those resources are lost to us forever. The time is now’, says Seré.

At a recent keynote address, the UN Under-Secretary General and Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), Achim Steiner, echoed these concerns and highlighted the implications of loss of the world’s animal genetic diversity:

‘I, like so many others, was shocked to read of the decline of genetic diversity in livestock outlined by ILRI and FAO in September (2007) at the First International Technical Conference on Animal Genetic Resources.

‘The increasing over-reliance on a handful of breeds such as Holstein-Friesian cows, White Leghorn chickens and fast-growing Large White pigs mirrors the trend in agricultural crops.

‘Mono-cultures, whether it be in agriculture or in the narrowing of human ingenuity and ideas, will not serve humanity well in a world of over six billion shortly moving to perhaps 10 billion.

‘(Mono-cultures) will not enhance stability and adaptation in a climatically challenged world’, concluded Steiner.

Download ILRI’s 2006 Annual Report: ‘The Time is Now: Safeguarding Livestock Diversity’: https://cgspace.cgiar.org/bitstream/10568/2479/1/AnnualRep2006_Safeguard.pdf

Related articles and resources on animal genetic resources

A ‘Livestock Meltdown’ Is Occurring As Hardy African, Asian, and Latin American Farm Animals Face Extinction: /archives/550

FAQs about saving livestock genetic resources: /archives/552

Films on animal genetic resources

• 3-minute film on conserving livestock for people

Livestock breeds that have helped people survive countless challenges throughout history are now dying out at an extraordinary rate. Globally, governments are discussing this problem, meanwhile this film sets out 4 approaches that can help now.

http://blip.tv/ilri/conserving-livestock-genetic-resources-for-people-summary-1369699

• 30-second film highlight on Sheko cattle

Sheko cattle come from Southern Ethiopia and there are only 2500 left in the world. They are adapted to withstand trypanosomosis, a disease that kills cattle and people.

http://blip.tv/ilri/three-endangered-african-livestock-breeds-1370212

• 30-second film highlight on Ankole cattle

Ankole cattle come from East Africa. These hardy, gentle, animals are threatened by expanding human populations and market demands. At current rates they will disappear in 50 years.

http://blip.tv/ilri/ankole-cattle-one-of-africa-s-disappearing-livestock-breeds-3982895

• 30-second film highlight on Red Maasai sheep

Red Maasai sheep come from East Africa and do not get sick when infected by intestinal worms. However, the numbers of pure Red Maasai sheep are declining.

http://blip.tv/ilri/three-endangered-african-livestock-breeds-1370212

Cutting edge technologies to help Kenyan farmers break into export markets

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As global milk prices continue to soar, Kenyan small-scale farmers are poised to become major players in the market for milk.
 
New livestock breeding strategies are likely to be vital in meeting increased demand for Kenyan milk without risking the loss of hardy local breeds, according to scientists speaking at a conference in Nairobi.

“The big new market incentives are presenting opportunities and challenges alike for developing countries,” said ILRI’s Director General, Carlos Seré. “Rising prices are driving more indiscriminate cross-breeding, which is leading to the extinction of tropical breeds, as well as to poorly performing second- and third-generation cross-bred animals.”
 
In the last 12 months, the world market price for milk has more than doubled from some USD28 per 100kg to over USD60. In the past, distorted markets and high standards in the international milk market have stopped Kenya from competing with powdered-milk-exporting countries. Today’s high dairy prices are forcing some manufacturers to find alternative, less expensive, milk, which is allowing Kenya to enter the export markets at significant levels for the first time.

Small-scale milk producers are big milk producers
Kenya has about 1.8 million rural households keeping some 6.7 million dairy cows.  These small-scale farmers and traders handle more than 80 per cent of all the milk marketed in the country. Despite their size, they are prepared to compete with the industrialized world’s biggest dairy producers, according to ILRI agricultural economist Steve Staal. “The small farmers make use of family and other cheap labour and grass, crop stalks and other residues, to feed their cattle, rather than costly grain,” Staal said.

These and other issues were the topic of an international conference in Nairobi that ILRI convened (8-9 November 2007) to address how improved animal breeding can reduce world poverty—partly by helping poor nations benefit from the skyrocketing demands and prices for milk, meat and eggs.

Animal breeding can help small farmers exploit the growing milk markets
Seré noted that the region’s cattle breeders must be careful to conserve valuable local breeds, which are better able to survive harsh conditions than are high-producing cattle imported from industrialized nations. “In Kenya, for example, the familiar black-and-white Holstein dairy cow is a status symbol among smallholders, who want to own this high-milk-producing exotic animal,” Seré said. “Smart and sustainable breeding strategies that conserve local breeds can bring about higher smallholder milk production.”

In East Africa, milk production and consumption has always been big business, and in Kenya, the dairy industry is the single largest agricultural sub-sector–larger in value than horticulture or tea. Kenyans are amongst the highest milk consumers in the developing world, consuming an estimated 145 litres per person per year on average. Among all developing countries, only Mongolians and Mauritanians consume more milk per dollar earned than do Kenyans.  The milk market in East Africa as a whole is estimated at USD1.7 billion a year. This excludes the 34 per cent of the region’s milk that is consumed on-farm, which is an important source of household nutrition.

Staal says the new breeding strategies for Kenya need to be two-pronged.

“The agriculturally high-potential highlands of Kenya are already ‘densely dairied’. One out of four households here already owns at least one cross-bred dairy cow. But dairy cattle in East Africa are currently low milk producers, averaging about 7 litres per day. We expect dairy expansion thus to happen on two fronts. We need higher-producing cross-breeds for the high-potential areas as well as hardier cross-breeds for less-favourable agricultural areas, particularly Kenya’s vast drylands where water, feed and veterinary services are scarce.”

