Seminal and holistic review of the probable ‘futures’ of livestock production, food security and environmental protection

Posted on December 7, 2011 by Susan MacMillan

Watch the whole of this filmed slide presentation by ILRI’s Mario Herrero on ILRI’s film channel: The future of livestock in feeding the world (duration: 28 minutes, 25 Nov 2011).

On 9 and 10 November 2011, the ILRI Board of Trustees hosted a 2‐day ‘liveSTOCK Exchange’ to discuss and reflect on livestock research for development. ILRI systems analyst Mario Herrero gave a keynote presentation titled ‘Global Livestock: Drivers, Trends and Futures’. What follows are highlights of the first half of his talk.

We need to feed 9–10 billion people by 2050 and we need to do so at a far lower environmental cost, basically with the same amount of land and less greenhouse gas emissions and water and nutrient use and at the same time in socially and economically acceptable ways.

Food systems have been changing and they’re likely to change even more as our population increases. So the target is moving.

Livestock systems are in transition
The drivers and trends playing key roles in these changes include: the increasing human population, the ‘livestock revolution (as people get richer in emerging economies, they consume more animal products), and an unprecedented movement of people to cities.

The demand for livestock products to 2050 is going to be enormous. Total consumption is likely to be 2.5 times more than what we’ve experienced in the last decades. Just image the resource-use implications of producing all this meat and milk.

What are people eating and how are we going to produce all the new feed and food needed?
People want chicken, pork and milk; these are the livestock foods growing at the fastest rates across the world. We need to see how we can increase our efficiencies in use of fresh water, 70% of which is used for agriculture. How do we increase efficiency gains of water use in the livestock sector?

Climate change
To complicate the picture even further, we have climate change. Recent assessments are telling us that the costs of the agricultural sector adapting to climate change go as high as USD145 billion per year. That figure represents 3% of global agricultural costs per year. The $145 billion represents the cost of the added technological change that we are going to need to produce food and counteract the impacts of climate change. This is no small sum of money! Remember that the G20 committed to give USD20 billion for agricultural development. This is simply not enough.

Reality check
Food prices have been decreasing until recently. It’s likely that the increasing food prices, which severely affcct the poor, will keep on increasing. We need to be able to plan how to adjust our agricultural systems to produce more food and dampen those prices and do this without incurring a big environmental cost.

The livestock ‘balancing act’
We know that keeping livestock has many advantages—they are an important source of nutrition, especially for poor people; they generate great incomes (the value of production of livestock is in many cases far higher than that for crops); and they help poor people to manage risks; they help maintain productive landscapes; and they are raised on many lands unsuitable for other kinds of food production.

Of course, on the other hand, livestock are inherently inefficient users of land; they are large users of natural resources; they are polluters in places; they produce a significant amount of greenhouse gases; and they are an important vector for human diseases.

What is key is realizing that livestock systems differ greatly by region and circumstance. We need a nuanced understanding of how this livestock ‘balancing act’ plays out in different parts of the world. . . .

Watch the whole of this filmed slide presentation by ILRI’s Mario Herrero on ILRI’s film channel: The future of livestock in feeding the world, duration: 28 minutes, 25 Nov 2011.

On 9 and 10 November 2011, the ILRI Board of Trustees hosted a 2-day ‘liveSTOCK Exchange’ to discuss and reflect on livestock research for development. The event synthesized sector and ILRI learning and helped frame future livestock research for development directions.

The liveSTOCK Exchange also marked the leadership and contributions of Dr. Carlos Seré as ILRI Director General. See all posts in this series / Sign up for email alerts

New study says livestock production provides Kenya with 43% of agricultural GDP

Posted on November 29, 2011 by Susan MacMillan

Collecting milk in Kenya’s informal market (photo credit: ILRI/Dave Elsworth).

Do estimates of the agricultural gross domestic product (GDP) of African nations really underestimate the value of the contribution from the livestock sector, as livestock specialists at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and elsewhere frequently complain? In Kenya and Ethiopia, the answer is a resounding ‘Yes’.

A new study by the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) Livestock Policy Initiative (LPI), which worked with national partners, concludes that livestock’s contribution to Kenya’s agricultural GDP is a whopping two and a half times larger than the official estimate for 2009. An earlier IGAD study concluded that livestock’s contribution to Ethiopia’s agricultural GDP has been even more dramatically under-reported; livestock’s contribution is now being estimated at three and a half times larger than that of the last official estimate available.

In Kenya, ‘This increase of 150% over official estimates means that the livestock contribution to agricultural GDP is only slightly less than that from arable agriculture, i.e. 320 billion Kenyan shillings for livestock (about $4.21 billion US dollars in 2009) versus 399 billion Kenyan shillings for crops and horticulture (in 2009 roughly $5.25 billion US dollars). . . .

‘According to the revised estimates, milk is Kenya’s most economically important livestock product, providing a little less than three quarters of the total gross value of livestock’s contribution to the agricultural sector. In terms of its contribution to agricultural GDP, milk is about four times more important than meat.

‘Cattle are Kenya’s most important source of red meat, supplying by value about 80% of the nation’s ruminant offtake for slaughter. More than 80% of the beef consumed in Kenya is produced by pastoralists, either domestically or in neighbouring countries and then imported on the hoof, often unofficially.’

