Taking Stock: Jul 2012 round-up of news from ILRI

Remembering Jeff Haskins

JEFF HASKINS
Last month, we at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and within CGIAR and the wider agricultural development communities grieved over the sudden loss of American media guru Jeff Haskins, who had spent six years in Africa covering African agriculture news stories for the American PR firm Burness Communications. Haskins, who had just turned 32, died at the Kenya coast on 14 Jul 2012. See online tributes to him from the ILRI News Blog (with links to 25 major news releases and 20 major opinion pieces that ILRI produced with the help of Jeff and his Burness team over the last five years), Pictures of Jeff Haskins (ILRI Pinterest Board), Pictures by Jeff Haskins (ILRI Pinterest Board)Burness Communications Blog, Global Crop Diversity Trust, CGIARInternational Center for Tropical AgricultureLa Vie Verte and Jeff Haskins Facebook page.

Emerging Zoonotic Diseases Events 1940-2012

MAPPING ZOONOSES
Before his untimely death, Jeff Haskins in early Jul orchestrated major and widespread media coverage of a groundbreaking report by ILRI revealing a heavy burden of zoonoses, or human diseases transmitted from animals, facing one billion of the world’s poor. Some 60 per cent of all human diseases originate in animal populations. The ILRI study found five countries—Bangladesh, China, Ethiopia, India and Nigeria—to be hotspots of poverty and zoonoses. The study also found that northeastern United States, Western Europe (especially the United Kingdom), Brazil and parts of Southeast Asia may be hotspots of ‘emerging zoonoses’—those that are newly infecting humans, are newly virulent, or have newly become drug resistant. The study, Mapping of Poverty and Likely Zoonoses Hotspots, examined the likely impacts of livestock intensification and climate change on the 13 zoonotic diseases currently causing the greatest harm to the world’s poor. It was developed with support from the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID).

An opinion piece by the main author of the study, ILRI veterinary epidemiologist Delia Grace, wearing her hat as a member of the Dynamic Drivers of Disease in Africa Consortium, appeared this Jul in The Guardian‘s Poverty Matters Blog.

Azage Tegegne of IPMS awarded an honorary Doctorate of Science degree

ILRI AWARD
Azage Tegegne, of ILRI and the Improving Productivity and Market Success of Ethiopian Farmers (IPMS) project, was awarded an honorary doctorate of science degree by Ethiopia’s prestigious Bahir Dar University.

Bruce Scott with ILRI Addis colleagues

ILRI STAFF
ILRI bid goodbye to Bruce Scott, who served ILRI as a director for 13 years, the last decade as director of ILRI’s partnerships and communications department. Bruce is moving only down the road in Nairobi, from Kabete to Westlands, where he is taking up the position of deputy director of a new initiative of Columbia University (USA): Columbia Global Centers  ⁄ Africa.

ILRI & FODDER AT RIO+20
We  compiled links to ILRI inputs to the Rio+20 conference, including how to ‘turn straw into gold’ with dual-purpose crop residues and, with the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), how livestock feed innovations can reduce poverty and livestock’s environmental ‘hoofprint’.

POLICY BRIEF
ILRI produced a policy brief on ‘Preventing and controlling classical swine fever in northeast India‘.

VIDEO INTERVIEWS
We film interviewed ILRI director general Jimmy Smith on ILRI’s evolving new livestock strategy and on ILRI’s role in providing evidence about the ‘bads’ as well as ‘goods’ of livestock production, marketing and consumption. And we interviewed ILRI scientist Joerg Jores on his research results, which, as reported in Scientific American, show that the pathogen that causes cattle pneumonia (CBPP) arose with domestication of ruminants ten thousand years ago, but only ‘heated up’ and began causing disease relatively recently.

Commissioners in Africa

VIP VISITORS
An Australian contingent visited ILRI this month and launched a new initiative, the Australian International Food Security Centre, to improve food security in Africa. The centre, which falls under the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), will spend USD33.8 million over four years to support food production in Africa as well as in Asia and the Pacific region.

Visit by Korea's Rural Development Authority (RDA) to ILRI in Nairobi

PROJECT NEWS
We reported on the signing of a memorandum of understanding by ILRI and Korea‘s Rural Development Authority (RDA) for laboratory work in Kenya, innovative platforms in an imGoats project in India and Mozambique, and training sessions on controlling zoonoses conducted by the Vietnamese members of an ILRI-led project known by its acronym EcoZD (‘Ecosystem Approaches to the Better Management of Zoonotic Emerging Infectious Diseases in Southeast Asia’).

Curious pig in Uganda raised for sale

SELECTED RECENT PRESENTATIONS
Azage Tegegne Livestock and irrigation value chains for Ethiopian smallholders (LIVES) project, Addis Ababa, Jun (256 views).
Danilo Pezo Smallholder pig value chain development in Uganda, Wakiso, Jun (1186 views).
Derek Baker Livestock farming in developing countries: An essential resource, World Meat Congress, Paris, Jun (874 views).
Derek Baker Interpreting trader networks as value chains: Experience with Business Development Services in smallholder dairy in Tanzania and Uganda, ILRI Nairobi, Jun (1879 views).
Peter Ballantyne Open knowledge sharing to support learning in agricultural and livestock research for development projects, Addis Ababa, Jun (1589 views).
John Lynam Applying a systems framework to research on African farming systems, CGIAR drylands workshop, Nairobi, Jun (1884 views).
Bernard Bett Spatial-temporal analysis of the risk of Rift Valley fever in Kenya, European Geosciences Union Conference, Vienna, Apr (1164 views).
Nancy Johnson The production and consumption of livestock products in developing countries: Issues facing the world’s poor, Farm Animal Integrated Research Conference, Washington DC, Mar (542 views).