Over the last decade, scientists at ILRI’s Nairobi-headquarters have worked with the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), the Kenyan Ministry of Livestock and Fisheries Development, and civil society groups to help transform the country’s 39,000 informal ‘raw’ milk sellers into legitimate milk marketers. This achievement led to gains for Kenyan dairy producers and consumers—through improved market efficiency—of an estimated USD29 million per year. This research has also helped to deliver improved livestock technologies, including breeding strategies designed for poor farmers.

Pioneered in Kenya, these new dairy interventions are now being expanded into other countries of eastern Africa and Asia, especially India, where smallholder dairying is also booming.

“With better and more appropriate breeds and species of farm animals, many of the 600-million-plus livestock keepers in poor countries will be able to produce more milk, as well as meat and eggs, for the fast-growing global livestock markets,” Seré said. He noted that new science-based breeding technologies and policies will help raise smallholder dairy yields in sustainable ways, pulling millions out of poverty while conserving valuable local cattle breeds.

Unprecedented opportunities for Kenya’s smallholders
Researchers pointed out that higher prices, paired with surplus supplies of milk in Kenya, also could make Kenya a significant player in a growing second market—for ultra-heat treated milk (UHT) which needs no refrigeration until the packages are opened.

In a conversation with ILRI, Machira Gichohi, Managing Director of the Kenya Dairy Board (KDB), noted that Kenya is the only country in the region with exportable quantities of milk available.
 
“This year we have seen significant increases in exports from Kenya,” Gichohi said. “Buyers include major food manufacturers, such as Cadbury. We’re already exporting milk powder to other sub-Saharan African countries, including South Africa, as well as to Asia and the Middle East. In addition, the UHT milk market is opening up and we’re now exporting long-life milk to Mauritius and South Africa.”

“Private processors are considering building two new processing plants to respond to the increased opportunities,” Gichohi added.

Appropriate breeding strategies, and the science required to support them, will be critical to new income gains for small farmers.
 “While the strong demand in the international markets presents new opportunities for producers, we must be cognizant of potential impacts on poor consumers in the region who depend on milk, and who may in time face higher local prices,” said Staal. “Innovations in packaging to provide low-cost products and to support the improved functioning of the traditional market, which typically provides the lowest-cost products, may ameliorate impacts of higher prices on the poor, while the expected production increases through smart breeding will help ensure continued ample supply to the domestic market.”

Further information visit the online press room at  https://www.ilri.org/ILRIPubAware/Uploaded%20Files/200711683220.John%20Vercoe%20Conference_Press%20room.htm

The geography of poverty in Kenya

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Prestigious PNAS chooses ILRI and partner research on the ‘geography of poverty in Kenya’ for its cover article that leads a special feature on world poverty (23 Oct 2007) highlighting innovative work of exceptional significance.

Cover image of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) Vol. 104. No 43. Copyright (2007) National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A. Reprinted with permission.

This joint research investigates the link between poverty incidence and geographical conditions within rural areas in Kenya.

The article, ‘Spatial determinants of poverty in rural Kenya’, is one of a series of research articles in PNAS’s Poverty and Hunger Special Feature focusing on poverty and sustainability science in developing countries. The ILRI paper analyses how geography determines welfare levels in rural Kenya and demonstrates why strategies targeting provincial level poverty reduction are needed to achieve broadscale development.

PNAS Poverty and Hunger Special Feature

African exceptionalism dominates development needs today
‘When we began to put together this special feature on poverty and sustainability science, we sought significant science-based research and perspectives on poverty worldwide. However, the six articles that have emerged from a lengthy solicitation, preparation, and review process, with one exception, all focus on sub-Saharan Africa.’

‘(This) serves to provide the latest evidence for an African exceptionalism that dominates the development needs of today.’

‘Briefly stated, all developing country regions have shown marked improvement in key indicators of poverty, health, economy, and food, except for sub-Saharan Africa.’

‘Understanding African exceptionalism and contributing to its reduction is one of the grand challenges of sustainability science.’

— R.W. Kates and P. Dasgupta, African poverty: A grand challenge for sustainability science

Geographical determinants of poverty in Kenya
ILRI’s research article ‘Spatial determinants of poverty in rural Kenya’ finds that poverty varies significantly and spatially within provinces, with some geographical variables important for reducing poverty in certain areas and not in others. This finding suggests that pro-poor policies need to be targeted to provincial levels rather than designed for blanket application across the country as a whole.

The latter fail to address the specific causes of poverty in different geographical areas. This analysis explores links among empirical data on poverty prevalence, inequality and population density. It uses widely different types of data from many sources, including socio-economic and environmental data, and identifies many geographical factors that influence poverty within provinces.

The authors found that distance/travel time to public resources as well as soil type, land elevation, type of land use, and demographic variables were key in explaining spatial patterns of poverty.

Having identified important poverty determinants, the researchers, from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Kenya’s Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), World Resources Institute (WRI) and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), then generated simulations to predict how changes in the levels of the various determinants would reduce or increase poverty.

ILRI scientist and lead author of the study, Paul Okwi, says:

‘Our policy simulations explored the impacts of various interventions on poverty at various locations.’

‘The results indicate that improved access to roads and improved soil fertility would significantly reduce poverty.’

‘While building roads is a long-term undertaking, improvements in soil could be made relatively quickly, with big impacts on alleviating rural poverty.’

‘Our analysis also shows that communities living in Kenya’s rangelands are likely to have the poorest access to roads and services and the poorest infrastructure in the country’ says Okwi.

Applications in and beyond Kenya
‘Developing better local-level understanding of poverty determinants, together with knowledge about how household level factors and broader national policies affect household welfare, will help policymakers and development practitioners help the poor better their livelihoods and welfare.’

‘It’s clear that combating poverty will require responses targeted to individual areas, rather than blanket responses’ says ILRI agricultural economist and co-author of the paper, Patti Kristjanson.

‘A similar study is already being conducted in Uganda and will soon be done in Tanzania. Results of the Kenya and Uganda studies are being analysed by policymakers revising the poverty reduction programs of those countries.’

