ILRI films on research helping Africa’s small-scale livestock keepers better adapt to changing climates

Watch the following playlist of climate change films produced by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).

These films describe how climate change is affecting millions of poor livestock herders and mixed crop-and-livestock farmers in Africa. Unpredictable and often extreme climatic events mean that overall, most of these livestock keepers struggle as droughts and floods devastate their increasingly fragile agricultural lands.

The first 8-minute film, ‘Heat, Rain and Livestock: Impact of climate change on Africa’s livestock herders’, shows how research-based interventions carried out by ILRI and its partners are helping livestock herders in northern Kenya cope with climate change.

Increasingly overcrowded lands and increasing competition for resources are contributing to more conflict between pastoral communities in many parts of Africa, but ‘scientific research, through projects such as ILRI’s Index-Based Livestock Insurance (IBLI) and a shift to raising animals that produce more (and more efficiently) and that are better adapted to climatic changes is making a difference.’

The second 4-minute film, ‘Climate, food and developing-country livestock farming’, describes many of the challenges experienced by small-scale livestock farmers in African countries, which remain under-appreciated by policymakers and the media in rich countries.

According to the ILRI film, ‘research can provide these farmers with the means to increase their production to meet growing demand for food in many countries while at the same time managing their environments.’

View the full climate change playlist on YouTube.

Read recent ILRI news articles on climate change:

Storming the ivory towers: Time for scientists to get out, ‘get social’, to learn better, faster–Nature commentary

Want ‘climate-smart’ farming adopted in Africa? Then better start collecting data on how much greenhouse gases African countries are emitting

Climate change–Wholesale reconfiguration of diets, livelihoods, farming will be required in some regions

Read research outputs from ILRI’s climate change research.

Reducing aflatoxins in Kenya’s food chains: Filmed highlights from an ILRI media briefing

Last month (14 Nov 2013), the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) held a roundtable briefing/discussion for science journalists in Nairobi to highlight on-going multi-institutional efforts to combat aflatoxins in the food chains of Kenya.

Aflatoxins are a naturally occurring carcinogenic by-product of common fungi that grow on grains and other food crops, particularly maize and groundnuts. Researchers from across East Africa are joining up efforts to address the significant human and animal health challenges posed by these food toxins in the region.

Watch this 6-minute film, which highlights some of the interventions being used to tackle aflatoxins in Kenya. The film features interviews with the five panelists at the media briefing, who came from the University of Nairobi, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Kenya, the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), the Biosciences eastern and central Africa (BecA)-ILRI Hub, and ILRI.

‘Even though the presence of aflatoxins in Kenya dates back to the 1960s, the first recorded outbreak of aflatoxins that affected humans was recorded in the early 1980s,’ says Erastus Kang’ethe, a professor in the Department of Public Health at the University of Nairobi.

‘The biggest risk of aflatoxins comes from long-term exposure to these toxins, which leads to chronic aflatoxicosis,’ says Abigael Obura, of CDC. ‘The CDC in Kenya is working closely with the Ministry of Health to improve aflatoxin surveillance measures in Kenya’s districts through better sample collection and analysis.’

At the same time, Johanna Lindahl and other scientists at ILRI are assessing the risks posed by aflatoxins in Kenya’s dairy value chain; cows that consume aflatoxin-contaminated feeds produce milk that is also contaminated with the toxins.

According to Charity Mutegi, from the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, one of the key strategies in managing aflatoxins in Kenya is by using a ‘biological control technology that targets the fungus that produces the aflatoxins while the crop is still in the field.’ Known more popularly as ‘aflasafe,’ this technology, which is expected to be available in the country soon, is in use in other parts of Africa where ‘farm trials have yielded aflatoxin reduction of over 70 percent,’ says Mutegi.

Jagger Harvey, a scientist with the BecA-ILRI Hub, says the hub has established a capacity building platform for aflatoxin research that is being used by maize breeders from Kenya and Tanzania to, among other control efforts, come up with maize varieties that are more resistance to the aflatoxin-causing fungus.

Read a related ILRI news article about a filmed interview of two scientists leading work of the CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health, Delia Grace, of ILRI, and John McDermott, of the International Food Policy Research Institute, who describe some of the risks aflatoxins pose, new options for their better control and why research to combat these toxins matters so much.

View an ILRI infographic of the impact of aflatoxins in the food chain.

Read more on biological control to reduce aflatoxins.

Read more on strengthening regional research capacity to deal with aflatoxins.

Fighting aflatoxins: CGIAR scientists Delia Grace and John McDermott describe the disease threats and options for better control

In this 6-minute film, two leading scientists combatting aflatoxins in the food chains of developing countries describe some of the risks these toxins pose and new options for their better control. Aflatoxins are a naturally occurring carcinogenic byproduct of common fungi that grow on grains and other food crops, particularly maize and groundnuts, as well as in the milk and meat of livestock that have consumed feeds contaminated with aflatoxins. These toxins threaten public health in many poor countries.

In this short film, Delia Grace and John McDermott discuss on-going research to control aflatoxins in developing countries and why this research matters so much.

Delia Grace is a veterinary epidemiologist who leads research on both ‘food safety and zoonoses’ at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and ‘agriculture-associated diseases’, a flagship project of the CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH). John McDermott, another veterinary epidemiologist by training, who formerly served as ILRI’s deputy director general for research and now works for the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), is director of A4NH (Agriculture for Nutrition and Health), a multi-centre program led by IFPRI.