Sharing the space: Seven livestock leaders speak out on a global agenda

Those interested in the future of the livestock sector—particularly in its potential to help alleviate world poverty and hunger without harming human health and the environment—will want to watch this 10-minute film of brief comments made by seven leaders in livestock development thinking. These comments were captured at the end of a recent (12–15 Mar 2012) ‘High-Level Consultation for a Global Livestock Agenda to 2020’, which was co-hosted by the World Bank and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and held at ILRI’s headquarters, in Nairobi, Kenya.

The seven participants interviewed are (1) Francois Le Gall, co-host of this consultation and livestock advisor at the World Bank; (2) Henning Steinfeld, chief of livestock information and policy at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO); (3) Kristin Girvetz, program officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; (4) Bernard Vallat, director general of the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE); (5) Boni Moyo, ILRI representative for southern Africa; (6) Carlos Seré, chief development strategist at the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD); and (7) Jimmy Smith, co-host of this event and director general of ILRI.

Eight other leaders in global livestock issues took part in last week’s consultation in Nairobi:

ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations): Soloman Benigno, project manager and animal health expert

AU-IBAR (African Union-Interafrican Bureau for Animal Resources): Ahmed El-Sawalhy, director; Bruce Mukanda, senior program and projects officer; Baba Soumare, chief animal health officer

EU (European Union) Delegation to Kenya: Bernard Rey, head of operations

OIE (World Organisation for Animal Health): Walter Masiga, sub-regional representative for Eastern Africa and the Horn of Africa

UN (United Nations): David Nabarro, special representative of the UN secretary general for food security and nutrition (via filmed presentation)

World Bank: Stephane Forman, livestock specialist for Africa

Read more about this consultation on this ILRI News Blog: Developing an enabling global livestock agenda for our lives, health and lands, 13 Mar 2012.

View pictures of the event on ILRI Flickr

Towards a more coherent narrative for the global livestock sector

Jimmy Smith and Henning Steinfeld (FAO)

ILRI’s Jimmy Smith (left) and FAO’s Henning Steinfeld confer at a high-level consultation for a global livestock agenda to 2020 at ILRI’s Nairobi campus this week.

High-level leaders in the livestock world have agreed on major ways to fulfill on an ambitious global livestock agenda to 2020 that would work simultaneously to protect the environment, human health and socioeconomic equity. The heads of ten agencies met earlier this week in Nairobi to hammer out the outlines of a consensus on strategies for a global livestock agenda to 2020. This High-Level Consultation for a Global Livestock Agenda to 2020 was co-hosted by the World Bank and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).

Three ‘pillars’ for the future of livestock were discussed: the environment, human health and social equity.

Henning Steinfeld, chief of livestock information and policy analysis at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), gave a presentation on the livestock-environment interfaceGlobal environmental challenges [and livestock].

Bernard Vallat, director general of the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), spoke on issues at the livestock-human health interfaceGlobal animal health challenges: The health pillar.

Carlos Seré, chief development strategist at the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), described livestock and equity issuesGlobal poverty and food security challenges: The equity pillar.

A major issue raised repeatedly throughout the 1.5-day consultation was the need to work in closer partnership not only to create synergies in institutional work programs but also to begin creating a more coherent narrative for the livestock sector. This new narrative is needed, it was said, both for some simple messaging to counter misunderstandings about the essential role livestock play in the lives and livelihoods of one billion poor people (e.g., dairying in poor countries feeds hungry children and pays for their schooling) and for more nuanced communications that help decision-makers and their constituencies better distinguish among livestock production systems, which vary vastly according, for example, to the different species kept (e.g., the rearing of pigs vs goats vs chickens), the environments in which the animals are raised (remote mountains vs fertile plains vs dry grasslands) and the particular livestock production system being employed (pastoral herding vs mixed smallholder farming vs industrial farming).

2012 ILRI-World Bank Livestock Agenda to 2020: Topic 1

François Le Gall (World Bank)

François Le Gall, senior livestock advisor at the World Bank, co-hosted an ILRI-World Bank High-Level Consultation on the Global Livestock Agenda by 2020, held in Nairobi, Kenya, 12-13 Mar 2012 (photo credit: ILRI/Susan MacMillan).

2012 ILRI-World Bank Livestock Agenda to 2020: Card 3

World Bank's Stephane Forman and François Le Gall

Stephane Forman (left) and François Le Gall, both livestock experts at the World Bank (photo credit: ILRI/Susan MacMillan).

2012 ILRI-World Bank Livestock Agenda to 2020: Card 4

ILRI animal health scientist Jeff Mariner

ILRI animal health scientist Jeff Mariner led discussions of one of several working groups at the consultation (photo credit: ILRI/Susan MacMillan).

2012 ILRI-World Bank Livestock Agenda to 2020: Card 7

Carlos Seré (IFAD) and Baba Soumare (AU-IBAR)

IFAD’s Carlos Seré (left) and Baba Soumare (centre), chief animal health officer at AU-IBAR (photo credit: ILRI/Susan MacMillan).