Pastoral areas in greatest need
While this analysis helps explain some of the geographic determinants of poverty, there is a need to incorporate information from other data sources such as livestock and agricultural censuses, to refine the analysis.

ILRI’s Kristjanson says:

‘It’s clear, for example, that the design and implementation of effective policies to alleviate poverty among poor livestock keepers needs to be revisited.’

‘There is critical need to focus on the causes of poverty in this region’s vast pastoral areas.’

‘Policies that help build markets, health clinics and roads are critical in these areas’, says Kristjanson.

What is ‘sustainability science’?

A new scientific approach to development is emerging in think tanks in North America and elsewhere. It goes by the somewhat awkward name of ‘sustainability science’ and ambitiously aims to bring together understanding in several widely different scientific disciplines to get research used for sustainable development of poor communities and countries.

A central problem in agricultural research for development is how to scale up successes to make a bigger difference for the poor. Sustainability science aims to provide new approaches for doing just that.

A leading group in this area is located at the Sustainability Science Program at Harvard’s Center for International Development. This group is led by William C Clark and Nancy Dickson, whose studies show that several centres of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), including ILRI, have long been at the forefront of applying ‘research into use’ approaches.

We recommend ILRI readers look through the several articles in the Poverty and Hunger Special Feature of the USA’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) (23 October 2007), which exemplify new publications in this emerging multidisciplinary area.

ILRI and Harvard are preparing a paper documenting ILRI’s experience with this integrated scientific approach to development, which will be will be published as an ILRI Innovation Works discussion paper and posted on this website in future.

For more information see Harvard’s Sustainability Science Program website
http://www.cid.harvard.edu/sustsci/index.html

Further information

Citation:
Okwi, P.O., Ndeng’e, G., Kristjanson, P., Arunga, M., Notenbaert, A., Omolo, A. Henninger, N., Benson, D., Kariuki, P. and Owuor, J. (2007). Poverty and Hunger Special Feature: Spatial determinants of poverty in rural Kenya. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Vol. 104. No 43. pp 16769-16774.

The article, Spatial determinants of poverty in rural Kenya, is a publication of a project jointly implemented by Kenya’s Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) and ILRI, and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation.

Link to the article on the PNAS website: http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/short/104/43/16769

The authors & their affiliations
Paul O. Okwia, Godfrey Ndeng’eb, Patti Kristjansona, Mike Arungaa, An Notenbaerta, Abisalom Omoloa, Norbert Henningerc, Todd Bensond, Patrick Kariukia, and John Owuora
a. International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), P.O. Box 30709, Nairobi 00100, Kenya;
b. Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), P.O. Box 30266, Nairobi 00100, Kenya;
c. World Resources Institute (WRI), Washington, DC 20002; and
d. International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Washington, DC 20006

Another ‘Inconvenient Truth’

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ILRI director general Carlos Seré responds to an August 2007 New York Times article about animal rights groups promoting vegetarianism as an answer to global warming
 
Claudia Deutsch reports in the New York Times (29 August 2007, and picked up in the International Herald Tribune), that animal rights groups are coalescing around a message that ‘eating meat is worse for the environment than driving’. They are urging people to curb greenhouse gases by becoming vegetarians. These groups are citing a study by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) that states that livestock business generates greenhouse gases. That’s true; methane and carbon dioxide produced by livestock contribute about 15 per cent to global warming effects. But simply focusing on this contribution to global warming distorts the problem and, more importantly, fails to offer solutions. Research tells us it would make little difference to global warming if we somehow removed all the livestock in, say, sub-Saharan Africa. The impact on livelihoods there, however, would be catastrophic.

What the animal rights folks are not saying (and the FAO report does say) is that for some one billion people on earth who live in chronic hunger, in degrading poverty and in degraded environments, the lowly cow, sheep, goat, pig and chicken provide nutrition, income and major pathways out of poverty, just as they did, until this century, in rich countries. In poor countries today, more than 600 million rural poor people depend on livestock directly for their livelihoods and farm animals account for some 30 percent of agricultural gross domestic product, a figure FAO expects to rise to 40 percent in the next 20 years. Virtually every industrialized country at one stage built its economy significantly through livestock production and there is no indication that developing countries will be different. Do we want to deny one-third of humanity—the 2 billion people living on less than 2 dollars a day—what has been such a critical and ubiquitous element in the development of industrialized countries?

The animal rights groups argue that humanity could help stem global warming by switching to a plant-based diet because mass-production of animals can lead to environmental as well as health problems. But the livestock that eat grain in the United States eat grass in Africa. The beef that causes heart disease in Europe saves lives in Asia. And the manure that pollutes water in Utah restores soils in Africa. The world is big and full of difference between the have’s and have not’s. In one city, too much cholesterol is a daily fear; in another, too little. But for much of humanity, livestock farming, most of it involving one or two cows or a few goats and sheep or pigs and chickens raised on tiny plots of land or in urban backyards, reduces absolute poverty, malnutrition and disease and often actually helps to conserve natural resources.

Demand for livestock products is in any case skyrocketing in developing countries, making an increase in animal production in those countries inevitable and this argument academic. FAO and other groups are predicting that the impacts of this on-going ‘livestock revolution’ will change global agriculture, health, livelihoods, and the environment. We should be looking for ways not to stop this livestock revolution (which, being demand-led, is impossible) but rather to harness it for human as well as environmental welfare. And before setting ourselves the task of ridding the world of animal flesh, we might try ridding it instead of unspeakable poverty, hunger and disease. We need a balanced approach to solving complex environmental problems, one that does not hurt the many people who depend on livestock for food and livelihoods.

The time is now

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The world’s first Global Plan of Action for Animal Genetic Resources was agreed at a recent FAO conference in Switzerland from 3 to 7 September. While international negotiations continue, much can be done now, before it’s too late.
 