Earlier this week (4 Nov 2013), IFPRI and its 2020 Vision initiative jointly with the CGIAR Research Program on A4NH released a series of 19 briefs on the state of efforts to combat aflatoxins. ILRI’s Grace co-edited the series with IFPRI’s Laurian Unnevehr: ‘Aflatoxins: Finding solutions for improved food safety’. Grace and Unnevehr themselves developed 2 of the 19 briefs: ‘Tackling aflatoxins: An overview of challenges and solutions’  and The role of risk assessment in guiding aflatoxin policy’. In another of the briefs, Grace zeroes in on the dangers of aflatoxins in animal-source foods: ‘Animals and aflatoxins’. Jagger Harvey and Benoit Gnonlonfin, two scientists with ILRI’s Biosciences eastern and central Africa (BecA) Hub, along with colleagues in Australia and Cornell University, wrote the last brief in the series: ‘Improving diagnostics for aflatoxin detection‘.

Aflatoxins grow naturally on many farms, infesting grains and groundnuts, particularly after drought or insect damage and are a particularly common problem in developing countries, where aflatoxins not only pose a significant public health risk but also create a barrier to trade in agricultural commodities.

‘These toxins have a range of effects on human and animal health,’ says Grace. ‘High doses are lethal to both humans and animals and chronic consumption of lower levels of aflatoxins is associated with liver cancer and immunosuppression in children.’

Researchers have known about the problem of aflatoxins in developing countries for several decades but because these countries have largely informal markets and minimal trade, people have tended to minimize or ignore the problem.

‘But this is changing’, says McDermott. ‘Recent cases of aflatoxin-related deaths in Africa widened appreciation that this problem is important; there’s been a recent increase in investment in different control methods’, he says.

The series of briefs released this week brings together the experiences of researchers both within and outside CGIAR and contributes to efforts to help smallholder farmers better manage aflatoxins on their farms. It is important to know how crohn’s disease is diagnosed and what needs to be done.

The briefs describe health risks from aflatoxins and the state of research on aflatoxins, including new methods of detection, crop breeding and food storage and handling, as well as ways to overcome the market constraints imposed by aflatoxins.

‘We’ve assembled for policy- and other decision-makers the current state of knowledge on what we need to do about aflatoxins in tropical countries,’ says McDermott.

Read more about the briefs released this week:

http://www.ifpri.org/publication/aflatoxins-finding-solutions-improved-food-safety

Read the whole publication: Aflatoxins: Finding solutions for improved food safety, edited by Laurian Unnevehr and Delia Grace

Download

Table of Contents and Introduction

1. Tackling Aflatoxins: An Overview of Challenges and Solutions
by Laurian Unnevehr and Delia Grace

2. Aflatoxicosis: Evidence from Kenya
by Abigael Obura

3. Aflatoxin Exposure and Chronic Human Diseases: Estimates of Burden of Disease
by Felicia Wu

4. Child Stunting and Aflatoxins
by Jef L Leroy

5. Animals and Aflatoxins
by Delia Grace

6. Managing Mycotoxin Risks in the Food Industry: The Global Food Security Link
by David Crean

7. Farmer Perceptions of Aflatoxins: Implications for Intervention in Kenya
by Sophie Walker and Bryn Davies

8. Market-led Aflatoxin Interventions: Smallholder Groundnut Value Chains in Malawi
by Andrew Emmott

9. Aflatoxin Management in the World Food Programme through P4P Local Procurement
by Stéphane Méaux, Eleni Pantiora and Sheryl Schneider

10. Reducing Aflatoxins in Africa’s Crops: Experiences from the Aflacontrol Project
by Clare Narrod

11. Cost-Effectiveness of Interventions to Reduce Aflatoxin Risk
by Felicia Wu

12. Trade Impacts of Aflatoxin Standards
by Devesh Roy

13. Codex Standards: A Global Tool for Aflatoxin Management
by Renata Clarke and Vittorio Fattori

14. The Role of Risk Assessment in Guiding Aflatoxin Policy
by Delia Grace and Laurian Unnevehr

15. Mobilizing Political Support: Partnership for Aflatoxin Control in Africa
by Amare Ayalew, Wezi Chunga and Winta Sintayehu

16. Biological Controls for Aflatoxin Reduction
by Ranajit Bandyopadhyay and Peter J Cotty

17. Managing Aflatoxin Contamination of Maize: Developing Host Resistance
by George Mahuku, Marilyn L Warburton, Dan Makumbi and Felix San Vicente

18. Reducing Aflatoxins in Groundnuts through Integrated Management and Biocontrol
by Farid Waliyar, Moses Osiru, Hari Kishan Sudini and Samuel Njoroge

19. Improving Diagnostics for Aflatoxin Detection
by Jagger Harvey, Benoit Gnonlonfin, Mary Fletcher, Glen Fox, Stephen Trowell, Amalia Berna, Rebecca Nelson and Ross Darnell

References

 

Short filmed interviews of researchers and practitioners in livestock and fish ‘value chains’ in Uganda

Watch two short video interviews made on the sidelines of a recent three-day AgriFood Chain Toolkit Conference-Livestock and Fish Value Chains in East Africa, held 9–11 Sep 2013 in Kampala, Uganda.