2012 ILRI-World Bank Livestock Agenda to 2020: Card 8

Walter Masiga and Bernard Vallet (OIE)

Walter Masiga and Bernard Vallet of the World Animal Health Organisation (OIE) (photo credit: ILRI/Susan MacMillan).

2012 ILRI-World Bank Livestock Agenda to 2020: Card 9

Kristin Girvetz, Gates Foundation

Kristin Girvetz, program officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (photo credit: ILRI/Susan MacMillan).

2012 ILRI-World Bank Livestock Agenda to 2020: Card 13

In total, 14 leaders in global livestock issues took part in this week’s Nairobi consultation:

ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations)
Soloman Benigno, project manager and animal health expert

AU-IBAR (African Union-Interafrican Bureau for Animal Resources)
Ahmed El-Sawalhy, director
Bruce Mukanda, senior program and projects officer
Baba Soumare, chief animal health officer

BMGF (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation)
Kristin Girvetz (formerly Grote), program officer

EU (European Union) Delegation to Kenya
Bernard Rey, head of operations

FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations)
Henning Steinfeld, chief of livestock information and policy

IFAD (International Fund for Agricultural Development)
Carlos Sere, chief development strategist

ILRI (International Livestock Research Institute)
Jimmy Smith, director general (co-host)

OIE (World Organisation for Animal Health)
Bernard Vallat, director general
Walter Masiga, sub-regional representative for Eastern Africa and the Horn of Africa

UN (United Nations)
David Nabarro, special representative of the UN secretary general for food security and nutrition (via filmed presentation)

World Bank
Francois Le Gall, livestock advisor at the World Bank (co-host)
Stephane Forman, livestock specialist for Africa

Read more about this consultation on this ILRI News Blog: Developing an enabling global livestock agenda for our lives, health and lands, 13 Mar 2012.

View pictures of the event on ILRI Flickr.

 

Developing an enabling global livestock agenda for our lives, health and lands

Jimmy Smith and Francois Le Gall (WB)

ILRI’s Jimmy Smith (left) and the World Bank’s Francois Le Gall are co-hosting a high-level consultation for a global livestock agenda to 2020 at ILRI’s Nairobi campus this week.

Can our global livestock systems meet a triple bottom line—protecting health, the environment and equity? Can 14 high-level leaders and thinkers outline and agree on a strategy that can help the world fulfill on that ambitious livestock agenda to 2020? Can all this be done in one and a half days?

Three weeks after Bill Gates announced at a meeting of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) in Rome new grants of USD200 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) to support the world’s smallholder farmers—a meeting in which Gates called on the big United Nations food-related agencies to work together to create a global productivity target for those small farmers—those agencies are meeting this week in Nairobi to hammer out the outlines of a consensus regarding strategies for a global livestock agenda to 2020.

This High-Level Consultation for a Global Livestock Agenda to 2020 is being co-hosted by:
Francois Le Gall, livestock advisor at the World Bank, and
Jimmy Smith, director general of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).

The dozen other heads of institutions and departments among the world’s leading bodies for food security that are taking part are:

ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations)
Soloman Benigno, project manager and animal health expert

AU-IBAR (African Union-Interafrican Bureau for Animal Resources)
Ahmed El-Sawalhy, director
Bruce Mukanda, senior program and projects officer
Baba Soumare, chief animal health officer

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF)
Kristin Girvetz (formerly Grote), program officer

European Union (EU) Delegation to Kenya
Bernard Rey, head of operations

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations
Henning Steinfeld, chief of livestock information and policy

International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)
Carlos Sere, chief development strategist

United Nations (UN)
David Nabarro, special representative of the UN secretary general for food security and nutrition (via filmed presentation)

World Bank
Stephane Forman, livestock specialist for Africa

World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE)
Bernard Vallat, director general
Walter Masiga, sub-regional representative for Eastern Africa and the Horn of Africa

Among the ideas rising to the surface for these leaders of global livestock departments and institutions are the need to shift focus from livestock per se to livestock-based lives and lands. The discussions are centering initially on three pillars of livestock development: health, environment and equity.

David Nabarro, the UN special representative for food security and nutrition, in a filmed presentation for this high-level consultation, said:

There is a movement for the transformation of food systems throughout the world. Livestock is an essential part of this equation. ILRI and the World Bank are key actors in seeing that science is applied for effective action for improved livestock systems. This meeting is important and happening when it should.

ILRI director general Jimmy Smith then gave an overview of the trends, opportunities and challenges of livestock development.

Feeding the world is possible, Smith concluded, as is sustaining our natural resource base and reducing absolute poverty.

Our challenges in achieving these, the livestock director said, include ‘improving our methodologies to develop more reliable assessments of the hard trade-offs involved in choosing ways forward for livestock development, managing those trade-offs at multiple scales, and ensuring institutional innovations, which will be as important as technological innovations—and perhaps harder to achieve’.
Watch and listen to Smith’s presentation.

Among the trends Smith highlighted are:

  • Demand for livestock products continues to rise
  • Livestock systems will continue to produce much of the world’s food
  • There remains a vast divide between developed and developing regions in kinds of livestock systems and their costs and benefits, but those different worlds are increasingly interconnected

Smith stressed the need for more reliable evidence-based assessments of the hard trade-offs implicit in our choices for the livestock sector, which will differ greatly in different regions and circumstances, especially in light of the fact that livestock impact so many important global development issues (e.g., human health, environmental protection, global food security)

An example of how critical livestock issues are for human well-being that Smith pointed out is the interface between livestock and human health.