In addition, the broad range of benefits rural food producers derive from livestock keeping—including manure for fertilizing crop field, traction for pulling ploughs, and serving as a means of savings and credit and insurance—represent about 11% of the value of the livestock contribution to GDP in Kenya and more than 50% in Ethiopia.

‘The conclusion to be drawn from this study is that Kenya’s livestock are economically much more important than hitherto believed; in fact, only marginally less than crops and horticulture combined. Agriculture and forestry are by far Kenya’s most important economic sector in terms of domestic production and it would now appear that livestock provide about 43% of the output from this sector. . . .’

We link here to the whole policy brief from the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) Livestock Policy Initiative (LPI – IGAD LPI website). The brief was based on working paper by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and IGAD: The Contribution of Livestock to the Kenyan Economy, No. 03-2011, by Roy Behnke and David Muthami.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of the earlier IGAD LPI working papers on Ethiopia (also a policy brief).

More on getting credible figures for livestock emissions of greenhouse gases

Posted on November 22, 2011 by Susan MacMillan

The Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change, an initiative of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), is identifying policy changes and actions needed to help the world achieve food security in the face of climate change; the Commission launched this summary for policymakers on 16 Nov 2011 (photo on cover by Neil Palmer/CIAT).

The current issue of New Scientist publishes an article describing a recently released study, ‘Achieving Food Security in the Face of Climate Change’, which was commissioned by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research). For more on that study, see the CCAFS news release of 16 November 2011: ‘Global Commission Charts Pathway for Achieving Food Security in Face of Climate Change‘.

Sujata Gupta’s New Scientist article on meat consumption, ‘Just how much meat can eco-citizens eat?’ (online publication date: 16 November 2011; print issue date: 19 November 2011; print issue number: 2839), contains what we believe is a factual error. Gupta quotes a 2007 article in the Lancet (‘Food, livestock production, energy, climate change, and health’, doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(07)61256-2) that 80% of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions come from meat production.

More credible figures, compiled from international global assessments by agricultural systems analyst Mario Herrero and his colleagues at the International Livestock Research Institute, are the following.

The total agricultural sector emits around 25–32% of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Crops emit 14% (EPA 2006) and all livestock emit 11–18%, depending on how emissions are attributed (FAO 2006, EPA 2006, PBL 2010). The emissions from livestock can be divided roughly as 30% methane from enteric fermentation, 30% nitrous oxide from manure management and 40% from carbon dioxide from land-use changes for grazing and feed production (FAO 2006). Figures for the emissions from land-use changes carry a lot of uncertainty. Emissions can also be divided by species and product. For example, the dairy sector is responsible for roughly 27% of greenhouse gas emissions from livestock (FAO 2010) while monogastric production (pigs/poultry) is responsible for 10–20% of the livestock emissions. Hence, it is not possible that beef production can account for 80% of all agricultural emissions. Even if beef cattle represent 50–60% of livestock emissions, this translates roughly into a figure close to 30–35% of all agricultural emissions—certainly not 80%. What is true is that of all livestock products, beef is the most inefficient in terms of greenhouse gas emissions produced per unit of product, especially compared to dairy and monogastrics (De Vries and de Boer 2010).

Herrero and his colleagues at ILRI, CCAFS and elsewhere are publishing updates on topics concerning livestock production and climate and other kinds of global change. Look out, for example, for the following book chapter, due next month, which we will report on in this blog: M Herrero, PK Thornton, P Havlík, and M Rufino, Livestock and greenhouse gas emissions: Mitigation options and trade-offs. In: E Wollenberg, A Nihart, ML Tapio-Bistrom and C Seeberg-Elverfeldt (eds), Climate Change Mitigation and Agriculture, Earthscan, London, UK (in press).

See an earlier report on a similar topic in this ILRI News Blog: Livestock and climate change: Towards credible figures, 27 Jun 2011.

Taking stock: Global livestock production systems are (finely and finally) differentiated

Posted on October 26, 2011 by Susan MacMillan

Mixed crop-livestock systems in the developing world produce significant amounts of milk and meat (figure credit: ILRI/Herrero, 2010).

A new book years in the making on the seemingly abstruse topic of ‘livestock system classifications’ has just been published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).

To find out why classifying livestock systems is not an academic matter (hint: it can help fill the gap between the potential and actual yields of our food production systems), but rather matters rather urgently, particularly to the futures of more than 1 billion poor people who depend on livestock for their livelihoods, read on. And note that the book includes lots of new maps to pore over.

Global datasets are becoming increasingly important for priority setting and targeting by organizations with a global mandate for agriculture and agricultural research for development in developing countries. Until now, the best estimates of livestock production systems were those produced by ILRI in 2002. These have now been updated and improved upon by FAO and ILRI.

What’s the book about? From the blurb
‘Informed livestock sector policy development and priority setting is heavily dependent on a good understanding of livestock production systems. In a collaborative effort between the Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Livestock Research Institute, stock has been taken of where we have come from in agricultural systems classification and mapping; the current state of the art; and the directions in which research and data collection efforts need to take in the future.