Researchers and practitioners in livestock and fish value chains came together in this meeting, which ambitiously set itself the tasks not only of refining a research-developed value chain toolkit but also of supporting a community of practice established to review, assess and improve value chain approaches in research-for-development projects.

Fifty-seven participants from across Africa attended the conference, which was hosted by two multi-centre CGIAR research programs—‘Livestock and Fish’, led by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Nairobi, and ‘Policies, Institutions and Markets’, led by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), based in Washington, DC.

In this first, 3-minute, film, the meeting’s CGIAR research hosts share their views on what they hope to get out of the meeting and why their research matters.

‘We’re looking at ways research can help speed development of both the livestock and the aquaculture sub-sectors,’ said Iheanacho Okike, who leads ‘value chain development’ research in the Livestock and Fish program. ‘The value chain approach is helping us assess these commodities right from the dealers of inputs to livestock and aquaculture farmers to the production, marketing and consumption of the farmers’ food products, whether milk, meat and eggs, or fish, crustaceans and molluscs.’

Derek Baker, an ILRI agricultural economist who works with the Policies, Institutions and Markets program, said feedback from this meeting will help his research team assess if and how markets can be make to work better for small-scale food producers.

‘We wanted to capture the personal experiences of value chain practitioners and stakeholders in their use of our value chain toolkit. And we wanted to better understand the opportunities these livestock entrepreneurs would like to take advantage of if they could find the means to do so,’ said Baker.

In this second, 4-minute, film, a few value chain agents/practitioners share their experiences in using the CGIAR toolkit for dairy, fish and crop farming in eastern Africa.

‘Using this toolkit has helped me to improve my livestock production and to find new, better, ways to run my business’, said Lovin Kobusingye, a fish processor from Uganda.

‘Understanding how these value chain tools are used is critical in helping us know if and how the value chain approach works in the smallholder context’, said Elijah Rusike, from the Swedish Cooperative Centre in Zimbabwe. ‘We want information that can help us establish benchmarks and enables us to trace all the different actors within particular food value chains’, said Rusike.

The Kampala conference is one of several planned review workshops that will collate, synthesize and share good practices of value chain tool users, practitioners and researchers. This information supports ongoing CGIAR agriculture ‘value chains’ research in eastern Africa.

Read a related story from the CGIAR Research Program on Livestock and Fish blog

Read a related story from ILRI’s Livestock Markets Digest blog

Read notes from the event

View pictures of the event

View posters featured at the conference

Read a report on the workshop storytelling process

‘The health of the poor is the wealth of the poor’: A little film for a big World Food Day and World Food Prize

The prevention and control of agriculture-associated diseases from FILM for SCIENCE in AGRICULTURE on Vimeo.

To honour World Food Day today, celebrated every year on 16 Oct in honour of the founding of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations on this date in 1945, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) invites you to watch a 3-minute film about a new research to reduce overweight diseases with the help from the Best testosterone booster that promotes energy for exercise.

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Delia Grace is a veterinary epidemiologist and food safety expert with ILRI, one of 15 CGIAR centres working for a food-secure world. Grace leads the ‘agriculture-associated diseases’ component of a CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health. The latter, led by the International Food Policy Research Institute, was started in 2012 to investigate the links between agriculture, nutrition, custom vitamins we love and health in poor nations.

Here is Grace on just what ‘agriculture-associated diseases’ are, and why they matter.

The health of the poor is the wealth of the poor.
In hungry countries, most people cannot get enough nourishing and safe food. A third of humankind still grows their own food or buys local food in local markets. But the foods poor people grow, buy and eat often make them sick, and can even kill them.

Food-borne disease is the most common illness in the world.
Milk, eggs, meat and vegetables are especially dangerous. Yet these superior foods provide the world’s poorest two billion people with essential nutrients they need to grow, develop and be healthy and productive. For more on healthy eating, learn about it at https://fastingapps.com.

In addition, more than half of all human diseases are transmitted to people from farm and other animals.
These diseases include those like TB and AIDs, which are catastrophic in the developing world. And every six months, another new disease jumps from animals to people.

In 2012, the A4NH research program was started to investigate the links between agriculture, nutrition and health in poor nations. A4NH scientists aim  to find ways to lower people’s risk of disease from food farming, food markets and foods, while increasing agriculture’s benefits.

Health problems rooted in agriculture need solutions that start on the farm.And end with safe food in every household.

About World Food Day and the World Food Prize
The annual celebrations for World Food Day help to raise awareness of the issues behind poverty and hunger. In the US, the associated events include bestowal of the World Food Prize on individuals who have contributed the most to the world’s food supply. Along with former British prime minister Tony Blair and others, ILRI’s director general, Jimmy Smith, is in Des Moines, Iowa, today to participate in the World Food Prize Laureate Award Ceremony  and Borlaug Dialogue.

The World Food Prize was founded by Norman Borlaug, a CGIAR scientist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), in Mexico, whose work on high-yielding and disease-resistant wheat varieties led to the Green Revolution and his winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970.

The winners of this year’s World Food Prize—Marc Van Montagu, Mary-Dell Chilton and Robert T Fraley—made independent breakthroughs in agricultural biotechnology that have made it possible for farmers to grow crops that give greater yields, resist insects and disease, and tolerate extreme climates.