Animal source foods are the biggest contributor to food-borne disease, Smith said. Diseases transmitted from livestock and livestock products kill more people each year than HIV or malaria. Indeed, one new human disease emerges every 2 months; and 20 percent of these are transmitted from livestock.

This consultation on a global livestock agenda comes at an appropriate time for Jimmy Smith, who started his tenure as director general of ILRI only late last year and who has instituted a task force, headed by ILRI’s director for institutional planning Shirley Tarawali, to refresh ILRI’s long-term strategy for livestock research for development. As several of the other institutions represented at this meeting are also in the thick of rethinking their strategies, this 1.5-day intense consultation is able to harvest the fruits of much recent hard thinking that has already been done in these global and regional institutions.

Policy workshop seeks sustainable practices to preserve livelihoods in Africa’s drylands

Nairobi workshop on Biodiversity, Ecosystem services, social sustainability and tipping points in African Drylands

Policymakers, practitioners and community users discussed, this week, ways to improve the sustainable management of Africa’s drylands at a workshop held at ILRI in Nairobi (photo credit: ILRI/Samuel Mungai).

Researchers, policymakers and livestock experts from Africa and the UK met this week to discuss the impacts of land use changes on African drylands  in efforts towards shaping policies that will enhance the sustainable management of these ecosystems.

In a workshop held on 14 February 2012 at the Nairobi headquarters of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), community representatives, scientists and specialists in ecology, economics and anthropology discussed research that is expected to shape policies for the improvement of poverty alleviation and ecosystems management in eastern Africa’s dryland ecosystems.

African drylands are fast approaching a tipping point brought about by policy-driven changes in land tenure that have transformed communal lands into private enclosures and wildlife conservancies and the closing off of open access lands that have limited livestock and wildlife mobility. These changes have led to environmental and social consequences that are threatening livestock production and and the livelihoods of pastoral people who depend on these lands.

‘This project will get to the heart of the complexities of drylands management because it is seeking to put pastoralists at the centre of managing their resources,’ said Jimmy Smith, the director general of ILRI. ‘Findings from this project will help us understand how livestock keepers interact with policies, the environment and their economic opportunities,’ said Smith.

The workshop which is part of a 24-month project known as the ‘Biodiversity, Ecosystem services, Social sustainability and Tipping points in African drylands (BEST).’ It is being carried out by a consortium of international partners who include ILRI, the Institute of Zoology, London, University College London and the African Technology Policy Studies Network who are using their expertise in natural resource and biodiversity assessment, natural resource management and communication to analyze the impacts of the changes taking place in dryland ecosystems. Other partners in the research include the Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute and the Association of Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa. The project is funded by a consortium of the Department for International Development and the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council and  Economic and Social Research Council.

‘We hope to address the very rapidly developing and severe challenges arising in east African arid- and semi-arid rangelands, particularly in Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania,’ said Katherine Homewood, an anthropologist with the University College London and the principal investigator for the project. ‘These changes have led to significant opportunity costs for pastoralists who depend on livestock production in these areas; some of whom have been displaced or dispossessed of their livelihoods,’ Homewood says, ‘because marginal areas have become immensely important to a huge variety of competing land uses like mining, biofuels production, crop farming and wildlife conservation.’

Despite these changes, findings indicate that livestock production remains the key source of income for pastoralists and the project, now in its first phase, will investigate how households are responding to the changes in dryland ecosystems, how pastoralist households invest time, labour and capital into livestock, farming or wildlife tourism in light of these changes and the consequences of these choices on poverty reduction, biodiversity and the local and national economies.

‘Results from this project will provide the government with useful information on biodiversity management, environmental reporting and land use practices by offering up to date information on social and environmental interactions that are essential for management of environmental risks in rangelands,’ said Ali Mohammed, Permanent Secretary in Kenya’s Ministry of Environment and Mineral Resources, who officially opened the workshop.

The project has been implemented for just under one year and  project partners used the workshop to draw on existing expert knowledge of dryland systems. This information will be used in modeling approaches for further analysis of dryland ecosystems. Among others, participants called for better evaluation of the opportunities and tradeoff emerging from differences in land tenure systems, disparities in distribution of  tourism income and displacements of pastoralists and diminishing livestock productivity. Information from this workshop will guide research and deliver findings that will help evaluate policy scenarios and give insights into ecosystem services to inform policymaking and practice.

 

More on the Biodiversity, Ecosystem services, Social sustainability and Tipping points in African drylands project: https://www.ilri.org/best

 

Watch a 10-minute film about finding ways of balancing the needs of people, lands and wildlife:

http://blip.tv/ilri/counting-in-a-disappearing-land-people-livestock-and-wildlife-1458292

 

‘Global Agenda of Action’ built for sustainable development of the world’s livestock sector

Building a Global Agenda of Action in Support of Sustainable Livestock Sector Development

A Global Agenda of Action in Support of Sustainable Livestock Sector Development is being built. It focuses on the improvement of resource-use efficiency in the livestock sector to support livelihoods, long-term food security and economic growth while safeguarding other environmental and public health outcomes.

Growing populations, income gains and urbanization have made livestock one of the fastest growing sub-sectors of agriculture. Growth in emerging economies has been particularly impressive and has been associated with a widespread transformation of the livestock sector. However, livestock sector growth has been largely unbalanced and often not been accompanied by concomitant adjustments and improvements in sector policies, governance and investments. Continuing demand expansion for livestock products and increasing resource constraints will likely exacerbate these trends.

