When charity is not enough

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Support for Ethiopia’s 85 million smallholder farmers.
 

When charity is not enoughAcross much of Ethiopia today, the grass and crop fields are green, the oxen and chickens fat and sleek, and the goats and cows roaming outside the traditional round mud huts, called ‘tukuls’, where smoke rises from cooking fires inside, healthy.

When charity is not enoughThe first of the year’s crop harvests are just now coming in—too late to save the most vulnerable. Livelihoods have been seriously effected in parts of Ethiopia’s Afar, Amhara, Oromiya, SNNP (Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples), Somali and Tigray regions with the failure of seasonal crops, large losses of livestock and skyrocketing market prices.

The situation is beginning to improve in some areas where rainfall has been received. However, the full recovery of lost assets and future agricultural productivity will require sustained support from government and humanitarian partners in the areas of seed support, supply of veterinary drugs and training of veterinary staff. The rate of livestock sickness in Somali Region has reached critical levels in pastoral communities. NGOs in the region are carrying out small-scale slaughter destocking exercises to improve access to water and pasture for core breeding stock.

Ethiopia’s State Minister for Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr Abera Deresa, says drought emergencies like this one, which the Ethiopian Government and United Nations agencies agree are affecting pockets of Ethiopia’s most vulnerable peoples and marginal farming areas, are a common, recurrent phenomenon in Ethiopia.

‘What is being under-reported’, says the minister, ‘is that Ethiopia’s farm production has recently been increasing by a healthy 10% every year. Unfortunately, this doesn’t necessarily mean that demand and supply are compatible. Thus we have the current food crisis in Ethiopia, which is caused (as in the rest of the world) by climate change (drought), the international shift of food crops to biofuel, and incompatibility of demand and supply.’

The Ethiopian government has been working closely with humanitarian organizations to mobilize timely humanitarian support for the worst-affected regions and peoples. In this work, Abera said, Ethiopia relied on an Early Warning System set up within the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

When charity is not enoughHunger is hitting other countries here in the Horn of Africa, which are reeling from the triple blows of drought and soaring food and fuel prices. The United Nations estimates that more than 14 million people urgently need food aid, including 2.6 million in Somalia, more than 1 million in Kenya, and 6.4 million in Ethiopia (the latter up from 4.6 million estimated earlier).

Aid programs are responding to this and other crises. The United States, for example, will this year give Ethiopia more than US$800 million—$460 million for food, $350 million for HIV/AIDS treatment, and just $7 million for agricultural development. No one wants a repeat of the great Ethiopian famine of 1984/5, which killed a million people.

‘We need to help countries like Ethiopia to create and sustain livelihoods as well as to save lives, says Carlos Seré, director general of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), which has a principal campus in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa. ‘That requires something longer term than food aid. It requires helping the country build skills, infrastructure and policy instruments that support equitable development of smallholder agriculture, the backbone of the Ethiopia’s economy. Pastoralists and small-scale farmers should to be able to feed their families while building assets for the future.’

The Ethiopian Government agrees. Realizing that humanitarian support is not a long-term solution to the country’s food security problems, it is working to help its farmers improve and sustain their food production by, for example, improved ways of managing the country’s heavy clay Vertisol soils and controlling invasive weeds and termites in crop fields. The Government is also supporting market-oriented development of smallholder farmers at all levels, in recent years training some 60,000 extension workers who work directly with farmers.

‘The Government works closely with a wide variety of partners,’ says the minister. ‘One good example is the IPMS Project.’

Improving productivity and market success


When charity is not enough

Seré and Abera agree that development work should be homegrown wherever possible. That’s why in 2005 ILRI teamed up with the Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and the Ethiopian Agricultural Research System and other centres of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) to implement an action-oriented research project to “Improving the Productivity and Market Success” (IPMS) of Ethiopian Farmers. This 5-year project, funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), works on market-led agricultural development in ten pilot learning districts as well as at regional and federal levels.