ILRI takes pleasure today in celebrating their achievements, as well as in honouring the following thirteen CGIAR scientists who have received the World Food Prize since the CGIAR’s Borlaug established the award in 1986:

  • 1987: MS Swaminathan, improved wheat and rice varieties in India, International Rice Research Institute (IRRI)
  • 1988: Robert Chandler, improved tropical rice varieties, International Rice Research Institute (IRRI)
  • 1990: John Niederhauser, control of potato late blight, International Potato Center (CIP)
  • 1995: Hans Herren, pest control for the cassava mealybug, International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA)
  • 1996: Henry Beachall and Gurdev Khush, rice breeders, International Rice Research Institute (IRRI)
  • 2000: Evangelina Villegas and Surinder Vasal, development of Quality Protein Maize, International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT)
  • 2001: Per-Pinstrup Andersen, food-for-education programs, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)
  • 2002: Pedro Sanchez, restoring fertility to soils, World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF)
  • 2004: Monty Jones, developer of New Rice for Africa (NERICA), International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA)
  • 2005: Modadugu Gupta, promoter of acquaculture and architect of the ‘blue revolution’, WorldFish Center (WorldFish)
  • 2009: Gebisa Ejeta, sorghum breeder, International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT)

The IPCC of the livestock sector? Global Agenda of Action on building a sustainable livestock sector


Watch this 3.3-minute video interview of Henning Steinfeld, who leads the livestock sector analysis and policy branch at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN. He spoke at the sidelines of the Third Multi-Stakeholder Platform Meeting of the Global Agenda of Action in Support of Sustainable Livestock Sector Development, which was co-hosted in Nairobi, Kenya, by ILRI, FAO and AU-IBAR, 22–24 Jan 2013 (video produced by Muthoni Njiru, of ILRI’s public awareness unit).

Shirley Tarawali, director of institutional planning and partnerships at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), is attending the 4th multi-stakeholder platform meeting of the Global Agenda of Action in Support of Sustainable Livestock Sector Development (GAA)  this week, 15–17 Oct, in Ottawa, Canada. The meeting aims to address the complexity of the challenges facing the sector which can be addressed only through concerted joint action.

This Agenda builds consensus among livestock sector actors on the path towards sustainability. Like its other members, ILRI believes the livestock sector is crucial to society achieving its environmental, social, economic and health objectives.

Basically, the livestock sector needs to produce more, from less, and with benefits to all.

A tall order. Can it be done? The Global Agenda of Action thinks it can.

‘The purpose of the Agenda is to catalyze the continuous improvement of the sector’s natural resource use to ensure the sector’s contribution to sustainability in food and agriculture. The partnership unites the forces of the public and private sectors, producers, research and academic institutions, NGOs and social movements and community-based organizations.’

Set up of the current Agenda

  • Open multi-stakeholder platform for consensus building on top-priority issues and actions
  • Guiding group for overall direction, guidance and monitoring
  • Focus area groups to implement the work programs
  • Support group

The GAA aims to help improve the efficiency of natural resource use in the livestock sector through work in the following three areas.

Focus area 1: Closing the efficiency gap
Generating large resource use efficiency, economic, and social gains through the use of livestock-related technologies, management practices, policies and institutional frameworks through, for example, quantification of efficiency gaps in target countries, regions and production systems

Focus area 2: Restoring value to grasslands
Enhancing livestock-related ecosystem services, productivity and livelihoods through the restoration, optimal management and utilization of grasslands through, for example, synthesis of non-market benefits of grassland restoration and an assessment of global grassland carbon sequestration potential

Focus area 3: Transforming waste to worth
Reducing nutrient overload and greenhouse gas emissions by livestock systems through the recovery and recycling of nutrients and energy contained in manure through, for example, a global inventory of current manure distribution, management practices and associated nutrient balances

This morning (15 Oct 2013), ILRI director Shirley Tarawali, an agronomist and livestock feed specialist by training, took part in a panel discussion questioning whether the Agenda should address ‘comprehensive sustainability’.

What is the evidence that it can be done? ILRI scientists are working to help obtain this (see below, for example). What strikes Tarawali most is the cogency of the three focus areas chosen to build this sustainability and the consistency of alignment demonstrated among the diverse kinds of livestock stakeholders taking part in this Global Agenda of Action.

Asked if we need an ‘IPCC’ to help us manage a sustainable evolution of the global livestock sector, Tarawali answered: ‘The Global Agenda is the IPCC of our global livestock systems! If we pay serious attention to the Agenda’s three focus areas of work, we can do this.’

ILRI scientists working directly with the Global Agenda of Action
ILRI director and agronomist/feed specialist Shirley Tarawali (UK) is part of the Guiding Group. Feed resources specialist Michael Blümmel (Germany), agricultural economist Hikuepi (Epi) Katjiuongua (Namibia) and sustainable livestock systems project leader Iain Wright (UK) are working with the Agenda’s Efficiency Group. Ecosystem ecologist Rich Conant (USA), livestock and the environment leader Polly Ericksen (USA) and ILRI Forage Genebank manager Alexandra Jorge (Mozambique) are working with the Agenda’s Grasslands Group. And landscape ecologist Tim Robinson (UK) and environmental scientist Nguyen Viet Hung (Vietnam) are working with the Agenda’s Manure Group.