The First International Technical Conference on Animal Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, held in Interlaken in September, was a week-long series of negotiations organized by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and hosted by the Government of Switzerland to consider the current state of the world’s animal genetic resources and to reach international agreement on the best ways forward to protect these resources for long-term use. The conference opened with the launch of the world’s first report on the status of farm animal genetic resources, The State of the World’s Animal Genetic Resources. By the end of the conference, the world’s first Global Plan of Action for Animal Genetic Resources had been agreed by representatives from 109 countries. The global plan identifies four high-priority areas for animal genetic resources: characterization, inventory and monitoring of trends and risks, sustainable use and development, conservation and policies, institutions and capacity building.
Progress made at the Interlaken Conference includes:

  • Agreement on a global plan for identifying and conserving valuable livestock species
  • Agreement that livestock keepers rights are fundamental and need to be considered as part of an inclusive and equitable global plan
  • Agreement that incentives need to be provided to help the traditional custodians of indigenous animal genetic resources—usually small-scale livestock keepers—continue to keep their native breeds.

Overview of the Interlaken conference
On the first day of the conference, ILRI’s director general, Carlos Seré, presented a paper on ‘Dynamics of Livestock Production Systems, Drivers of Change and Prospects for Animal Genetic Resources’. He identified key drivers of change, how they were influencing current trends and future prospects, and their impacts on the management of animal genetic resources for food and agriculture.
Seré identified four drivers: economic development and globalization, changing market demands, environmental impacts and trends in science and technology. He described the trends in livestock production in industrial, crop-livestock and pastoral systems, emphasizing that while the trends are occurring in both developing and industrialized countries, the outcomes are different. In the developing world, some trends are reducing the ability of livestock keepers to improve their livelihoods, reduce their poverty and manage their natural resources. The industrial livestock production systems of developed countries have already greatly narrowed the livestock genepool, reducing our ability to deal with future uncertainties, such as climate change and zoonotic diseases.

Local breeds being crowded out
During the presentation, the ILRI director general cited replacement of indigenous tropical breeds with exotic animals as a key reason for the erosion of genetic diversity. Local breeds are estimated to be disappearing at the rate of one a month. This concern was echoed by the representative from the League for Pastoral Peoples and Endogenous Livestock Development. Ilse Köhler-Rollefson stated that policies relating to the introduction of exotic breeds and subsidies were helping large-scale production systems but hurting pastoralists.
Seré stressed that conserving our livestock genetic resources required appropriate institutional and policy frameworks and concerted international efforts. As these negotiations will take time, Seré proposed four complementary actions to improve the management of animal genetic resources and maintain our genetic options for the future. These are: provide incentives for in situ conservation of local breeds (‘keep it on the hoof’); facilitate movement of breeds within and between countries (‘move it or lose it’); match breeds to environments (‘livestock landscape genomics’); and establish genebanks (‘put some in the bank’).
These four strategies are practical steps that can help conserve indigenous tropical breeds. Seré cautioned that if actions are not taken now, it could be too late for some breeds that will soon be lost to the world forever.

Media help to raise awareness of ‘livestock meltdown’
There was extensive media coverage of the FAO Interlaken conference, with regional and international press and radio and local African TV all helping to raise awareness of the ‘livestock meltdown’ taking place.

Local livestock breeds at risk: Nature (3 September 2007) reported that indigenous animals are dying out as commercial breeds sweep the world.

‘Many of the world’s indigenous livestock breeds are in danger of dying out as commercial breeds take over, according to a worldwide inventory of animal diversity.
‘Their extinction would mean the loss of genetic resources that help animals overcome disease and drought, particularly in the developing world, say livestock experts.’

Read the full article at http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070903/full/070903-2.html (subscription required).

FAQs about saving livestock genetic resources

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01.   What did ILRI/FAO find and how did you find it?
How: A global assessment of livestock genetic resources has been coordinated by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). The assessment aimed to determine the status of the world’s livestock resources – what exists and where, what are their characteristics and the risks they may be facing, and what is the capacity of nations to deal with these. As an international organization addressing poverty through sustainable livestock production, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) develops research tools for characterizing livestock breeds of the developing world and assessing their diversity.

What?: The ‘assessment of the State of the World’s livestock resources’ (as this initiative was called) had the following findings:

  • Over 7000 breeds (representing mammalian and avian species) have been developed over the last 12,000 years, since the first livestock species was domesticated.
  • There are 40 livestock species used for food and agriculture, 5 of which – cattle, sheep, goats, pigs and chickens – account for most of the world’s food and agriculture production.
  • Some 696 breeds have become extinct since the early 1900s.
  • A total of 1,487 breeds are at risk, of which 579 are at critical levels (requiring immediate action).
  • Key causes of threat were identified (see examples below).
  • Lack of information on the world’s livestock resources—what livestock breeds and populations exist and  where, what are their characteristics, do they possess unique genetic diversity—was found to be a key impediment to their sustainable use.
  • Conservation programs are lacking, especially in developing countries where most of the world’s remaining breeds reside and where the risk of loss of livestock genetic resources is greatest

02.   Why do a few specialized ‘European’ breeds of farm animals dominate?

  • In pursuit of quick wins to increase productivity to meet demand, developing countries over the last half century have imported specialized, high-producing breeds, such as the black-and-white Holstein-Friesian dairy cow.
  • Aggressive promotion by breeding companies of the North.
  • Subsidized importation, usually through development assistance.
  • Exotic breeds have been imported into developing countries without adequate information on the robustness/hardiness/appropriateness of the native breeds the imports have been supplanting.

03.   How are the exotic imports faring in their various new locales in developing countries?
There are local niches where exotic breeds have proved productive. For example, Holstein-Friesian cows have done well in the East African highlands, which have temperate climate and adequate feed resources. However, the imports have been unable to cope with the disease, heat, humidity, scarce and poor-quality feed in many developing-country environments. Their inappropriateness for these stressful environments has tended to be discovered only after they have been widely used and have significantly ‘diluted’ the local gene pool, leaving local farmers without their traditional hardy animals.