A proposal by the current chair Jimmy Smith, director general of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), to co-chair an Interim Preparatory Committee of the Global Agenda of Action with Francois Le Gall, livestock adviser at the World Bank, was endorsed by a second meeting of the Agenda’s  Multi-stakeholder Platform, in Phuket, Thailand, 1–4 Dec 2011.

This note describes the preparation of a Global Agenda of Action through a participatory process which focuses on consensus building among key stakeholders in the livestock sector for a subsequent operational phase.

Excerpts
‘A global agenda of action is being built around the notion that demand growth for livestock products will likely continue for decades to come, as incomes and human populations continue to grow. Such growth will need to be accommodated within the context of a finite and sometimes dwindling natural resource base, and will be faced with the need to respond to climate change, both adapting and mitigating.

‘Demand growth also presents opportunities for social and economic development that many developing countries would not want to miss. In addition, the livestock sector provides numerous opportunities for enhanced food security and livelihood support.

‘To ensure that such multiple promises for the livestock sector to contribute to society’s environmental, social, economic and health objectives materialize, concerted sector stakeholder action needs to be mobilized towards the necessary changes in regulatory frameworks, policies, technologies, and supporting investments.

‘The development of a Global Agenda of Action heeds the call of these opportunities.

Building a global agenda of action
‘A Global Agenda of Action in support of sustainable livestock sector development is consensual and built on broad based, voluntary and informal stakeholder commitment to act towards the improvement of resource-use efficiency in the global livestock sector to support livelihoods, long-term food security and economic growth while safeguarding other environmental and public health outcomes. member countries, private sector, civil society, academia, research, and international organization stakeholders have all been closely involved in broad stakeholder consultations to create awareness and to discuss and agree on the objectives, priorities, and conceptual framework of a global agenda of action.

‘The initiative is linked closely to FAO’s inter-governmental processes of its committee on agriculture (COAG), which during its 22nd session held in 2010 recommended that FAO actively engage in a global dialogue with a wide range of stakeholders to sharpen the definition of the livestock sector’s objectives.

‘Two multi-stakeholder platform (MSP) meetings have thus far been held as part of the development of a global agenda of action; the first in Brasilia, Brazil (17–20 May 2011), and the second in Phuket, Thailand (1–4 December 2011).

Where are we now?
‘The MSP endorsed natural resource use efficiency in the livestock sector, covering entire commodity chains, as the thematic centre of the agenda, initially focussing on three areas, namely “closing the efficiency gap”, “restoring value to grassland”, and “towards zero discharge”. The basic concept, or the main theory of change, underlying the Global Agenda of Action in each of these focus areas, is that resource use efficiency and thus sustainable development of the livestock sector can be achieved by an increase in the use of human-made resources and a concomitant reduction in the use of natural resources per unit of desired output. Whilst the relative emphasis and the approaches for each focus area will vary from region to region, each of the three focus areas presents specific ‘game changing’ opportunities to make large environmental, social and economic gains. . . .’

Find out more by visiting the the Global Agenda of Action website.

World Bank vice president Rachel Kyte in Nairobi town hall on ‘big picture agriculture’

Nairobi visit by WB VP Rachel Kyte

On a visit to the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF)/CGIAR on 2 Feb 2012, World Bank vice president Rachel Kyte listens to presentations made by CIP’s Lydia Wamalwa and ILRI’s Sheila Ommeh (photo credit: ILRI/Susan MacMillan).

As Bill Gates prepares in America’s Pacific Northwest today for a live-streamed session (starting at 2:15 PST, UTC-8 hours), in which he will answer questions about his 2012 Annual Letter, where he argues for the importance of agricultural research for development, a similar Q&A session at a town hall was held early this morning in Nairobi with World Bank Vice President for Sustainable Development Rachel Kyte, who was video-linked so that all staff of the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), which hosted the event, and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and other CGIAR centres in the Kenyan capital, could take part in the event.

The World Bank vice president, who also serves as the chair of the CGIAR Fund Council, covered much ground in her brief statement and responses to questions at the town hall this morning. Thoughtful, knowledgeable, and straight in her speaking, Kyte spoke of the importance of ‘climate-smart agriculture’ and of taking ‘landscape’ rather than piecemeal approaches to agricultural research for development. She spoke of the need to preserve the ‘public-good ethos’ of the CGIAR while reaching out to the private sector, and of the ‘profound commitment’ at the World Bank to increase global food security, reflected in the USD50 million the Bank annually provides to the CGIAR. While underscoring the importance of the work of the 15 CGIAR centres to sustainable development, and confirming donor interest in sustaining those centres, Kyte also said CGIAR donors, which have committed USD700 million of the CGIAR target of USD1 billion annual investment, also are looking for more efficiency and effectiveness in CGIAR centre work and for greater clarity of purpose in some of the proposals being submitted for multi-institutional CGIAR Research Programs.

This June’s Rio +20 conference offers us an opportunity for a greener and more sustainable world over the next 20 years,’ Kyte said. And now, she said, is the time to act, as ‘we’re still riding the “food security tiger”, which has, unusually, remained a high-profile issue ever since the food crisis in 2008.’

Gates and Kyte both appear to be interested in ‘big-picture agriculture’, which may be defined as seeking to understand and manage complex agricultural systems at the landscape level, assessing not only the productivity of these systems but also their sustainability and impacts on livelihoods of the poor. Such big-picture approaches are by necessity highly demanding of complex yet productive partnerships between research groups, governments, civil society and the private sector.