See the Agenda strategy and consensus.

Directly below, view the slide presentation made by ILRI director general Jimmy Smith at the Third Multi-Stakeholder Platform Meeting of the Global Agenda of Action in Support of Sustainable Livestock Sector Development, which was co-hosted in Nairobi, Kenya, by ILRI, FAO and AU-IBAR, 22–24 Jan 2013.

Or, below, watch this 3-minute video produced by FAO introducing the Global Agenda of Action.

Empower local experts to inform agricultural policy in Africa: Short filmed interview of FANRPAN’s Lindiwe Majele Sibanda

One of the more interesting side events at this month’s sixth Africa Agriculture Science Week (AASW6) hosted by the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) in Accra, Ghana, 15–20 Jul 2013, was hosted by the CGIAR Challenge Program on Water & Food, of which the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) is a partner.

In this 2.48-minute filmed interview at AASW6, Lindiwe Majele Sibanda, chief executive officer and chief of mission of the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN), based in South Africa, shares how ‘innovation platforms’ have ‘brought a new way of doing business’ that is helping to inform policy changes in the agricultural sector.

‘What is clear was that we have often sidelined traditional leaders and not looked at non-scientists and non-technocrats,’ said Sibanda, who chairs ILRI’s board of trustees. ‘We should be focusing on empowering these local experts, giving them capacity to inform policy processes to ensure sustainability.’

‘For this to happen,’ Sibanda says, ‘we need policies that are created bottom up, where the evidence comes from practitioners but is packaged to feed directly into policy.’

‘This process is about equipping all actors to be drivers of change—change that is driven by evidence that comes from research,’ she adds.

The chain starts from those affected by the problem being around the table with those who want to experiment, research and deliver options for development—sitting as equal partners.—Lindiwe Majele Sibanda, CEO of FANRPAN

This session by the CGIAR Challenge Program on Water & Food, which was facilitated by ILRI’s knowledge management and communication specialist, Ewen Le Borgne, shared experiences from the Limpopo, Nile and Volta basins on engaging partners, keeping them motivated and sustaining their engagement after the program is completed. The session’s 70 participants discussed how to set up engagement platforms, engage with policy, scale up platforms and how to deal with power and representation in these groups.

About AASW6
FARA’s 6th Africa Agriculture Science Week (AASW6), in Accra, Ghana, included marketplace exhibitions (15-20 Jul 2013), side events on sub-themes (15-16), a ministerial roundtable alongside a Ghana Day (17 Jul), plenary sessions (18-19) and a FARA Business Meeting (20 Jul). The discussions were captured on Twitter (hashtag #AASW6) and blogged about on the FARA AASW6 blog.

Read more on the ILRI blogs about AASW6

With ‘new road’ for agricultural research, Africa can feed Africa—and will feed Africa, and the world

NEPAD’s Ibrahim Mayaki makes the case for investing in Africa’s agricultural research for development, 23 Jul 2013

Recycling Africa’s agro-industrial wastewaters: Innovative system is piloted for Kampala City Abattoir, 22 Jul 2013

Jimmy Smith and Frank Rijsberman speak out at FARA’s Africa Agriculture Science Week, 22 Jul 2013

Lindiwe Majele Sibanda and Monty Jones on closing the gaps in agricultural research for Africa’s development, 19 Jul 2013

Voices from the sixth Africa Agriculture Science Week, 18 Jul 2013

‘Not by food alone’: Livestock research should be used to make a bigger difference, say African experts, 17 Jul 2013

‘Livestock Research for Africa’s Food Security’: Join us at our side event at FARA’s AASW in Accra, 15 July, 9 Jul 2013

Dairy farming = ‘dairy education’: The sector that is educating Kenya’s children – filmed story, 12 Jul 2013

Dairy farming = ‘dairy education’: The sector that is educating Kenya’s children – filmed story

This 3:25-minute film shares how keeping cows has enabled Margaret Muchina, a dairy farmer from central Kenya, to support and educate her four children, who include Edward Kimani, who sat for his high school exam in 2010 and emerged as one of the country’s best students.

This single mother from Kenya’s Kiambu District started keeping dairy cows on her 2-acre farm in 1985. Her regular dairy income, mostly through daily milk sales, has been critical in enabling her to support her family, including the schooling of her children. Her dairy income is now supporting Kimani’s education at the University of Nairobi, where he is studying for a bachelor’s degree in geology.

Between 1997 and 2005, Margaret was one of many Kenyan farmers who participated in an award-winning Smallholder Dairy Project that carried out research to help improve the country’s smallholder, and largely informal, dairy sector, which trades mostly in ‘raw ‘ (unpasteurized) milk and was then being more harassed than supported by regulatory authorities.

The Smallholder Dairy Project supported a move towards towards a more favourable policy environment that paved the way for significant increases in the number of raw milk traders in the country, which helped milk producers like Margaret sell more milk leading to wider economy wide benefits for small-scale farmers.

Like many other Kenyans keeping one or two dairy cows to help them feed their families and send their children to school, Margaret Muchina is grateful to the Smallholder Dairy Project for information on best farm management and milk handling practices. Mrs Muchina now operates her small dairying with greater freedom and with new support from her government.