04.   Why can’t we save all domesticated livestock breeds and populations?
Saving all existing livestock breeds around the world would require considerable investment. Fortunately, some specialized breeds in developed countries are currently safe or relatively safe because they remain popular with local communities and thus are supported by market forces. With globalization and ease of movement of traded commodities, there is increasing risk that fewer and fewer breeds will be supported this way. Many local traditional breeds support the livelihoods of the world’s poor livestock keepers in developing countries. While these native breeds are threatened by rapid changes occurring in the livestock production systems of poor countries, these countries lack the resources to conserve all their traditional native stock.

05.   Why is genetic diversity important in livestock?
Diversity is the basic ingredient for improving productivity, product quality and adaptation to meet different needs. It offers farmers and breeders the options needed to make adjustments to new market needs or to respond to changes in the production environment. A disease outbreak that wipes out a particular (susceptible) genetic type presents a greater risk in ‘monoculture’ (single-breed) production systems than it does in multi-breed systems. In other words, livestock diversity can help people cope with adversity while also providing prospects for livestock improvements. Changes in livestock production across the developing world, as well as an unpredictable future, require that these genetic options be safeguarded. It is particularly important to conserve livestock genetic resources because the ancestors of most of our existing livestock species no longer exist; crop breeding, on the other hand, has benefited enormously by being able to harness genes from the wild ancestors of our major crop plants.

06.   Can’t we just recreate desired traits via genetic engineering if necessary?
This will probably be technically feasible in the future for many production traits of interest in our livestock. And that is exactly why we need to have the diversity from which ‘new animal types’ could be created – whether through genetic engineering or conventional breeding (acceptability and costs, among others, will determine which ‘creation avenue’ is employed). Importantly, we do not know which traits we will need in future and which of the present breeds posses the requisite genes. Thus, as we develop technology and tools to conserve livestock genetic resources, we must also ensure that we have access to the raw materials—the livestock and/or their germplasm.

07.   Doesn’t industrialized agriculture obviate the need for such diversity?
As has happened in crop agriculture, industrialized livestock systems are typically characterized by a handful of specialized ‘breed types’. The chicken and pig industries have a few parental lines that form the basis of commercial chickens and pigs around the world. An outbreak of a disease to which these lines are susceptible could wipe out most of these animals, with disastrous global impacts. Thus, it is in the interests of both the public and private sectors to safeguard diversity in livestock as source of future options.

08.   How is foreign investment reshaping local livestock practices?

  • Direct foreign investment finances breeding companies that introduce foreign breeds.
  • The ‘supermarket revolution’, which is driven in many countries by foreign direct investment, is impacting livestock as well as crop agriculture in significant ways:

    o Standards required for food products sold in supermarkets influence such things as product quality, size  uniformity and timing of delivery.
    o The production volume needed to meet these food standards make it difficult for poor smallholders to participate in the supermarket revolution.
    o Contract-farming provides avenues for a few, well-informed and/or better-endowed farmers to participate in this revolution, sometimes through cooperatives.
   o But most smallholders are left out in this process.

09.   Do developed-world genebanks already hold some of this diversity material?
Developed-world genebanks hold very little livestock germplasm from developing countries—just a few breeds they may have imported for experimental evaluation. The major global flow of livestock genetic material has been from North to South. Currently, the fastest and most effective way for the North to help stem livestock biodiversity losses is to assist developing nations in establishing capacity to save their endangered native breeds. It is not good enough for Southern countries to depend on the North to be custodians of their livestock genetic material. The greatest livestock diversity remaining in the world is in the South and Northern countries are not highly interested in these breeds.

10.   Are rare breeds going to end up being preserved by hobbyists or organic enthusiasts?
In the developed world, there are examples of livestock breeds being preserved by livestock hobbyists or enthusiasts. In the developing world, most livestock owners are poor and the number of breeds needing attention is too large to be addressed by a few rich farmers. Alternative and substantive actions are required.

11.   How important is livestock production to developing world development?
Worldwide, one billion people are involved in animal farming and domestic animals supply 30 per cent of total human requirements for food and agriculture. In developing countries, 70 per cent of the rural poor depend on livestock as an important part of their livelihoods and livestock account for some 30 per cent of agricultural gross domestic product, a figure expected to rise to 40 per cent by the year 2030. Currently, more than 600 million rural poor people rely on livestock for their livelihoods. (Sixty-three per cent of the developing world’s total population live in rural areas, including 75 per cent of the 1.2 billion people trapped in extreme poverty; of these 900 million rural poor, some 70 per cent, or 630 million, raise livestock as part of their livelihoods.) The developing-world’s large and rapidly growing livestock markets make livestock production an income-generating opportunity similar to horticulture and other high-value agricultural commodities. The advantage of the livestock markets is that they are largely domestic and thus require no export infrastructure. Finally, livestock is what poor farmers know how to produce, and they have access to feed and other resources to produce it competitively.

12.   Does livestock production still offer a pathway out of poverty?
Yes. The growing livestock markets and expanding post-production value addition are providing jobs and incomes at many levels. Increasing animal production also of course keeps down critical food prices for the urban poor.

13.   Is another answer to simply scale back the use of livestock in general by reducing demand in the developed world while stopping demand before it starts in developing countries?
The livestock revolution is demand-driven. As consumers become more urbanized and their incomes grow, as they have in much of Asia and Latin America, their demand for animal products grows markedly. We expect that the developing world will double their consumption of animal products in the next 20 years. Livestock production growth to meet the growing market demand has to rely on the same or shrinking land, water and other natural resources. What we need are dramatic productivity increases. Policies will play a key role in shaping what happens in different parts of the world. If polices enforce more environmentally neutral production systems, this could lead to higher prices, particularly in the developed countries, which use intensive systems heavily reliant on external inputs and energy.