Nairobi visit by WB VP Rachel Kyte: Kyte and Jimmy Smith

Jimmy Smith (pictured right, above), who came from the World Bank last year to become ILRI’s third director general, and Tony Simons, director general of the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), welcomed the CGIAR community and Rachel Kyte to this town hall meeting, which was preceded by a brief tour of a few of ICRAF’s research facilities and short presentations by two early-career CGIAR agricultural scientists.

Nairobi visit by WB VP Rachel Kyte: Sheila Ommeh presents

Sheila Ommeh is a young Kenyan scientist who received her PhD just last week in the field of chicken genetics. Ommeh explained to the Bank vice president that 70% of all chickens raised in Africa are native breeds that are rapidly disappearing through cross-breeding and the introduction of exotic breeds. Ommeh’s research is disclosing the value of conserving and better using many of Africa’s hardy native birds, which are an important source of scarce income and nutrition for poor households, especially the women and children in them.

Nairobi visit by WB VP Rachel Kyte: Lydia Walmalwa presents

Lydia Wamalwa is another Kenyan scientist, about to obtain her doctorate in plant molecular biology. Wamalwa is working with the International Potato Center (CIP) at the ILRI-Biosciences eastern and central Africa Hub to develop varieties of sweet potato genetically resistant to disease.

Wamalwa closed her presentation by saying that she hopes in 20 years’ time someone like herself will be in Kyte’s position at the Bank, continuing a winning struggle against poverty and hunger in Africa.

‘Twenty years?’ vice president Kyte said. ‘Make that five.’

For more pictures of the town hall meeting, visit ILRI’s Flickr website.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Turning defeat into new destiny–Going beyond food aid in the Horn of Africa

NP Kenya 211011_29

A massive die-off of livestock across the great pastoral drylands of the Horn of Africa in 2011 threatened the livelihoods of more than 13 million people, most of them in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya, and killed tens of thousands of the most famished and vulnerable people. This—what is believed to have been the worst drought in the region in six decades—combined with civil strife in Somalia has generated nearly 100,000 refugees and sent untold numbers of people into absolute—and, for many, everlasting—poverty (photo of cow carcass in northern Kenya, credit: Neil Palmer/CIAT).

With the news cycle generated by the United Nations Conference of the Parties (CoP 17) climate change conference in Durban in Dec 2011 now over and the rains having arrived in central and southern Somalia, easing both the drought and the famine there, it appears to be an appropriate time to revisit the underlying causes of the hunger and famine that swept across these lands in the second half of 2011. This was the first famine to be declared in the Horn by the United Nations in nearly 30 years. In a 34-page policy paper published recently (18 Jan 2012), Oxfam and Save the Children estimate that between 50,000 and 100,000 people died between April and August 2011, more than half of them children under five.

The following opinion piece by Jimmy Smith, director general of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), explores what it will take to prevent such a tragedy from happening again in this region.

Opinion piece by ILRI’s Jimmy Smith
The ongoing famine in southern Somalia, and the hunger elsewhere in the Horn of Africa, is a catastrophe that has been hard to look at and hard, for most of us in our wired and networked 21st century, even to absorb.

But face it we must. None of us hearing the horror stories of tens of thousands of refugees fleeing villages broken by several years of crippling drought, which turned lands and livestock alike to dust, and then, with the arrival of seasonal rains, to mud, can fail to be aware of our own part in this still-unfolding tragedy. For we together have failed to provide the livestock herders and crop farmers who inhabit these marginal lands with even the minimal resources they need to keep their environments productive.

In the opinion of some, our alternating neglect and wholesaling of East Africa’s vast and once productive dryland ecosystems has helped turn them into fragmented wastelands, dotted with refugee camps.

We may tell ourselves that there is little we can do about political strife in countries such as Somalia, but we cannot say the same thing about our perennial under-investment in small-scale rain-fed food production, an activity that remains the over-riding business of virtually every person living in the Horn today. Rich and poor nations alike have systematically failed to deliver this support, support that is usually promised in our meetings, support that is needed to build and sustain Africa’s own food production capacities.

What Africa’s rural farming and herding communities have needed, above all else, is increased agricultural research and development, with concomitant investments in rural roads, power, irrigation, clinics and schools. By failing to maintain sufficient levels of scientific as well as financial resources, we have failed to help local communities take up and adapt more sustainable and profitable herding and cropping practices.

The desiccation that devastated the Horn’s dry rangelands last year has parallels with that which occurred in the semi-arid grasslands of North America’s heartland some 70 years ago, creating a vast Dust Bowl across 19 states. The immense dust storms that blew the topsoil off the Great Plains throughout the 1930s made millions of acres of land useless and forced hundreds of thousands of people to leave their homes for other regions. Some people died of malnourishment, hundreds of thousands of people entered years of penury and joblessness, and by 1940 a total of some 2.5 million people had been dislocated and forced to migrate, like nearly 100,000 mostly Somali people in the Horn today.

In the wake of the American disaster, and in spite of a Great Depression then crippling the country—a financial crisis even deeper than that we’re facing today—a critical mass of agricultural expertise and ideas was brought to bear on those issues underlying the crisis. That mattered because the Dust Bowl was caused primarily not by several years of drought but rather by several decades of unsustainable farming, by a ‘carelessness of plenty’, with American entrepreneurs encouraged, by the availability of big farm machinery and easy credit as well as a period of unusually wet seasons, to plough the prairie sod to excess, as well as to overgraze it, which destroyed the prairie grasses and laid the land bare.