‘The book also addresses issues relating to the intensity and scale of production, moving from what is done to how it is done. The intensification of production is an area of particular importance, for it is in the intensive systems that changes are occurring most rapidly and where most information is needed on the implications that intensification of production may have for livelihoods, poverty alleviation, animal diseases, public health and environmental outcomes.

‘A series of case studies is provided, linking livestock production systems to rural livelihoods and poverty and examples of the application of livestock production system maps are drawn from livestock production, now and in the future; livestock’s impact on the global environment; animal and public health; and livestock and livelihoods. . . .’

Why this book? From the Introduction
‘Many organizations are involved in assembling and disseminating global spatial datasets that can be used for a wide variety of purposes. Such datasets are becoming increasingly important for priority setting and targeting by organizations with a global mandate for agriculture and agricultural research for development, such as the United Nations (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the international centres of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), regional and subregional research organizations, and donors who need to target their investments and measure their impacts on beneficiaries. The world in which we live is extremely dynamic, and this is reflected in the ways in which the world feeds itself and people meet their livelihood requirements. There can be considerable heterogeneity in the determinants of rural poverty (Snel and Henninger, 2002; Kristjanson et al., 2005). An implication of this is that poverty alleviation efforts increasingly need to be targeted at relatively small groups of people, and this calls for a finer grain in the definition of intervention domains than has perhaps been considered in the past.

‘Currently, one of the biggest gaps in the availability of global datasets is a spatial agricultural systems classification that provides appropriate detail on the distribution of crops and livestock in different places.

This publication addresses this gap by bringing together some recent developments in agricultural production system mapping and highlighting some of the difficult problems involved. The book also identifies further work that is required to develop a dynamic global agricultural production systems classification that can be mapped, ground-truthed, and refined through time. . . .

‘The outputs described here should find immediate application among development organizations, donors and research institutes, in targeting investment and technology or policy interventions that are effective in promoting sustainable livelihoods of the poor in developing countries.

Why map livestock production systems?
‘Farming of crops and livestock cannot be considered independently of one another nor should they be considered in isolation. Established links between livestock numbers, cultivation levels and human populations suggest that greater attention should be paid to quantifying and mapping these associations (Bourn and Wint, 1994). The interdependence of crops and livestock in mixed farms and the different contributions made to livelihoods (Powell et al., 1995) suggest that these two aspects of farming should be considered together. The nature of such interactions is heavily shaped by environmental factors and, increasingly, by economic forces.

‘A detailed knowledge of the distribution of livestock resources finds many applications, for example, in estimating production and off-take, the impacts of livestock on the environment, livestock disease risk and impact, and the role that livestock plays in people’s livelihoods (Robinson et al., 2007; FAO, 2007a). But livestock is not all equal. In different contexts it serves quite different functions, plays different roles in people’s livelihoods, varies in herd structure and breed composition, and is fed and managed in different ways. For most applications some sort of practical stratification is needed: milk yields are not the same from cows reared in extensive, low-input pastoral systems as they are from specifically-bred dairy cows raised intensively. In the same way, the risks posed by livestock diseases vary considerably depending on whether animals are kept in high-density housing or grazed over large areas of rangeland, for example. At its simplest, combining information on production systems with livestock statistics allows livestock numbers to be disaggregated by production system (see, for example, the appendices in FAO, 2007a). Compared with simple national totals, this gives a more meaningful breakdown of how livestock are distributed across the globe. . . .’

What are the new numbers? From the conclusions
‘In terms of the numbers of poor and our estimates of the numbers of poor livestock keepers, based on national, rural poverty lines for 2010, the critical regions are still South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Some 71 percent of the estimated 430 million poor livestock keepers live in these two regions, up from 66 percent a decade earlier. While the rangeland systems contain relatively few poor, most of these households are dependent on livestock for their livelihoods. Half of the poor livestock keepers in rangeland systems globally are located in sub-Saharan Africa: nearly 60 million, based on national, rural poverty lines. The mixed systems contain large numbers of poor (over one billion), and the number of poor people who depend to some extent on livestock is considerable: the mixed irrigated and mixed rainfed systems are estimated to host more than 300 million poor livestock keepers based on national and international US$1.25 per day poverty lines, and double that many based on the international US$2.00 per day poverty lines.

‘Despite their obvious limitations and coarseness, the data presented on locations and densities of poor livestock keepers can still provide information of considerable use. The current information continues to be used at ILRI to prioritize and focus livestock research, and to help identify ‘hotspots’ at the global and regional levels that can then be investigated in more detail at higher resolution. Such hotspots can be defined in various ways depending on the purpose: as areas of high population densities of poor livestock keepers, or areas of high densities of poor people coupled with high levels of biodiversity or natural resource degradation, for example. Such information is critical for informing action agendas concerning livestock, development, and global change. . . .’

How did the book come about? From the foreword
‘This book has grown out of a long-standing collaboration between the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). It emerged from a meeting of international organizations held at the Earth Institute at Columbia University in 2004, at which FAO and the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research were charged with closing a gap in our understanding of the distribution of agricultural production systems. The book took further shape following a workshop convened by FAO in Bangkok in 2006, during which the custodians of many of the key datasets needed to produce maps of global livestock production systems were brought together with experts and researchers in agricultural production systems. It brings together the results of several years’ of activity by FAO and ILRI, along with colleagues from the International Food Policy Research Institute, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis and many other organisations not explicitly linked to the production of the book.’