The Smallholder Dairy Project was led by Kenya’s Ministry of Livestock and implemented by the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).

Find out more about the Smallholder Dairy Project

ILRI’s current work in dairying focuses on value chain development in Tanzania. Read more here.

Staff of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and many other CGIAR centres and research programs will be discussing the successes of Africa’s agriculture, including how its livestock sector can help achieve food security in the continent, at the 6th Africa Agriculture Science Week (AASW6) in Accra, Ghana. This event is being hosted by the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) and the Government of Ghana and runs from Monday–Saturday, 15–20 Jul 2013.

Check out this blog next week for more stories from the 6th Africa Agriculture Science Week.

More meat, milk and fish — Big interventions for ‘farm-to-table’ livestock value chains in poor countries

Watch this brief (3-minute) film introducing a new multi-centre CGIAR research program, one after ‘more meat, milk and fish by and for the poor’, that has ambitions to do research differently, moving from research products to research outcomes. Developing—and getting into use—big interventions that help transform eight ‘whole farm-to plate livestock and fish value chains’ are what this program is about. Is it doable? Let us know what you think.

In this 3-minute film, Tom Randolph, an agricultural economist with the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), explains what’s new about the multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional CGIAR Research Program on Livestock and Fish that he directs.

‘Meat, milk and fish are critical to the poor both as food and income’, Randolph says. ‘But while research has hugely increased farm production in rich countries, we haven’t suceeded yet to help the millions of family farms in developing nations to raise their production very much.

We’ve been doing a lot of good science a lot of good research over the years. But all that good science has not translated into significant improvements in the amount of milk meat and fish that people are able to produce and put on their tables for themselves and their communities.

‘To change this, we’re experimenting with a new approach. The focus of research in the past was on research products. Now we’re making ourselves accountable for getting research into use.

This is what a new program called More Meat, Milk and Fish by and for the Poor is all about.

‘So what’s different about this program? Well, for one thing, we’re addressing the whole way these foods move from small farms to tables. This so-called ‘food chain’ includes producing, processing, selling and consuming meat, milk and fish.

‘And we’re working to design big interventions that can transform whole farm-to-table chains in selected countries. This will help us scale up our research, with direct benefits for large numbers of people.

‘Also, we’re teaming up early with development partners who know how to take these interventions to scale.

‘Finally our program is focusing all its research capacity on just 8 farm-to-table livestock and fish systems selected because their successes can be replicated in many other regions. These 8 systems include small-scale dairying, goat and sheep raising, pig production and aquaculture in 8 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

‘Our intention is to show that small-scale farmers and businesses, already central to feeding the world’s poor, will be key to food security up to the year 2050, when global populations peak. We want to demonstrate that their systems can be transformed. And this kind of science can make a big difference in everyone’s lives. Additionally, you can explore more about our program and initiatives at https://cherrypickertraining.org.uk/.

By doing research in this different way, we expect within a decade to see more meat, milk and fish being produced and consumed by the people who need it most.’

Below, view a slide presentation version of the film above by Tom Randolph: ‘More meat, milk and fish by and for the poor: How the Livestock and Fish Research Program Helps Improve Access to Critical Animal-source Foods’, Mar 2013.

Four CGIAR research institutions—the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and WorldFish—as well as many other partners are working together in the CGIAR Research Program on Livestock and Fish.

Watch two companion film presentations
Shirley Tarawali, ILRI director of Institutional Planning and Partnerships, on Livestock Research for Food Security and Poverty Reduction (15 minutes)
Jimmy Smith, ILRI director general, on ILRI and the Global Development Agenda (13 minutes)

Jimmy Smith on the global development agenda, and livestock’s role in it — 13-minute film

Watch this 13-minute film-enhanced slide presentation by ILRI director general Jimmy Smith on the global development agenda and the roles of livestock, and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), within it.

‘Over the last several decades, up until the early 2000s, agriculture was a very neglected sector. Agricultural investments precipitously declined from about 15% of official development assistance to about 2.5% in the early 2000s.

‘However, the world food crisis of 2008 and the recurring ones since then have elevated the agricultural agenda high up on the development agenda. So the challenge for us now is how we will feed the world, what will be the contribution of livestock, and how will we address poverty and environmental sustainability.

Trends
‘Livestock often make up 40% of agricultural GDP, and the sector is growing fairly rapidly; 4 of the top 5 agricultural commodities by value are livestock, and in Africa, 4 of the top 10 agricultural commodities are livestock. So livestock are quite important in terms of the global food and poverty agenda.

No matter which region we look at, livestock’s contribution to agricultural GDP is growing as fast as the rest of agriculture, and in most cases faster. Per capita consumption of meat in the developing parts of the world, for example in Africa, is only 13 kg, when meat consumption in North America, for example, is 125 kg per person.

The growth in demand for livestock products is happening everywhere. No matter which region we look at, and no matter which commodity of livestock we look at, there is growth. Between now and 2030, the demand for various livestock commodities will grow, from 50% in the case of pork to up to 600% in the case of poultry.

‘Less than 15% of the total livestock commodities are traded, so though trade is important, local markets matter more. And these local markets in the case of livestock commodities are mostly informal. So as we attempt to deal with meeting the rising demand for livestock products, we must work on the informal markets as much as we work on the formal ones.