14.    How will the ‘supermarket revolution’ take hold in the developing world and what impact this will have on livestock production?
Supermarkets will impose stringent requirements on production of crops and livestock foods, particularly in terms of homogeneous large volumes and food safety conditions. This can make it increasingly difficult for smallholders to participate in these modern commodity chains. Important developments in terms of organizing smallholders for collective action are critical and are being established by agribusinesses and non-governmental organizations (e.g. contract-farming, vertical integration, cooperatives). Large-scale production units will continue to grow and can be developed in pro-poor ways by maximizing employment in poor areas that have resources suitable for animal production. For example, large-scale dairy or feedlot operations may contract forage production to small-scale farmers.

15.   Is the goal of saving diversity simply to boost the potential of alternatives to industrial animal husbandry, such as crop-livestock systems?
No, it is to provide options for the world. Even industrial systems will need animal genetic resources if significant shocks to the system happen, e.g. ban on antibiotics, climate change causing higher temperatures in certain regions and the spread of diseases from the tropics to the temperate world.

16.   Why is it important to boost crop-livestock systems?
Boosting crop-livestock production is the best way to sustain agricultural systems in large parts of the developing world. There are big inefficiencies in these systems that can be addressed with technology, better training and knowledge sharing.

17.   How far along with ‘landscape-livestock genomics’ are you? Is there even the beginnings of a map? When do you expect such a thing might be available?
The aim of landscape genomics is to learn from the co-evolution of livestock and their production systems and use the knowledge gained to better match different breeds with production circumstances. The approach employs molecular genetic tools to understand the genetic composition of livestock at the population level, using specified genetic regions (‘signatures of selection’) that appear targeted by key influencing factors in that environment. By overlaying this information with other sets of information such as agro-ecological maps, one can see what genetic material are candidates for use in which parts of the globe.
Where are we today? Independent of the genomics work, much progress is being made in modelling and mapping livestock systems, including how they are evolving in response to climate change. Development of tools for rapidly mapping genetic composition of populations is also advancing. Over the next 5 years, we plan to have made significant advances in this area and to have applied landscape genomics (even at a pilot scale) in the humid zone of West Africa, focusing on cattle populations.

18.  What do you hope to do next?
Urgent actions include:

  • With FAO and other collaborators, sensitize the global community about the value of conserving livestock genetic resources and mobilize greater support for saving the remaining livestock diversity in the developing world.
  • Focus on breeds already at risk, especially those in the FAO ‘critical list’.
  • Establish gene banks: Ex situ conservation (in gene banks) is seen as the fastest way to save some of these breeds, even if characterization information is inadequate or absent – a special session at the global conference in Interlaken (Switzerland) on 3 September 2007 discussed strategies to move this forward.
  • Facilitate the sharing of genetic material among developing countries, especially where there is evidence that a breed in one country holds promise for another, which will serve as long-term insurance against losses arising from droughts, civil conflicts, and other disasters.
  • Develop re-stocking strategies to ensure that appropriate breeds are used in the aftermath of disasters.
  • Develop pro-poor breeding strategies appropriate for low-input livestock production systems and infrastructure levels available in developing countries.
  • Identify factors that constrain competitiveness of indigenous breeds.

A ‘livestock meltdown’ is occurring as hardy African, Asian and Latin American farm animals face extinction

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Scientists Call for Rapid Establishment of Livestock Genebanks To Conserve Indigenous Breeds
 

With the world’s first global inventory of farm animals showing many breeds of African, Asian, and Latin American livestock at risk of extinction, scientists from the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) today called for the rapid establishment of genebanks to conserve the sperm and ovaries of key animals critical for the global population’s future survival.

An over-reliance on just a few breeds of a handful of farm animal species, such as high-milk-yielding Holstein-Friesian cows, egg-laying White Leghorn chickens, and fast-growing Large White pigs, is causing the loss of an average of one livestock breed every month according to a recently released report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The black-and-white Holstein-Friesian dairy cow, for example, is now found in 128 countries and in all regions of the world. An astonishing 90 percent of cattle in industrialized countries come from only six very tightly defined breeds.

The report, “The State of the World’s Animal Genetic Resources,” compiled by FAO, with contributions by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and other research groups, surveyed farm animals in 169 countries. Nearly 70 percent of the entire world’s remaining unique livestock breeds are found in developing countries, according to the report, which was presented to over 300 policy makers, scientists, breeders, and livestock keepers at the First International Technical Conference on Animal Genetic Resources, held in Interlaken, Switzerland, from 3-7 September 2007.

“Valuable breeds are disappearing at an alarming rate,” said Carlos Seré, Director General of ILRI. “In many cases we will not even know the true value of an existing breed until it’s already gone. This is why we need to act now to conserve what’s left by putting them in genebanks.”

In a keynote speech at the scientific forum on the opening day of the Interlaken conference, Seré called for the rapid establishment of genebanks in Africa as one of four practical steps to better characterize, use, and conserve the genetic basis of farm animals for the livestock production systems around the world.

“This is a major step in the right direction,” said Seré. “The international community is beginning to appreciate the seriousness of this loss of livestock genetic diversity. FAO is leading inter-governmental processes to better manage these resources. These negotiations will take time to bear fruit. Meanwhile, some activities can be started now to help save breeds that are most at risk.”

ILRI, whose mission is poverty reduction through livestock research for development, helps countries and regions save their specially adapted breeds for future food security, environmental sustainability, and human development.

Industrialized countries built their economies significantly through livestock production and there is no indication that developing countries will be any different. Worldwide today, one billion people are involved in animal farming and 70 percent of the rural poor depend on livestock as an important part of their livelihoods. “For the foreseeable future,” says Seré, “farm animals will continue to create means for hundreds of millions of people to escape absolute poverty.”