Download the whole publication here: Global livestock production systems, by TP Robinson, PK Thornton (ILRI), G Franceschini, RL Kruska (former ILRI), F Chiozza, A Notenbaert (ILRI), G Cecchi, M Herrero (ILRI), M Epprecht, S Fritz, L You, G Conchedda and L See, 2011, Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), 152 pp.

Short films document first index-based livestock insurance for African herders

Posted on October 26, 2011 by Susan MacMillan

For those readers interested to get more local context about the recent first insurance payouts to livestock herders in Kenya’s northern Marsabit District (go here for an assembly of recent stories on this), here are two films ILRI produced on the subject when the insurance was first made available to Marsabit’s pastoral herders, in January 2010.

Livestock Insurance for Pastoralists in Kenya
January 2010 saw the launch of the world’s first livestock insurance for remote African pastoralists as a result of years of research.
Running time: 2:49

Development of World’s First Index-Based Livestock Insurance for African Pastoralists Herders
In Kenya’s drylands, drought has always been the greatest hazard faced by livestock herding families. Modern pressures are making this situation worse.This film tells the story of a research project started in 2007, which this year introduced a new form of insurance to remote herding peoples who had never been provided with insurance before. This new insurance product has potential to protect many other herding communities throughout Africa.
Running time: 12.36.

Livestock director and partners launch first-ever index-based livestock insurance payments in Africa

Posted on October 25, 2011 by Susan MacMillan

ILRI director general Jimmy Smith speaks to residents of Marsabit, in northern Kenya, where a livestock insurance scheme has made its first payouts to small livestock keepers following a prolonged drought in the Horn of Africa (photo credit: Neil Palmer/CIAT).

Jimmy Smith, director general of the International Livestock Research Institute, made the following remarks on the occasion of the first payouts of index-based livestock insurance policies ever made to livestock herders in Africa in a region that has been afflicted by the drought that has reduced herds in the drylands of the Horn by a third.

Inhabitants of Marsabit town, in northern Kenya, attend a special event marking the first payouts of a livestock insurance scheme to small-scale livestock keepers following a prolonged drought in the Horn of Africa (photo credit: Neil Palmer/CIAT).

‘Today ILRI’s Index-Based Livestock Insurance (IBLI) project provides 650 livestock herders in Kenya’s remote Marsabit District with the very first payments of index-based livestock insurance claims ever made on this continent.

‘That makes this an important as well as historic moment.

Members of the Marsabit community listen to speakers at the launch of the first payouts of livestock insurance in Africa (photo credit: Neil Palmer/CIAT).

‘The success of any insurance scheme depends on its clients being confident that payments will be made if and when an insured event occurs. I hear that many have been reluctant to purchase the livestock insurance policies being offered to Marsabit’s livestock keepers in August and September of this year [2011] because the herders first wanted to be assured that this insurance product works and—in this time of great drought and livestock losses here and elsewhere in the Horn of Africa—if it will payout. Now that the appropriate payments are being made and in a timely manner, we hope we have earned the trust of people here, trust that will generate more widespread awareness and interest in this livestock insurance product.

Women of the Marsabit community listen to speakers at the launch of the first payouts of livestock insurance in Africa (photo credit: Neil Palmer/CIAT).

‘We are celebrating today not only the first payouts but also that the livestock index that predicts mortality in this region seems to be working well; several of our on-the-ground partners in Marsabit are in agreement with the figures. Our relatively inexpensive way of estimating livestock deaths in a time of drought and forage loss appears to be reliable and could now open the door to making livestock insurance widely available in Marsabit and similar areas in Kenya’s northern drylands, which are home to many of its pastoral peoples.

At a village meeting in Dirib Gombo, farmers who took out livestock insurance hear they are to receive their first payout after a prolonged drought in the region (photo credit: Neil Palmer/CIAT).

‘For all its initial success, this insurance project remains a work in progress. We’re aware of the challenges of raising awareness of the program in the more distant areas of Marsabit and making sales across the entire district. And even as we trust that those who purchased this livestock insurance will receive their payments in the shortest time possible, we recognize that many clients will have to be paid manually, a process that involves costly driving to areas as far as Loiyangalani and Illeret, where some pastoralists also bought contracts. That said, over the last three insurance sales periods since January 2010, Equity Bank’s Point of Sale systems and UAP’s telephone scanners have made the process more efficient. Over the next several seasons, on-going efforts will continue to improve the technology platforms delivering IBLI services, making them increasingly more cost-effective and accessible.

At a village meeting in Dirib Gombo, officials prepare to make the first insurance payouts after a prolonged drought in the region (photo credit: Neil Palmer/CIAT).

‘The most important sign of success is the response of the client. So even as payments are being made, we at ILRI want to know what impact the payments are having and how valuable the insurance product is. You will see the ILRI team in this area conducting research to understand how IBLI is benefiting the community and those households that bought livestock insurance. We worked with members of the community to design and develop this product, and we are keen to receive your suggestions about ways to improve it.