 

(http://www.ipms-ethiopia.org/)

This initiative works to help smallholder farmers transform their subsistence-based farming
practices into market-oriented agricultural systems. The IPMS project works with farmers, cooperatives, private-sector market agents, credit agencies and public-sector service providers to develop such a new system through a process of testing and learning.

Knowledge management, innovation capacity development and participatory commodity development approaches are cornerstones of the strategy. Both crop and livestock commodities are considered in the project’s 10 pilot learning districts,

The rising price of food
When charity is not enoughWhile the food price index of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, which captures trends in major food commodities, rose by 56 per cent between March 2007 and March 2008, it increased only 39% in Ethiopia, 20% in Burundi and Kenya, and just 11% in Tanzania. In several other countries in the region, including Madagascar, Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia, the increase was less than 10%. Experts consider that this is because of the varied “food baskets” in the region, with teff being a staple in Ethiopia, local maize in Kenya, plantain in Uganda and beans in Rwanda. Even so, the UN World Food Programme estimates that in some places in Ethiopia, the price of maize increased 83 per cent, sorghum 89 per cent and wheat 54 per cent between September 2007 and February 2008.

Livestock owners these days are getting higher prices for their livestock commodities. That would appear to be a good thing for the poor, because the higher prices for livestock commodities should be benefiting households that are net sellers rather than buyers of food. But contrary to conventional wisdom, most poor households in this region, including those in rural areas, are net buyers rather than net sellers of food, and thus are, at least initially, hurt rather than helped by rising livestock and other food price rises.

Can poor farmers benefit from rising prices?
In many circumstances, higher livestock prices should, over the longer term, help more than hurt poor livestock producers, and that is why ILRI is encouraging subsistence farmers in Ethiopia and its neighbouring countries to take a more market-oriented approach to their production systems.

Even so, ILRI and its Ethiopian partners are well aware that not all small farmers will benefit from the rising prices of livestock commodities, that not all small farmers will enter the market economy—or should try, and that provision in policies should be made for those farmers who for various reasons will continue their subsistence production methods and those who will drop out of farming altogether.

When charity is not enoughThe IPMS project is testing different ways of providing market information on the price and quality of livestock products, introducing small-scale processing of dairy and other livestock products, and new ways to link livestock producers and sellers. Use is made of a credit innovation fund to encourage existing credit institutions to develop new financial products, such as lending/repayment procedures that include collateral requirements to support the introduction of these interventions. ILRI and other research institutions supply the project with knowledge, help it build indigenous capacity in agricultural development, and provide technical advice and documentation of lessons learned. The livelihoods of many of Ethiopia’s small farmers have already been greatly enhanced by their adopting the practice of short-term fattening of large and small ruminants. 

Earlier this year, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister H.E. Meles Zenawi presented the IPMS project with a Development Hero Certificate from the government of the Regional State of Tigray.

 The livestock development efforts of IPMS focus on sales of meat or live animals and milk and other dairy products. 

The project tests market-oriented production interventions:

• improved housing for farm animals
• (supplementary) feeding systems
• Improved use of crop residues
• planted forage species
• community-based grazing and control of ‘sleeping sickness’ (trypanosomosis)
• community-based breeding and insurance schemes for short-term fattening
• input supply/service interventions
• private bull stations
• decentralized artificial insemination service
• use of synchronization to improve the efficiency of artificial insemination
• private-sector involvement in feed and forage seed supply
• development of a ‘paravet’ animal health system

Related Information:
Cattle have been getting some bad press lately. Western editorials report the consumption of
too much fatty red meat leading to increased heart disease, the inefficient use of grain as feed
for livestock and the production of methane gases by cattle, a factor in global warming.
Elsewhere in the world, cattle receive songs of praise.

 

Collective action on food crisis

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“Food Needs to Move!” Especially across national borders.
“The levers to solve this problem are in our own hands.”—Joseph Karugia

Collective action on food crisis

New research showing how the global food price crisis is playing out in 17 countries of eastern and central Africa was presented at a roundtable discussion in Nairobi 22 July 2008.

