Tag Archives: Global Agenda of Action

Greening the livestock sector: ‘Game changers’ for environmental, social, economic gains

Posted on by
1

Global Agenda of Action in Support of Sustainable Livestock Sector Development, Nairobi

Jimmy Smith (centre), director general of ILRI, with participants at the 3rd Multi-stakeholder Platform Meeting of the Global Agenda of Action in Support of Sustainable Livestock Sector Development, 22–24 Jan 2013 (photo credit: ILRI/Paul Karaimu).

A week-long Third Multi-stakeholder Platform Meeting of A Global Agenda of Action in Support of Sustainable Livestock Sector Development, kicked off today in Nairobi, Kenya.

People concerned about either the benefits or the costs of livestock production should take note of these deliberations.

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 assumption (‘theory of change’) underpinning the Agenda is that natural resource-use efficiency and thus sustainable development of the livestock sector can be achieved by an increase in the use of humanmade resources and a concomitant reduction in the use of natural resources per unit of livestock food/product/output.

View or watch (livestream) a slide presentation about the Global Agenda, titled People, the Planet and Sustainable Livestock, made by Jeroen Dijkman, of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), in Nairobi, Kenya, on Friday, 18 January 2013. This was the fifth in a series of ‘livestock live talks’ at ILRI. Dijkman spoke of the coming crunch: ‘We’re adding two China’s to the world in the next 30 years and by 2050 we’ll need to feed 335 more people and need 70% more meat and milk.’ This, Dijkman said, is happening in the midst of growing land, soil and water scarcity (agriculture accounts for 70% of all freshwater use) and increasing livestock and other greenhouse gas emissions that are heating up our climate.

When Dijkman was asked if he thinks the Global Agenda offers a ‘third way’ for livestock production, one somewhere between subsistence and industrial production, he answered, it’s the ‘only way’.

We’re not going to stop livestock production, and livestock is at the centre of most contemporary resource use issues (land, water, energy, nutrients, climate change). Demand for livestock products will likely continue to be strong. Efficiency is key to reducing resource requirements and environmental impact. We need faster new technology adoption and better supporting policy frameworks. Making livestock more sustainable is both important and urgent: action is what is needed. ‘Blame games’ aren’t helpful: We need a constructive dialogue to build consensus. Resource use efficiency is the common ground and it indicates the direction of change.” — Jeroen Dijkman, FAO

Rationale
Growing populations, income gains and urbanization have made livestock one of the fastest growing sub-sectors of agriculture. Past sector expansion in developed countries and more recently in emerging nations has been impressive and has been associated with a widespread transformation of the livestock sector. Ensuring that the continuing demand expansion for livestock products does not increase pressure on natural resources and contributes to socially desirable outcomes, however, will require further adjustments and improvements in sector policies, governance and investments.

Focus
The Agenda’s stakeholders have agreed initially to focus on the following three areas.

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.

As FAO’s Dijkman said in his seminar at ILRI the week before:

We’re moving to a new narrative. The livestock sector will grow but that growth will need to be ‘green’. The livestock sector offers great opportunities for better resource management and development. The good news is that social and health objectives can be aligned. We need to do this jointly – through collective action. That’s what this Global Agenda is all about.”

Field visits
Participants at the Global Agenda meeting this week will visit the following three agencies on the Friday following the close of the meeting on Thursday.

Ol Kalou Dairy
Ol Kalou Dairy Ltd is a well-established limited company founded located in the Central Province of Kenya. Founded in 2002 and comprising 3500 farmers, the dairy collects about 20,000 litres per day. The dairy is well equipped with a cooler and an agro vet shop that provides inputs and services on credit to active suppliers. Extension services are provided to the members. The dairy is currently been supported by the East Africa Dairy Development Project.

ILRI biosciences laboratories
A morning’s visit to the laboratories at ILRI will include an overview of ILRI by its director general, Jimmy Smith, followed by a tour of ILRI’s facilities, including the Biosciences eastern and central Africa (BecA)-ILRI Hub and its research, capacity building and services. works with partners worldwide to enhance the roles livestock play in pathways out of poverty, principally in Africa and Asia. The tour will also showcase ILRI’s biosciences livestock research, including its 454 sequencing platform and a project on ‘An Integrated Response System for Emerging Infectious Diseases in East Africa’, another on mycotoxins research, a nutritional diagnostics platform and a livestock bio-repository. The tour will be followed by a science poster session and lunch.

Farmers’ Choice
Farmer’s Choice was established in 1980 with its main objective being the sale of fresh and processed pork products to the entire population and across all income groups in Kenya. The core business of Farmer’s Choice is the production of sausages, bacon, ham, delicatessen products and fresh pork. Beef, lamb and poultry have also become important supplementary products.

Background
This meeting is organized by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), the African Union-Interafrican Bureau for Animal Resources (AU-IBAR) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). ILRI and AU-IBAR are co-hosting the meeting at the Intercontinental Hotel in Nairobi, Kenya, from 22 to 24 January 2013, with a third of the participants taking field trips on the following Friday. This meeting represents a ‘constituting milestone’ for the Agenda, entailing, in addition to information and networking events, working sessions to refine action programs and governance agreements.

About ILRI
The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) works with partners worldwide to enhance the roles livestock play in pathways out of poverty, principally in Africa and Asia. The products of these research partnerships help people in developing countries keep their farm animals alive and productive, increase and sustain their livestock and farm productivity, find profitable markets for their animal products, and reduce their risk of livestock-related diseases. ILRI is a not-for-profit institution with a staff of about 600 and, in 2012, an operating budget of about USD60 million. A member of the CGIAR Consortium working for a food-secure future, ILRI has its headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya, a principal campus in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and offices in other countries in East, West and southern Africa and in South, Southeast and East Asia.

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

Posted on by
1

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.