At a village meeting in Dirib Gombo, farmers who took out livestock insurance receive their first payout after a prolonged drought in the region (photo credit: Neil Palmer/CIAT).

‘‘A project such as this is necessarily a product of collaboration. ILRI and our commercial partners Equity Bank and UAP Insurance—those who actually market and sell the product—are quite visible, but there are several others that must be recognized. Cornell University and the Index Insurance Innovation Initiative (I4) based out of the University of California at Davis have been instrumental in the development of the IBLI product and supporting the research agenda behind it. Closer to the ground, members of the Marsabit District Steering Group have offered invaluable support and advice to the project team, as has Food for the Hungry International. The project has also received tremendous support from the Ministry of the Development of Northern Kenya and the Ministry of Livestock and the Provincial Administration, from the District Commissioner to chiefs and counsellors across Marsabit. Finally there are the hundreds of young men and women across all divisions of Marsabit who have worked tirelessly conducting surveys and product education and extension.

Leader of the Index-Based Livestock Insurance Project, ILRI’s Andrew Mude (right), answers a questions from the Marsabit community (photo credit: Neil Palmer/CIAT).

‘We’re now working to see if IBLI can be sustained by commercial partners such as Equity Bank, UAP and others that may be interested. Currently, however, the research, design and implementation of the IBLI project has been funded by numerous donors who believe in its potential. For this we must thank the European Union, the Global Index Insurance Facility, the Microinsurance Facility, the World Bank and the United States Agency for International Development. The British Government, through UKAID, has been one of the largest supporters of the project and, together with the European Union, will be funding the second phase of scaling up.’

A farmer awaits a livestock insurance payout following a village meeting in Dirib Gombo, near the northern Kenyan town of Marsabit; some farmers in the village took out livestock insurance, and this year are receiving the first payouts after a prolonged drought in the region (photo credit: Neil Palmer/CIAT).

One of the many head of cattle that perished for lack of fodder in the drought that dried up the rangelands of Kenya’s Marsabit District this year (photo credit: Neil Palmer/CIAT).

Read a related story on this ILRI News Blog: Herders in drought-stricken northern Kenya get first livestock insurance payments

Editor’s note, 26 Oct 2011: The original title of this blog post, ‘Livestock director and partners launch first-ever livestock insurance payments in Africa,’ was changed to ‘Livestock director and partners launch first-ever index-based livestock insurance payments in Africa;’ other forms of livestock insurance (not index-based) have been available in other parts of Africa. Two similar statements in the body of the blog were similarly corrected.

American agricultural economist Tom Randolph to lead new CGIAR Research Program on Livestock and Fish

Posted on October 24, 2011 by Susan MacMillan

Tom Randolph, an agricultural economist at ILRI, speaks with former ILRI project manager Oumar Diall while attending a 2006 workshop in Bamako, Mali, on controlling trypanosomosis drug resistance, a project he and Diall led for several years in West Africa (photo credit: ILRI/Stevie Mann).

Tom Randolph has been named director of a newly established CGIAR Research Program on Livestock and Fish. Jimmy Smith, new director general of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), a position he took up on 1 October 2011, announced Randolph’s appointment on 13 October 2011.

ILRI leads this CGIAR research program, which is one of several new multi-institutional research programs initiated by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). In this program, which aims to provide more meat, milk and fish by and for the poor, ILRI will be collaborating with other scientists and staff from three of its sister CGIAR centres—the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), based in Cali, Colombia; the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), based in Aleppo, Syria; and the WorldFish Center, based in Penang, Malaysia. Many other strategic partners will play key roles in implementing the program in several ‘livestock value chains’ and countries targeted by the new project.

Randolph helped lead the collaborative processes employed over the last two years to develop the concept and subsequent full proposal for this research program.

Before this appointment, Randolph headed a team conducting research on smallholder competitiveness in changing markets under ILRI’s Market Opportunities Theme. His research interests and contributions at ILRI have been varied, including studies at the interface of animal and human health and assessments of the impacts of agricultural problems and the research conducted to address them, including evaluations of the impacts of tick and tick-borne diseases, animal health delivery systems, ILRI’s East Coast fever vaccine development research, the contributions economics and epidemiology can make to animal disease control and the control of bird flu in sub-Saharan Africa.

One of the projects Randolph led has helped to reduce parasite resistance to drugs used to control trypanosomosis (animal sleeping sickness) in the cotton belt of West Africa. This project established a clear picture of the distribution of potential resistance across a zone from eastern Guinea to western Burkina Faso, highlighting the importance of tsetse ecology, farming systems, accessibility to veterinary services and pharmaceutical products, and cattle breed in influencing drug use and misuse. Under Randolph’s leadership, this project evolved from a primary focus on the biological issue to a holistic understanding of the complex epidemiological and socioeconomic factors at farm, local, national and regional levels that influence the problem and determine the ability to address it.

Among his more recent projects is a groundbreaking assessment of the relations between dairy intensification, gender and child nutrition among smallholder farmers in the Rift Valley Province of Kenya; this project is investigating the pathways between dairy intensification and child nutrition.