The research results show that the regional food situation differs significantly from the global one, largely because of this region’s exceptional diversity. That regional diversity provides these countries with opportunities to turn the volatile global and local food situations to their advantage.

By integrating markets and simplifying trade within the region, policymakers can efficiently link areas with food deficits to areas with food surpluses. This integration will help the region’s small farmers get better prices for their crops and livestock while also helping the region’s urban consumers get reliable year-round access to staple food items.

The July Roundtable on the Global Food Crisis was organized by the Kenya country offices of the World Bank and World Food Program and the Nairobi-headquartered International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). Fifty key decision-makers in agricultural and rural development met on ILRI’s campus to discuss interventions that governments, development agencies, research organizations and nongovernmental organizations could make to help poor people cope with the rising prices of staple foods.

Joseph Karugia, a Kenyan agricultural economist, provided an overview of the regional food situation. Karugia coordinates a Regional Strategic Analysis and Knowledge Support System for Eastern and Central Africa (ReSAKSS-ECA). His review was based on a study led by the region’s leading agricultural research group, the Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa (ASARECA). Under pressure by policymakers needing to take action to address the food price crisis, a team of 26 researchers within ASARECA and several centres supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) that work in this region, including ILRI, with study activities coordinated by ReSAKSS-ECA, conceived and executed the study together and with speed.

“Our regional food prices have generally risen much slower than global ones,” Karugia said. Even the countries within the region are being affected differently by the global food prices, largely because of their different “food baskets”. Kenya’s main staple is maize, but in Uganda it’s plantain, in Ethiopia it’s teff and in Rwanda it’s beans. Those countries that deal in non-traded commodities are buffered from the rising prices of globally traded staples. “Rice and wheat,” Karugia said, “two hugely important staples globally, are relatively trivial in this region. Moreover, most of the region’s maize needs are met outside the global markets because most people in the region obtain their maize in locally, in informal as well as formal markets.”

One result is that while the food price index (FPI) of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which captures trends in major food commodities, rose by 56% between March 2007 and March 2008, the FPI increases in this region were all below 40% and in most cases significantly lower. The FPI increased by 39% in Ethiopia, 20% in Burundi and Kenya, and just 11% in Tanzania. In several other countries in the region, including Madagascar, Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia, the increase was less than 10%.

It’s not only the staples of these neighbouring countries that differ. Their climate and rainfall patterns differ, and consequently their planting and harvest times differ, too.

These within-region variations give policymakers a powerful lever for transforming a global food crisis into a regional opportunity for farm producers and urban consumers alike.


“The spatial and temporal distribution of production and staggered harvesting
in the countries of eastern and southern Africa offer large opportunities for trade.”

By integrating the region’s food markets and simplifying its food trade regulations, Karugia said, the region could link up food-deficit to food-surplus areas and thus provide its citizens with staples in an given season. A truly integrated regional market would provide farmers with remunerative prices and alternative reliable markets for their produce while also providing urban consumers and rural net buyers of food with a variety of reasonably priced food staples throughout the year.

Most of the trade in food in this region is informal. It is wasteful not because it is informal but rather because of the many obstacles the informal traders have to face. Karugia explains: “At the border between Kenya and Uganda, trucks laden with sacks of grain and other food staples are unloaded, reloaded onto bicycles, bicycled across the border to be reloaded onto trucks on the other side. This is not an efficient way to move food!”

It would be a shame, Karugia said, quoting the economist Paul Romer, for the eastern and southern Africa region “to waste a good crisis”. “This global food price crisis provides the 19 countries of eastern and southern Africa with a golden opportunity to promote agricultural-led development through increased domestic production, regional trade and integration.”