Americans set about transforming this by investing heavily in better farming. The federal government, for example, began an aggressive campaign to teach farmers soil conservation methods, and actually paid farmers to practice these methods. It set up a Drought Relief Service that bought cattle in emergency areas at better-than-market prices and then used the cattle for food distributed to hungry people nationwide. And it advised families remaining in the prairie states to shift from crop and wheat production to livestock and hay production, a more appropriate use of degraded lands.

Finally, and critically, America’s network of land-grant universities was mobilized not only to help feed people in the emergency but also to find lasting solutions for rebuilding the productivity and resilience of the nation’s prairies. The idea was to bring the scientific knowledge of land-grant colleges to American farmers. The idea worked.

Today, international, regional and national research and development groups, working together in well-coordinated ways and tied to local conditions and priorities, have an opportunity to make a similar difference in the Horn, helping its homeless and hungry people to reclaim their lands and livelihoods. It is, therefore, gratifying to see the donor community and governments mobilizing financial and technical resources to respond to the lessons just learnt in the Horn.

We’ve seen that unsustainable prairie cropping in North America and unsupported livestock-based agricultural production systems in the Horn, when combined with lengthy and severe drought cycles, are toxic mixes. But if America’s earlier tragedy teaches us anything, it’s that we can turn defeat into new destiny by applying the best of science—smart, innovative and conservation-minded agricultural research—and promoting those agricultural practices that will make the biggest and most enduring difference to poor people and their environments.

Americans said ‘never again’ about the Dust Bowl—and they made good on their promise. We can, and should, say the same thing about hunger and starvation in the Horn of Africa.

Notes
(1) The Guardian‘s Global Development Blog started the new year with a chat discussion on the food crisis in the Horn of Africa, where famine was officially declared on 20 Jul 2011.

As the Guardian‘s Jaz Cummins reports, on 13 Dec 2011, the UN made an appeal for USD1.5 billion to support projects in Somalia in 2012—a figure 50% higher than in 2011.

The Guardian this January recommends the following background reading it published last year:
Madeleine Bunting blogs on the role conflict and natural disasters have played in Somalia, 11 Sep 2011
Conflict with Kenya, 18 Nov 2011
The World Bank’s Vinod Thomas on how the Horn of Africa can be better prepared for recurrent drought, 11 Aug 2011
Pascal Lamy, director general of the World Trade Organisation, on the key ingredients to tackle food crisis, 21 Nov 2011
Liz Ford on the long-term strategy Africa’s latest food crisis needs, 4 Jul 2011

(2) Is A Food Crisis Brewing in the Sahel?
A meeting to be held on 25 Jan 2012 in Washington, DC, will assess whether a similar food crisis is brewing in the Sahel—and the best ways of ensuring that resources to deal with it are not squandered in ‘band-aid treatments’ but rather used to build resiliency in the region. The meeting is being organized by The Partnership to Cut Hunger and Poverty in Africa and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Africa Program, in collaboration with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET).

While African nations and the donor community struggle to mitigate famine in the Horn of Africa, fears are growing that drought in the Sahel will trigger a similar food crisis in West Africa by the spring of 2012. However, experts have cautioned against misdiagnosing the food situation in the Sahel, for fear that excessive band-aid treatments of emergency food assistance will squander energy and scarce resources that would be better utilized in treating pockets of severe food insecurity and building resiliency in the region. With input from US and African experts on the Sahel, this event will explore the true nature of the emerging crisis in the Sahel and seek to identify effective responses, including regional trade and resilience-building through agricultural development.

(3) PAEPARD (Platform for Africa-European Partnership in Agricultural Research for Development) Seminar: Preventing a New Famine in the Horn of Africa: The role of the EU in building resilience
Ann Waters-Bayer, a pastoral expert and senior advisor at ETC EcoCulture, was a panel member at a seminar put on for European Development Days 2011, 15–16 Dec 2011, in Warsaw. The panelists, comprising practitioners and policymakers, discussed how to prevent another crisis of this scale and the role that the EU can play in reaching long-lasting sustainable solutions.

Speaking on the panel, Waters-Bayer reminded her audience that pastoral modes of production are often the most appropriate uses of these and other of the world’s great drylands.

‘We’re ten years late in trying to support development which is appropriate to the Horn of Africa and other dryland ares. I think a lot of people in Europe don’t realize what are the most appropriate food production systems in the very dry and variable areas. Often the kinds of development support provided in these drylands are those more appropriate to Europe or better-watered areas.

‘I found it striking that in the film we’ve seen on how to prevent famine from happening again in the Horn of Africa, pastoralism was not mentioned. Pastoralism is the production system practiced in the largest part of the Horn of Africa. Pastoralism is the production system most appropriate for this type of environment. Pastoralism takes advantage of what crop farmers would regard as a constraint, a challenge, a problem—this variation in availability of vegetation, caused by the variability of rain, of water. Pastoralists take advantage of this variability by moving with their animal herds.

One of the big problems in this dryland region has been that a lot of the development and a lot of the policies for this region, especially policies dealing with use of communal resources and acquisition of so-called ‘unused land’, are policies confining pastoralists and making it impossible for this very appropriate production system to continue to operate.