An American from upstate New York, Randolph received an undergraduate degree in Chinese studies in 1976, after which he spent six years teaching English in Zaire with the Peace Corps. On his return to the United States, Randolph pursued an MSc and PhD in agricultural economics from Cornell University. His doctoral dissertation was based on field work he conducted in Malawi with the Harvard Institute for International Development, looking at the impact of agricultural commercialization on child nutrition in smallholder households. His thesis earned the American Agricultural Economics Association’s Outstanding PhD Dissertation Award. He subsequently joined the West African Rice Development Association (WARDA, now Africa Rice Centre), in Senegal, as a Rockefeller-funded post-doctoral fellow, later becoming policy economist and policy support program leader at WARDA’s Côte d’Ivoire headquarters.

Randolph joined ILRI in 1998 and will remain based at ILRI’s Nairobi, Kenya, headquarters as he directs this new multi-country and multi-institutional CGIAR Research Program on Livestock and Fish.

Herders in drought-stricken northern Kenya get first livestock insurance payments

Posted on October 21, 2011 by Susan MacMillan

Pastoralists from Marsabit, in Kenya’s remote northern drylands, play a game crafted by ILRI scientists to simulate livestock losses that could occur due to drought, in which the local herding communities are educated about how index-based livestock insurance works (image credit: ILRI).

As livestock deaths mount, a small group of herders in Kenya’s Marsabit District is first to benefit from program that tracks forage conditions via satellite.

In the midst of a drought-induced food crisis affecting millions in the Horn of Africa, an innovative insurance program for poor livestock keepers is making its first payouts today, providing compensation for some 650 insured herders in northern Kenya’s vast Marsabit District who have lost up to a third of their animals.

Known as index-based livestock insurance, or IBLI, payouts are triggered when satellite images show that grazing lands in the region have deteriorated to the point that herders are expected to be losing more than 15% of their herd. The current readings for which indemnities are now being paid show that between 18 and 33% of livestock have been lost to drought this season.

‘It’s terrible that we are seeing this level of loss, but gratifying that the policies are doing what they are supposed to do, which is to help herders avert disaster when weather conditions dry up pasture lands and animals begin to perish,’ said Isaac Magina, head of agriculture insurance at UAP Insurance Ltd.

‘When you look at a 33% loss, that is a significant portion of the asset base of any business and it would be difficult to survive without insurance,’ added Magina.

The insurance project was developed in partnership by the Nairobi-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Cornell University and the Index Insurance Innovation Initiative program at the University of California at Davis. Commercial partners Equity Bank and UAP Insurance Ltd implement the program. The IBLI project is funded by the United States Agency for International Development, the European Union, the British Government, the World Bank, the Microinsurance Facility and the Global Index Insurance Facility.

The Marsabit District alone is home to some 86 thousand cattle and 2 million goats and sheep that generate millions of dollars in milk and other products and serve as the main source of sustenance and income. ILRI estimates that up to one-third of all livestock in the region have perished during the current drought.

In East Africa, an estimated 70 million people live in the drylands, and many of them are herders. In Kenya, the value of the pastoral livestock sector is estimated to be worth USD800 million. And the Intergovernmental Authority on Development in Eastern Africa, which takes a regional approach to combating drought in six countries of the Horn, estimates that over 90% of the meat consumed in East Africa comes from pastoral herds.

Under the terms of the policy, insured herders are compensated for any losses above 15%, with the 15% threshold acting as a sort of deductible. For example, a cattle herder who lives in an area with a livestock mortality rate of 33% receives a payout covering 18% of his or her animals. With cattle valued at about 15,000 Kenyan shillings (Ksh) per head (about USD150), an insurance policy covering 10 animals, or Kshs150,000 in cattle, would pay out at about Kshs27,000 (about USD270).

When the 15% deductible is factored in, compensation ranges from 3% in areas where the drought has been more moderate to 18% in the areas where herders were hit particularly hard. But in an indication of the severity of the drought, all of the areas where the policies were sold have exceeded the 15%mortality threshold that triggers a payout. Thus far, the policies cover about 1,100 animals—mostly cattle, but some goats and sheep and a few camels as well.

The payments are being dispatched in the middle of a humanitarian crisis endangering 12 million people in the Horn that is prompting a call for new ways to manage food security risks in East Africa’s arid drylands. For example, a recent report from ILRI has found that the pastoral approach to livestock production, in which herders make do with marginal lands by regularly moving their herds, could be very effective at averting weather-related food shortages. ILRI experts say that in arid and semi-arid regions, keeping livestock can be a more effective coping strategy than cultivating crops—if herders have options for reducing their vulnerability to drought.

‘Drought insurance is one important way to help livestock keepers maintain food security even in very harsh environments,’ said Andrew Mude, the IBLI project leader at ILRI. ‘Insurance is not by itself sufficient,’ he added, ‘But if it is accompanied by other risk-reducing strategies, such as better access to grazing lands and watering areas, then the pastoralist approach, which some people dismiss as a backward lifestyle of the past, emerges as a very effective way to meet future food needs.’

Mude said that it is too early to tell just how the payouts from the policies will affect food security and other welfare indicators. For example, it’s not yet clear how many herders will use the compensation to replace animals lost to the drought. But Mude said one major success thus far is that the livestock mortality index that is at the heart of the program appears to be working. The fatality rate predicted by the satellite assessments of forage loss is tracking very closely surveys of animal deaths on the ground.