In recent years, many of the world’s smallholder farmers abandoned their traditional animals in favor of higher yielding stock imported from Europe and the US. For example, in northern Vietnam, local breeds comprised 72 percent of the sow population in 1994, and within eight years, this had dropped to just 26 percent. Of the country’s fourteen local pig breeds, five are now vulnerable, two are in critical state, and three are facing extinction.

Scientists predict that Uganda’s indigenous Ankole cattle—famous for their graceful and gigantic horns—could face extinction within 50 years because they are being rapidly supplanted by Holstein-Friesians, which produce much more milk. During a recent drought, some farmers that had kept their hardy Ankole were able to walk them long distances to water sources while those who had traded the Ankole for imported breeds lost their entire herds.

Seré notes that exotic animal breeds offer short-term benefits to their owners because they promise high volumes of meat, milk, or eggs, but he warned that they also pose a high risk because many of these breeds cannot cope with unpredictable fluctuations in the environment or disease outbreaks when introduced into more demanding environments in the developing world.

Cryo-banking Sperm and Eggs
Scientists and conservationists alike agree that we can’t save all livestock populations. But ILRI has helped lay the groundwork for prioritizing livestock conservation efforts in developing regions. Over the past six years, it has built a detailed database, called the Domestic Animal Genetic Resources Information System (DAGRIS), containing research-based information on the distribution, characteristics, and status of 669 breeds of cattle, sheep, goats, pigs and chickens indigenous to Africa and Asia.

Seré proposes acceleration of four practical steps to better manage farm animal genetic resources.

1.) A first strategy is to encourage farmers to keep genetic diversity “on the hoof,” which means maintaining a variety of indigenous breeds on farms. In his speech, Seré called for the use of market-incentives and good public policy that make it in the farmer’s self-interest to maintain diversity.
2.) Another way to encourage “keeping it on the hoof,” Seré said, is by allowing greater mobility of livestock breeds across national borders. When it comes to livestock, farmers have to “move it or lose it,” he said. Wider distribution of breeds and access to them makes it less likely that particular breeds and populations will be wiped out by fluctuations in the market, civil strife, natural disasters, or disease outbreaks.
3.) The third approach that Seré is championing is a longer term one with great future potential for resource-poor farmers. It goes by the name of “landscape genomics” and it combines advanced genomic and geographical mapping techniques to predict which breeds are best suited to which environments and circumstances around the world.
4.) But for landscape genomics—or any of the other approaches—to work, of course, scientists will need a wide variety of livestock genetic diversity to work with. For this reason, the fourth approach Seré is advocating is long-term insurance to “put some in the bank,” by establishing genebanks to store semen, eggs, and embryos of farm animals. 

“In the US, Europe, China, India, and South America, there are well-established genebanks actively preserving regional livestock diversity,” said Seré. “Sadly, Africa has been left wanting and that absence is sorely felt right now because this is one of the regions with the richest remaining diversity and is likely to be a hotspot of breed losses in this century.”

But setting up genebanks is a first important step towards a long-term insurance policy for livestock. Seré noted that genebanks by themselves are not the only answer to conservation, particularly if they end up becoming “stamp collections” that are never used.

“Individual countries are already conserving their unique animal genetic resources. The international community needs to step forward in support,” said Seré. “We support FAO’s call to action and the CGIAR stands ready to assist the international community in putting these words into action.” 

Related information: 

 What Makes Livestock Conservation So Different from Plant Conservation?

 

 

North-to-South Livestock Gene Flows Crowd out Local Breeds

 

 

Livestock breeds face ‘meltdown’ (BBC News)

 

Visit the online press room for further information and a series of short films and high-quality images of the third world’s unique farm animal breeds.

Protecting breeds for people

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Animal Genetic Resources Are a Key Tool for Coping with Change in the Livestock Sector
 

Livestock are ubiquitous in the developing world. The ‘big five’—cattle, sheep, goats, poultry and pigs—as well as 9 other popular farm animals and 26 or so more specialized species are raised by more than half a billion people either on pastoral rangelands by nomadic herders, or on mixed farms by smallholders who raise crops along with livestock, or in peri-urban areas by people who raise a few animals in their backyards. All of these small-scale livestock enterprises matter to developing-country governments because livestock account for some 30 per cent of their agricultural gross domestic product, a figure expected to rise to 40 per cent by the year 2030.

The diverse livestock production systems, like most crop production systems, are changing in response to globalization, urbanization, environmental degradation, climate change and science and technology. But the fastest changes are occurring within the livestock systems. That’s because the developing world’s rising human populations and household incomes are causing demand for milk, meat, eggs and other livestock foods to soar. As one would expect, livestock markets are growing and changing to serve that growing demand. What’s less appreciated are the changes being wrought by many of the billion-plus small-scale livestock keepers and sellers of the developing world who are changing the way they do business to help meet that growing demand.

The rate of change within the livestock sector is so rapid that many local populations of livestock developed by small-scale farmers over millennia no longer have time to evolve adaptations to their new circumstances or the new needs of their owners. They are simply dying out, and at unprecedented and accelerating rates. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that on average a breed disappears every month and that 20 per cent of our uniquely adapted breeds of domestic animals are at risk of extinction.

Over the last 150 years, farmers in industrialized countries supplanted their indigenous farm animals with a few high-producing breeds of a few species (chickens, pigs, cattle) suited to highly intensified production systems. The result is that 70 per cent of the world’s known livestock genetic diversity now resides on small farms and in remote regions of developing countries. With all the challenges facing developing countries and their one billion people living on less than a dollar a day, the question arises as to what immediate practical and cost-effective steps could be taken to preserve the wealth of their livestock genetic diversity.

From a research viewpoint, it’s clear that if we’re going to manage the world’s remaining livestock genetic resources well, we’ll have to characterize the remaining populations to decide which are worth saving and why, we’ll have to find ways of broadening use of those populations deemed useful, and we’ll have to conserve the most important livestock genetic diversity for possible future use—by poor and rich farmers alike.