‘So what’s the global development agenda that livestock faces? First, livestock contributes to the livelihoods of over a billion people. And so there is a great opportunity for us in this rising demand for livestock products to integrate small farmers into markets. For us, that’s a big opportunity to contribute both to food security and to poverty reduction. . . .

‘About one billion people rely on livestock for their livelihoods in the developing world. And these people, relatively poor, in rural areas, need attention so that they will not only contribute to the global food equation, but also reduce their poverty.

Livestock ‘goods’ and ‘bads’
‘But as we know, livestock are not all good. There are also some “bads” about livestock. They contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions, amounting (depending on whose calculations you look at) to somewhere between 14 and 26%. So as we integrate smallholders into markets, we must be sure that we give them the tools to cut the carbon footprint of livestock.

‘As livestock populations have been growing around the world, disease challenges have emerged more and more. And these mostly include (but are not limited to) “zoonotic” diseases that can go from humans to livestock and livestock to humans.

‘In many developing countries, consumption of meat and milk is low, and there is an opportunity to increase that consumption for better nutrition and health. There’s also the concern, even in developing countries, about obesity—people who consume too much.

‘There are many other ways that livestock contribute to the rural poor. These are what we refer to as the “non-tradables”, such as manure, which, for example, in India is about 50% of the nitrogen used in crop farming. And livestock provide traction and fuel in addition to the enormous cultural values that livestock have held for people since ancient times.

‘In our efforts to address the global livestock agenda, we see ourselves working in three broad systems.

Three systems ILRI works in
High growth
‘The first are those systems where the possibilities for growth are quite high, and where there is good market access, where we can increase the productivity of livestock, so that smallholders can contribute to the global food equation and at the same time use that to escape poverty.

Fragile growth
‘But we also have very fragile environments in which livestock are raised, in the drylands, for example, where pastoralism is the main means of livelihood. And there is very little opportunity to increase the productivity of livestock. Rather, the challenge in these systems is mainly to put safety nets under those who are very vulnerable to changing climates and harsh ecological conditions.

Growth with externalities
‘The third are those systems with high growth but also externalities. These are what we refer to as ‘factory farms’, large intensive farms found in many parts of the developed world but also increasingly in the developing world. And here the issues are about how you dispose of manure, and how you deal with the threat of livestock diseases. We see a marginal role for ILRI in these latter systems, but aware that small-scale farming in the developing world will over time increase in size. this is not a system that we will ignore entirely.

Livestock in CGIAR research programs
‘We’re addressing these livestock issues through what are known as the CGIAR research programs. We lead the Livestock and Fish program and we are major players in the other seven CGIAR research programs. We are addressing our agenda through these new CGIAR research programs, which are giving us huge access not only to our traditional partners, who are the other CGIAR research centres, but also many development partners in both the developed and developing worlds.

ILRI’s strengths
‘We’re a very strong player in gender and equity issues. We’re a strong player in work to build resilience in livestock communities in marginal environments. We’re working with others on innovations in value chains for various livestock commodities. We’re a significant player in dealing with zoonotic diseases and food safety. And of course feed, an intractable problem for small-scale livestock systems in developing countries, is an area in which we are engaged as well.

‘And we work on issues at the interface of livestock and the environment, including both the impacts of livestock on the environment and the impacts of the (changing) environment on livestock. That’s what we call our “integrated sciences”.

‘We also work in the biosciences, where most of the work goes on in laboratories. We’re an increasingly important player in vaccinology, in genomics and in breeding. In what is known as the BecA-ILRI Hub, we have world-class biosciences facilities that are being used not just for livestock but also for crop sciences. In future, we’ll strengthen our work in genomics and gene delivery, in feed biosciences and in poultry genetics.

ILRI resources
‘We’re an institute of 700 staff around the world, have an annual budget of about USD60 million, operate in about 30 scientific disciplines, and have over 120 senior scientists with many more junior scientists, representing 39 developing countries. Of our internationally recruited staff, 56% are from developing countries, and 34% are women—we’re proud of this record and we need to improve on it. We operate out of two large campuses, in Kenya and in Ethiopia, with other staff located in about 20 other sites around the world, in Africa and South and Southeast Asia, and we’re now looking at how we might engage in livestock research work in Latin America and Central Asia.’

Watch two companion filmed presentations

Go to ILRI’s website for more on ILRI’s new long-term strategy.

View related ILRI slide presentations
Livestock research for food security and poverty reduction: ILRI strategy 2013–2022, Apr 2013
(and see a related ILRI News blog post: Launching ILRI’s new long-term strategy for livestock research for development, 12 Jun 2013).

An overview of ILRI, by Jimmy Smith, 25 Feb 2013

Taking the long livestock view, by Jimmy Smith, 22 Jan 2013

Livestock and global change, by Mario Herrero, 28 Nov 2012

The global livestock agenda, by Jimmy Smith, 27 Nov 2012

Working together for viable livestock futures: Stakeholders at the Global Agenda of Action speak out


Today (17 Jun 2013), a meeting of A Global Agenda of Action in Support of Sustainable Livestock Sector Development is taking place at the Rome headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). The Agenda is a partnership of stakeholders who are committed to the sustainable development of the livestock sector. Today’s Multi-stakeholder Action for Sustainable Livestock meeting will share experiences on innovative forms of stakeholder dialogue and partnerships and is a follow up to an Agenda meeting held this past January in Kenya.

