Taking stock: East Africa Dairy Development project reflects on its achievements and lessons learned

EADD Annual Review and Planning Meeting 2011

A young East African feeds his family’s dairy cows (photo credit: EADD).

From 2008, the East Africa Dairy Development (EADD) project has been working in Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda with the aim of transforming the lives of 179,000 families (about 1 million people) by doubling household dairy income in 10 years through integrated interventions in dairy production, market access and knowledge application.

The project is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and implemented by Heifer International, African Breeders Services—Total Cattle Management, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), TechnoServe and the World Agroforestry Centre.

With the first phase of the project ending in June 2013, two members of the project team—Isabelle Baltenweck, agricultural economist at ILRI, and Gerald Mutinda, the EADD regional manager in charge of dairy productivity, gender and youth—recently had the opportunity to take stock of some of the project’s key achievements during a ‘livestock live talk’ held 26 Jun 2013 at ILRI’s Nairobi campus.

Livestock live talk is a seminar series at ILRI that aims to address livestock-related issues, mobilize external as well as in-house expertise and audiences and engage the livestock community around interdisciplinary conversations that ask hard questions and seek to refine current research concepts and practices.

The talk began with a description of the project, its value chain approach, vision and objectives, and followed by an overview of its achievements and lessons learned.

The speakers then highlighted the project’s innovative ‘hub approach’ which was adopted to help overcome the challenges small-scale dairy farmers often face in accessing farm inputs such as feeds as well as animal breeding and health services.

The hub approach takes advantages of economies of scale and enables service providers to have a wider customer base, thereby making it more efficient for them to operate. Through the hub approach, farmers organize themselves into dairy farmer business associations that make it easier for individual farmers to access inputs and services as well as facilities for bulking and cooling of raw milk.

It was noted that the hubs should not be viewed as a ‘model’ per se, but rather as an approach that can be tailored and adapted to suit different regions and countries. For example, the project found that many hubs can be successful by providing milk bulking services alone while others can offer both milk bulking and cooling. For the second phase of the project, the hub approach planned for Tanzania is centred around the provision of inputs and services.

Another key learning point was the importance of ensuring that the due attention is given to gender aspects during the design and implementation of the project. The speakers admitted that key aspect was overlooked during the design of the first phase of the project. As a result, some key gender-based indicators were not properly tracked.

However, this oversight has been corrected and the team now has a comprehensive gender strategy in place to guide the project design for the second phase to ensure that gender mainstreaming is incorporated through gender analysis at various levels of the value chain as well as monitoring and evaluation of thematic gender-based studies.

The ‘cream’ from more efficient dairying: Kenya to pilot scheme to pay smallholders for their environmental services

Global Agenda: 1 of 3 objectives

One of three objectives of the Global Agenda of Action in Support of Sustainable Livestock Sector Development. Its Third Multi-Stakeholder Platform Meeting was co-hosted in Nairobi, Kenya, by ILRI, FAO and AU-IBAR, 22-24 Jan 2013 (photo credit: ILRI/Susan MacMillan).

Guest blog post by ILRI’s Simon Fraval

In collaboration with the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Kenya Ministry of Livestock Development, researchers at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) are assessing the feasibility of the Kenyan dairy industry obtaining payment for its environmental services through productivity gains. (See this ILRI position paper for more information on ‘payment for environmental services’ schemes).

Reducing the level of greenhouse gases generated per unit of milk produced by smallholder farmers could be attractive to environmental markets. While this project will not provide direct money transfers to Kenya’s dairy farmers, it will support agricultural extension for better cow nutrition and other interventions made to increase milk production while also reducing emissions of greenhouse gases per unit of milk.

The concept gained momentum at an interim preparatory committee meeting of the Global Agenda of Action in Support of Sustainable Livestock Sector Development held in Rome in September 2012.

The Global Agenda is committed to broad-based, voluntary and informal stakeholder actions improving the performance of the livestock sector. It ambitiously aims to protect natural resources as well as to reduce poverty and protect public health. The Agenda’s stakeholders have agreed initially to focus on the following three objectives: Close the efficiency gap in livestock production systems, restore value to grasslands’ environmental services and sustainable livelihoods, and recover and recycle nutrients and energy contained in animal manure. The Agenda is working to achieve these objectives largely through consulting and networking, analyzing and informing, and guiding and piloting.

Progress on the Kenya dairy pilot ‘payment for environmental services’ project was presented at the third multi-stakeholder platform meeting of the Global Agenda, held in Nairobi, Kenya, 22–24 January 2013. This project provided a practical example of the Agenda’s core activity in piloting novel approaches to ‘close the efficiency gap’. The presentation to the Global Agenda meeting can be found on its Livestock Dialogue website.

Pilot workshop on payment for environmental services for Kenya's dairy sector

A stakeholders’ workshop on a pilot ‘payment for environmental services’ project for Kenya’s dairy industry was held in Jan 2013. Pictured left to right: Luke Kessei, Kenya Ministry of Livestock Development; Julius Kiptarus, Director of Livestock Production in Kenya’s Ministry of Livestock Development; Pierre Gerber, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations; and Isabelle Baltenweck, ILRI (photo credit: MLD/Henry Ngeno).

Following the progress update provided at the mid-January 2013 Global Agenda meeting, a stakeholder workshop was held later in the month (29 Jan 2013) engaging representatives from the Kenya Dairy Board, the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute, the Kenya Dairy Processors Association, Kenyan livestock and cooperation ministries, development organizations and ILRI. The workshop was attended by Julius Kiptarus, Director of Livestock Production in Kenya’s Ministry of Livestock Development.

Stakeholders of the pilot ‘payment for environmental services’ project for Kenya’s dairy industry discussed the intricacies of such schemes, particularly carbon markets; site selection; potential greenhouse gas mitigation activities; and the design of a feasibility study. View slide presentations from this workshop here.

Technical mitigation options in dairy from ILRI: By Caroline Opiyo, of FAO.

This pilot project is the first to access markets for payment for environmental services schemes through productivity gains in smallholder livestock enterprises. With the setting of this precedent and development of an internationally recognized methodology, development organizations will be able to replicate this pilot project and draw funding from the carbon market and other providers of ‘payment for environmental services’ schemes.

For more information, please contact Simon Fraval, a volunteer with AusAID’s Australian Youth Ambassadors for Development program placed at ILRI’s Nairobi headquarters, where he supports CGIAR research programs on ‘Climate Change, Agriculture, and Food Security’ and ‘Livestock and Fish: More meat, milk and fish by and for the poor’. Fraval brings to ILRI expertise in livestock value-chain development and life-cycle assessment. Contact him at s.fraval [at] cigar.org