From a political viewpoint, we’ll need new and appropriate institutional and policy frameworks, as well as lots of policy discussions, to find ways to strengthen national and international programs that support the conservation of livestock biodiversity.

While the political issues are being discussed at length at national and inter-governmental fora, four practical things can be started immediately to ensure that the world’s remaining livestock biodiversity is conserved for future generations.

(1) Keep it on the hoof.
Give local farmers and communities incentives for maintaining local livestock breeds by, for example, improving access by poor farmers and herders to markets, perhaps including niche markets, where they can sell their traditional livestock products.
 
 (2) Move it or lose it.
Encourage safe movements of livestock populations within and between countries, regions and continents to widen global access, use and conservation of farm animal genetic resources.
 
(3) Match breeds with environments.
Optimize livestock production by expertly matching livestock genotypes with farmer ambitions, fast-changing environments and specific natural resources, production systems and socio-economic circumstances.

 (4) Put some in the bank.
Freeze semen, embryos and tissues of local breeds and store them indefinitely to protect indigenous livestock germplasm against extinction due to the on-going declines in livestock diversity and to serve as long-term insurance against catastrophic losses due to wars, droughts, famines and other future shocks.

How science can help
It’s clear that most of the developing world’s indigenous livestock populations will not be able to adapt in time to their rapidly changing environments and circumstances; we’ll need new strategies and interventions to improve our conservation and husbandry of these resources. It’s also clear that advances in several scientific fields promise to give rise to those innovations.

On-going breakthroughs in livestock reproductive technologies and functional genomics, for example, as well as in the information fields of bioinformatics and spatial analysis, are being systematically marshaled for the first time to address this challenge.. And policy and agricultural systems analysts are today articulating more judicious thinking about the production and funding of global public goods.

Finally, whereas societies and countries tend to differ in their short-term interests in livestock production, their long-term interests—such as learning how to cope with unforeseen changes in livestock production systems and their environments—tend to converge. This creates real opportunities for international scientific, environmental and aid agencies to work with developing countries in collective action to conserve the world’s remaining livestock genetic diversity.

Visit the online press room for further information and a series of short films and high-quality images of the third world’s unique farm animal breeds.

The ‘big five’ African vintage cows

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We are losing the genetic resources locked up in the world’s domesticated livestock at an unprecedented rate
 
Of the 7,616 breeds of domestic livestock reported to FAO, 1,491, or 20%, are classified as being ‘at risk’. What’s at stake in this ‘livestock meltdown’ is nothing less than the animal basis for world food security. If we are to adapt food production systems to radically changing conditions in the coming decades, animal as well as plant genetic diversity will be critical resources for doing so. Traditional breeds offer diversity, which is the only base for future selection and adaptation. The on-going loss of our livestock genetic heritage is tantamount to losing a road map for survival—the key to food security, environmental stability and improving the human condition. Here are five rare ‘vintage cows’ of Africa that could be part of that road map.

SHEKO

SHEKO

Only some 2,400 Sheko cattle remain alive. These relatively small animals, which are related to West Africa’s ancient N’Dama cattle, are found only in the remote corner of southwestern Ethiopia, near the Sudanese border, where the Sheko people bred them for millennia for their natural resistance to disease, particularly tsetse-transmitted trypanosomosis. The Sheko are believed to be the last remnants of Africa’s original humpless shorthorn cattle, which were probably first domesticated in this region of eastern Africa.

ANKOLE

ANKOLE

There are about 3.2 million Ankole cattle in five countries of East and Central Africa. The Ankole are drought-resistant and beloved by their keepers also for their uncommon gentleness, beauty, rich milk and tasty meat (believed also to be low in cholesterol). Rapidly expanding human populations, infrastructures and markets, however, are forcing more and more farmers to replace their indigenous African Ankole cattle with exotic breeds such as the black-and-white Holstein-Friesians dairy cows, which produce much more milk. At their current rates of decline, these hardy, graceful animals will disappear within the next 50 years.

RED FULANI
RED FULANI
This large bony and typically red-coated animal has extremely long lyre-shaped horns. It is kept by pastoral Fulani people, who herd the animal across open semi-arid rangelands of the Sahel that criss-cross five countries of West and Central Africa. This is a dual-purpose milk and meat animal prized for its ability to cope with heat, ticks, insect bites and great water and feed scarcity.

 KURI
KURI

These hamitic longhorn humpless cattle inhabit the hot, humid shores and archipelagos of the Lake Chad Basin in Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria. They are large-bodied, typically white, and carry highly distinctive bulbous horns. The breed is adapted to the hot and humid climate and can survive long droughts. They are managed under traditional systems, feeding on grass on the small islands of Lake Chad. They are excellent swimmers and follow their herdsmen through the water as they travel from an island to another; their bulbous horns are considered useful in floating. The Kuri are highly fertile animals and excellent milk and meat producers. ILRI estimates the remaining population of Kuri, now threatened with extinction, to number only some 10,000 head.

IMPROVED BORAN
IMPROVED BORAN

The semi-nomadic Borana tribe in southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya herd the Boran, a medium- to large-sized and long-legged zebu animal that has considerable potential as a meat breed. On acquiring them early in this century, Kenyan ranchers judiciously crossed the original Ethiopian Boran with European breeds. This scheme to maximize the potential of an indigenous breed rather than attempt to replace it with exotic types has been highly successful. Today, the Improved Boran is one of Africa’s top beef breeds. Docile and well-adapted to hot, dry ranching conditions and to sparse pasture, these valuable animals have been exported from Africa to other continents, such as Australia, and from there to the USA.

Further Information

A ‘Livestock Meltdown’ Is Occurring
As Hardy African, Asian, and Latin American Farm Animals Face Extinction

Visit the online press room for further information and a series of short films and high-quality images of the third world’s unique farm animal breeds.