That’s crucial because using freely available satellite images of pasture lands to accurately predict animal deaths overcomes a major barrier that has bedeviled past efforts to provide livestock insurance in poor regions: the prohibitively high costs and logistics of confirming animal deaths in herds that roam across vast distances in extremely remote areas.

‘This is all still a work in progress,’ said Jimmy Smith, director general of ILRI. ‘But the fact that our relatively inexpensive approach to estimating livestock deaths seems to be accurate could open the door to making livestock insurance widely available in many parts of Africa.’

Going forward, experts believe a key issue will be whether livestock insurance in East Africa would be commercially viable by itself or whether its ability to protect herders from the impact of prolonged drought might justify some level of financial support from governments or donors, as agricultural insurance programs in Western countries often do.

‘This is asset insurance for animals that are the centerpiece of livelihoods, providing a stream of income and nutrition for years and years,’ said Mude. ‘The investment in insurance=based asset safety nets protecting these herds could have a more cost-effective welfare impact over the longer term than other forms of response such a food and cash assistance.’

‘This insurance scheme is a great example of how partnerships with the private sector can lift people out of poverty and provide long-term solutions to food crises,’ said Andrew Mitchell, the British international development secretary.

‘To many farmers, losing their cattle means losing everything, as they are not just a source of income but are their only source of food. Support from Britain and others means that more than 600 herders in Northern Kenya can buy more cattle to replace those they have lost. This means they are better able to cope with this and future devastating droughts.’

Jimmy Smith takes up position as director general of ILRI

Posted on October 15, 2011 by Susan MacMillan

ILRI director general Jimmy Smith (right) addresses ILRI staff in Nairobi for the first time on 3 Oct 2011 (photo credit: ILRI/Samuel Mungai).

Jimmy Smith, new director general of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), spent his first two weeks on the job visiting and listening to staff on both major campuses of ILRI, its headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya, and its principal campus in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

In remarks made on several occasions, Smith repeated his belief that staff are ILRI’s most important asset. But unlike many who give lip service to such change management speak, Smith has reason to mean it. In the 1990s, he served for a decade as a member of ILRI’s more far-flung staff, first in Ibadan, Nigeria, and then Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He thus has personal experience of what it’s like to be outposted and said he was making it his personal commitment to see that all staff feel an integral part of the institute.

‘I see all staff of ILRI—as well as those of our sister centres and partners of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR)—on all our campuses as part of our family and feeling themselves to be so.’

At his first coffee morning meeting with staff at ILRI’s Nairobi headquarters, Smith also said the following.

‘I came here to build on what ILRI has already accomplished through its former director general, Carlos Seré, and his teams.

‘We have 2 billion more people to feed by 2050 and we already have 1 billion hungry people today. We must deliver.

‘The future is in our hands to make ILRI and the CGIAR live up to our promise to eliminate hunger and poverty.

‘I’ll be talking with you about where we go in the future to become a truly world-class global livestock institute known for its work to reduce hunger and poverty.

‘With this change of senior management, some staff may feel somewhat apprehensive. I promise you there’s nothing ILRI is doing now that I don’t value. But there is much we can do even better.

‘Our mission is urgent. Our research must deliver. And we have to become more efficient as well as more effective.

‘I don’t promise you business as usual. I promise you, rather, a commitment to integrity, performance and change.

‘And I’m counting on all of you to be my partners in this.’

US-Kenyan team developing vaccine to protect African cattle against deadly East Coast fever

Posted on October 7, 2011 by Susan MacMillan

Staff of ILRI’s Tick Unit dissect ticks to extract the parasite Theileria parva, which causes East Coast fever in cattle (photo credit: Brad Collis).

A vaccine that protects cattle against East Coast fever, a deadly disease in eastern and central Africa, is being developed by scientists in Kenya working for the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) jointly with scientists at the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Animal Disease Research Unit in Pullman, Washington, which is part of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). ARS is the USDA’s chief intramural scientific research agency. This research, which looks at combination vaccines for tick-borne diseases, supports USDA’s priority of promoting international food security.

Scientists are focusing on the tick that transmits the parasite responsible for East Coast fever. Because this host tick and its parasite are similar to the tick and parasite that cause babesiosis, commonly called Texas cattle fever, in the United States, developing a vaccine for East Coast fever could lead to a vaccine for Texas cattle fever, which is a serious illness for wild and domesticated animals, especially cattle.

In an initial study, scientists developed a polymerase chain reaction test that detects parasite DNA in ticks. They used tick populations that were produced at ILRI to have different susceptibilities to infection with the parasite. Two different strains of ticks—Muguga and Kiambu—were compared. The Muguga ticks had a low level of parasitic infection, whereas the Kiambu ticks were highly susceptible.

Understanding genetic differences between these two tick populations could lead to the identification of proteins that might be good targets for a vaccine to help control East Coast fever.

This international partnership is part of a global community effort to control diseases that limit food and fiber production. Although East Coast fever isn’t currently a problem in the United States, this collaborative research aids in keeping the US and other countries free of the disease. Results of this collaborative research may be applied to help control similar parasitic diseases.