This 6-minute film shares views of some of the participants at the Third Multi-stakeholder Platform Meeting of the Global Agenda of Action which was held in Nairobi 22-24 January 2013. The meeting was organized by FAO, the African Union-Interafrican Bureau for Animal Resources and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).

‘We’re not particularly good at articulating how the livestock sector should move forward and the social and economic benefits the sector offers,’ says Henning Steinfeld, head of the livestock sector analysis and policy branch at FAO.

‘This agenda ensures we are working together to make livestock production meet the future needs for animal products for a growing world population, especially in developing countries,’ said Hsin Huang, secretary general of the International Meat Secretariat.

The Agenda’s stakeholders are focusing on three areas in their quest to improve the performance of the livestock sector:

  • Closing the efficiency gap: Application of existing technology and institutional frameworks to generate large resource use efficiency, economic and social gains. 
  • Restoring value to grasslands: Harnessing grass/rangeland’s potential to contribute to environmental services and sustainable livelihoods.
  • Towards zero discharge: Reducing nutrient overload and greenhouse gas emissions through cost-effective recycling and recovery of nutrients and energy contained in animal manure.

Nearly 100 participants from more than 20 countries attended this year’s meeting. The official launch of the Global Agenda of Action is planned later.

Read ILRI news articles about the Third Multi-stakeholder Platform Meeting of the Global Agenda of Action:

https://newsarchive.ilri.org/archives/10333

https://newsarchive.ilri.org/archives/10390

Launching ILRI’s new long-term strategy for livestock research for development–15-minute film

Watch this 15-minute filmed presentation on ILRI’s new long-term strategy.

Shirley Tarawali, director of institutional planning and partnerships at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), describes ILRI’s new and recently launched long-term strategy.

‘We recently finalized a strategy for the coming ten years. The institute’s previous ten-year strategy finished in 2010 and we’ve had a lot of changes. We’ve become a member of the CGIAR Consortium. We’ve had a new director general. And the challenges facing agriculture and livestock in particular have become huge. We needed to consolidate and refocus our efforts for the coming ten years.

‘The strategy is called Livestock research for food security and poverty reduction. ILRI’s previous strategy was very much focused on poverty reduction, so we’ve expanded our mandate.

‘For much of 2012, we’ve been working on bringing together stakeholders, inside the institute, those who we work with, and those who don’t know us so well, in order to consult face-to-face and online to get inputs on where we should focus, where our priorities should be.

ILRI Vision and mission

‘ILRI’s strategic objectives—the what, if you like—were informed by a diagnosis involving a lot of external consultations.

Diagnosis

Food security challenge
‘The whole world is concerned about how we can feed more billions of people in the decades to come; we see livestock as part of the solution to this food security challenge.

Delivering at scale
‘We can’t operate on small project levels; we need to make sure our research leads to development outcomes and impacts; significant numbers of people who keep animals in one way or another (there are probably about 1 billion) are impacted by our research.

Women in livestock development
‘We need to be specific about the roles of women in livestock development; if you want to have significant agricultural development impacts, you need to take specific account of the roles of women, who are often the ones raising the animals or processing or selling the milk and other animal products.

Diversity of livestock systems
‘Poor people who keep animals are involved in many different production systems, sometimes raising animals for milk and meat, sometimes for better cropping, sometimes to trade stock. Their opportunities depend on the livestock system they practice, the livestock commodities they produce and their economic situation.

Human health and the environment
‘Livestock systems can harm human health and the environment, but in developing countries there are huge opportunities to address these problems and use livestock to better protect human health and the environment.

New science
‘Even in developed countries, the productivity of agricultural systems is reaching its boundaries, so we need new science solutions. This is very much the case in developing countries as well, and we want to make sure that we bring new science to bear on developing-country livestock agriculture.

Greater funding
‘Although in many developing countries livestock contribute about 40% of agricultural GDP, investment in the livestock sector remains relatively low; raising funding for livestock research for development is essential.

Capacity development
‘We need greater capacity all round: within ILRI and within our partner and investor organizations.

Fit for purpose
‘We need to make sure that that every bit of the organization is lined up to deliver on our strategic objectives.

‘Given this diagnosis, ILRI must succeed in meeting three strategic objectives.

ILRI STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES
#1: Improve practice

‘We need to provide poor people raising and trading animals and animal products with the technologies and institutional and market environments they need.

#2: Influence decision-makers
‘We need to influence decision-makers to increase their investments in sustainable and profitable livestock systems of the poor.

#3: Develop capacity
‘We need to make sure that capacity exists to make good use of livestock investments and deliver at scale.

ILRI CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS

‘Finally, what we are calling critical success factors, this is the “how”. . . .’

ILRI strategy: Five intersecting critical success factors

The figure above shows the five areas in which ILRI needs to perform well, all of which depend critically on partnerships for success.

Watch two companion filmed presentations:
by Jimmy Smith, director general of ILRI, on ILRI and the Global Development Agenda (13 minutes) and
by Tom Randolph, director of the CGIAR Research Program on Livestock and Fish, on More Meat, Milk and Fish by and for the Poor (3 minutes).

Go to ILRI’s website for more on ILRI’s new long-term strategy.