‘Land grabbing has really become a big issue in the Horn of Africa and other parts of Africa. Land grabbing, or land acquisition, supposedly for more productive uses of the land, is going on without people realizing what production systems are actually using that land and how productive those systems are.

If there had been more research done on alternative ways of using land and real feasibility studies conducted on what can actually be done with this land, they would realize that the existing production systems, especially the very very flexible and resilient pastoralist system, is often the best way to use these very dry areas.’

Funders meet in Nairobi to align their vision and expectations for pro-poor biosciences research

Last week (13 Dec 2011), aid agencies that have funded Biosciences eastern and central Africa Hub (BecA Hub), a shared state-of-the-art research and capacity building platform hosted and managed by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) for the region, convened an all-day meeting at ILRI’s Nairobi headquarters. The purpose of the meeting was to harmonize support being provided to BecA and African biosciences and to explore sustainable models for building on the momentum that BecA and its supporters have created.

BecA’s main donors and stakeholders represented at this meeting were the:

  • Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID)
  • Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF)
  • Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA, which funded BecA in its beginnings)
  • New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD)
  • Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture.

This donor alignment meeting came appropriately on the heels of a recent first meeting of the CEOs of both NEPAD, a program of the Africa Union celebrating its tenth anniversary, and ILRI, one of 16 centres belonging to the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), now celebrating 40 years of operation.

NEPAD’s Luke Mumba, who participated in the meeting, brought warm greetings from his CEO, Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, who had paid a recent first visit to ILRI and BecA and reported that NEPAD views BecA ‘as strategically important for affordable and accessible biosciences.’

‘BecA and NEPAD have a common vision to improve livelihoods of the poor,’ Mayaki said. ‘And NEPAD is now interested to play a bigger role in BecA’s programs, helping it to have even greater impact.’

ILRI director general Jimmy Smith thanked Mumba for his message and then framed the ensuing discussion in a talk and slide presentation. The following are excerpts from his talk.

Opening remarks by ILRI’s Jimmy Smith
‘The idea for a Biosciences eastern and Central Africa platform started when I worked for CIDA. It is an initiative I’ve supported since its inception. And I’ve been thinking about BecA since before I rejoined ILRI this November.

‘I liked BecA’s business plan but thought it lacked the “demand side”. I discussed this with Syngenta’s Marco Ferroni, and told him that it’s possible that different donors have different expectations of BecA. I want these to be aligned so that I can fulfill on them.

‘I’d like to frame our discussions today by providing first a bit of context.

Up until 2008 we all believed that food came from supermarkets. Then the world food market went topsy turvy. Prices rose and 100 million people were sent into poverty. Because prices for food were good for some poor farmers, 40 million people also rose out of poverty.

‘Since then, people are once again raising the old Malthusian theory—that massive geometric population growth in the face of arithmetic food growth is bound to lead to great social upheavals.

Here’s what we’re facing. There’ll be 2.5 billion more people by mid-century. We’ll need 70% more food produced to feed the additional population. Specifically, for example, we’ll need 1 billion more tonnes of cereal grains by 2050 for food, feed and biofuels. Most of the additional food will have to come from land already farmed.

‘And we are not starting from zero. There are already 1 billion people in the world who are hungry!

‘75% of people who are poor live in rural areas, but they are at the receiving end of investments of only 4% of official development assistance for agriculture.

‘Donor support to agriculture has fallen from 1980 to 2009. The trendline is inching upwards, but very slowly—and it is not matching the need.

‘In Africa, food production has been increasing but it still lags behind population growth. Africa has been meeting its food needs largely from importation, US$14-billion-worth of cereals each year. This is not sustainable. The continent cannot continue to spend so much on food if it is also going to invest sufficiently in other sectors, such as health and education.

‘The Ford and Rockefeller foundations together financed research that led to the ‘Green Revolution’. This was a group of donors, around a table, with a big vision, which was transformative. My question is, will the creation of BecA be as transformative as that of the Ford and Rockefeller vision was in the sixties? I think it could be.

What are the opportunities for BecA?
‘Every expert who has studied the food situation has said our best possibilities lie in the biotech sciences. People see biotech as a new frontier that has helped us in the past and can continue to do so in the future. We can now do things faster and with more precision. Look how quickly genomes can now be mapped.

This opportunity could be seized and be transformative again. Think if we could produce maize as efficiently as sorghum. What would happen to the maize belt in Africa? Can we create plants whose photosynthesis is more efficient? Can the native African Boran cow produce as much milk as the exotic Jersey?

‘The facility to conduct such science is brought to Africa through the BecA Hub at a scale that could have great impact. It is also here at a size that can greatly help build biosciences capacity on the continent. BecA Hub capacity can leverage the expertise of ILRI and the other centres of the CGIAR. It can catalyze and add value to the agenda of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme.

‘Challenges and questions remain. Can we, for example, develop an explicit agenda setting process that CAADP members will own and invest in? Can we transform our funding base to do transformative science working with CADPP, NARS, universities? Can we put in place an accountability framework that inspires confidence in our donors and partners? Can we bring about more harmonious relationships internally?’

View the slide presentation Jimmy Smith made: The BecA-ILRI Hub: Realizing the promise, 13 Dec 2011.

View a presentation ‘BecA hub research, facilities, and capacity building‘ by Jagger Harvey, Appolinaire Djikeng, and Rob Skilton

 

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.’

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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).

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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

ILRI's Tom Randolph

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.

Jimmy Smith takes up position as director general of ILRI

ILRI director general Jimmy Smith

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.’