Findings from this research were published in Gene and in the Journal of Medical Entomology.

Read more at the United States Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service: Partnership focuses on developing East Coast fever vaccine, 4 Oct 2011.

Read more about this research in the October 2011 issue of Agricultural Research Magazine.

Read more about this project on ILRI’s website.

‘Historic’ G20 meeting in Montpellier backs more funding for agricultural research–CGIAR Treaty signed by France, Hungary

Posted on September 20, 2011 by Susan MacMillan

Among flyers of the CGIAR Research Programs displayed at the G20 meeting on ‘Agriculture Research for Development: Promoting Scientific Partnerships for Food Security,’ in Montpellier, France, 12-13 Sep 2011, was this one on ‘Livestock and Fish: More Meat, Milk and Fish by and for the Poor’ (brochure by ILRI [content] and CIP [design] for the CGIAR Consortium).

On 16 Sep 2011, the chairman of the board of the CGIAR Consortium for International Agricultural Research, Carlos Pérez del Castillo, made the following statements, which are excerpted from a message he sent to the directors general of the 15 CGIAR centres, including the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), which leads the CGIAR Research Program on Livestock and Fish: More Meat, Milk and Fish by and for the Poor.

‘The G20 Conference on Agricultural Research for Development just held in Montpellier (12–13 September 2011), was the first conference in the history of the G20 that focused on issues of international agricultural research for development. David Nabarro called it a “historic event of momentous proportions”, because of the strong consensus that emerged from the discussions on the key role of international agricultural research for development in providing sustainable long-term solutions to global food security.

‘Participants comprised the G20 representatives of Agriculture, Research and Foreign Affairs Ministries, as well as the Directors General of G20 Agricultural Research institutions. Key international institutions participated as well: GFAR [Global Forum on Agricultural Research], FAO [United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization], the World Bank and the CGIAR Consortium. . . .

‘With the objective to promote international scientific partnerships for Food Security, this was a working meeting with four sessions. The first, on how to increase coordination of agricultural research systems in the G20 countries was chaired by Japan and the CGIAR gave a keynote presentation . . . .

It was heartening to hear many delegations state that existing coordination mechanisms, such as the CGIAR Research Programs and the GCARD Roadmap, are particularly well positioned to facilitate international coordination . . . .

‘[T]hroughout the Conference, extensive references were made to a strong commitment to international agriculture research for development and to the important role that the reformed CGIAR is expected to play in the international arena, as facilitator of research synergies among G20 countries. . . . There was . . . an overwhelming consensus that more stable and longer-term funding are needed for international agricultural research to succeed in providing long-term options and solutions to global food security. . . .

‘We expect that the salient points from this meeting will be used as input for the joint G20 ministerial Finance and Development meeting in Washington (September 25), and for the Heads of States Summit, in Cannes (November 3–4). . . .

‘[A]t the end of the Conference, the Treaty establishing the CGIAR as an international organization was signed by France . . . and by Hungary . . . . Two other countries are expected to sign in the coming days, as the Treaty is now formally open for signatures at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Paris.’

View the poster on the CGIAR Research Program on Livestock and Fish.

Livestock systems in Africa: The big picture–by livestock economist Carlos Sere

Posted on September 14, 2011 by Susan MacMillan

Watch this 11-minute video of a slide presentation made by ILRI Director General Carlos Seré in Los Banos, the Philippines, in late 2010 (video produced by the International Rice Research Institute).

In a slide presentation on ‘Reinventing Agriculture in the 21st Century: Livestock Systems in Africa,’ Carlos Seré, director general of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), made three main points.

First, livestock is the fastest growing part of developing-world agriculture. It’s the ‘demand pull’ that can drive these agricultural systems.

Second, these are all ‘mixed systems’, with crop growing mixed with livestock raising; understanding the interactions between them is essential for the design of any strategy for agricultural development.

Third, we have a lot of the building blocks to achieve ‘sustainable intensification’ of smallholder agricultural production, but the real challenge is much more institutional in nature—how do we tie everything together, scale out the best interventions, and deliver them effectively?

Data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) tells us that the most important agricultural commodity in the world is cow’s milk, followed by rice, cattle meat, pig meat, chicken, wheat and eggs . . . So we can see that livestock is central to the global agricultural sector and becomes increasingly so as societies develop. In developing countries, rice is the number one commodity, followed by indigenous cattle meat and cow’s milk.

Due to population growth and other factors, the developing world’s livestock systems are changing fast and in big ways. Science can help the world’s poorer livestock keepers to work with these trends.

Most people in developing countries live in areas where mixed crop-livestock systems predominate. That is something we tend to forget: we tend to come in with a specific disciplinary approach, looking at crops or trees or livestock in isolation, when all these and more are integrated in a whole agricultural system that we must attend to.

Seré summed up his presentation by saying that livestock is the motor that brings in cash to smallholder mixed farmers. While cereals sustain the family, animals are the cash source. There’s a lot of potential to help small-scale livestock keepers to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases produced per kilo of livestock output. A lot of the techniques and interventions needed to intensify smallholder food production are already there; the challenge is how to bring them all together at scale and in useful ways for the farmer.

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