The ASARECA research presented at this roundtable discussion was a demonstration of this new networked science. Diverse scientists from ReSAKSS-ECA, ASARECA and the CGIAR worked together for months amassing data from country and regional organizations and consulting with key experts and partners within governments, policy think tanks, research institutions, emergency relief agencies and the private sector. Although their individual perspectives on, and interpretations of, the data they collected vary considerably, the research group reached consensus on several points.

• The poor in this region are spending 40 to 70% of their income on buying food.
• The poor are being hit hardest by the rise in food prices, especially the rural net buyers of food.
• Contrary to popular belief, most of the farming households in the rural areas are net buyers rather than net producers of food if price rather than volume of food is considered. Poverty forces them to sell their grain and other crops at harvest time, when prices are at their lowest, and to buy grain again, several months later, when the households run out of the staple, often at two to three times the price at which they sold their grain.
• Prices of agricultural inputs are increasing across the 17 countries of the region. (The price of fertilizer rose 200% in Kenya in the last year.)
• Yields of staple food crops are stagnating or decreasing in 17 of the 19 countries of Eastern and Central Africa (only Egypt and Mauritius are increasing their yields) because farming is moving onto increasingly marginal agricultural lands, causing yield aggregates to fall.

One other salient fact leaped out of the data—the region cannot continue to spend less than 10% (and in some cases as low as 2%) of its national budgets in a sector that provides 25% of the region’s gross domestic product, 75% of its citizen’s livelihoods, and food for 100% of its people. ‘We have neglected our agriculture, our farmers and our food markets for decades,” says Karugia. “This is the result.”

Karugia and his many colleagues in this multi-institutional, multi-disciplinary, and multi-commodity project asked themselves one central question: What levers can we pull to take advantage of the higher food prices? The two conventional answers—increase farm production and control consumer demand—were deemed by the group to be too slow to be useful. This regional group of scientists concluded that a regional strategy for exploiting the food price hikes offered the best opportunities for the most numbers of people: “Exploit the regional diversity by facilitating regional trade”.

Priority actions for such a regional strategy would include the following:
• Markets: Remove export bans, eliminate non-trade barriers, simplify trade regulations and upgrade infrastructure along the region’s main trade corridors.
• Farmers: Reduce the high cost of fertilizer and other agricultural inputs and facilitate their trade, widen use of best-bet agricultural technologies, pilot innovative risk-management strategies such as index-based insurance schemes.
• Institutions: Strengthen market information and intelligence as well as frameworks for preparedness, response and learning.

Addressing these issues in these ways, with evidence-based policy options, is thus feasible, say the study team, and should lead to lowering the prices of food staples while also raising farm productivity and agricultural livelihoods.

In summing up the day’s roundtable discussion, host Carlos Seré, who is ILRI’s director general, said that it’s not only food we should be moving within the region but also the agricultural technologies that allow greater and more sustainable food production. The current food price crisis also has that silver lining: “When you have high food prices, you can move those technologies for improved food production. And you can get attention for neglected alternative crops, such as cassava chips for livestock feed. Which become viable as the price of grain staples rise.”

“This is something happening now,” Seré said. “We need smart interventions that target the region’s poor consumers and farmers alike. We need to get fertilizers into the region’s high potential farming areas. The key thing is to work with markets—to arbitrage across countries and across the region. We must reduce trade barriers within the region, which will greatly improve the efficiency of its markets.”

“We must also think through new crop portfolios for this region,” he continued. “How, for example, could we continue to support maize production in Kenya without penalizing those farmers pursuing a more diversified system that includes sorghum or millet?”

Seré concluded: “Climate and other fast-evolving changes affecting developing-country food production will make our problems worse in future. Finding the institutional frameworks for addressing these problems in collective action is our challenge.”

Welcome address by ILRI director general Carlos SerĂŠ

In welcoming participants to the roundtable forum, ILRI director general Carlos Seré said: “Global analysis of the food situation is relatively simple. We need to bring the discussion and analysis down to regional levels to increase the specificity, the granularity, of our information.” . . . Read more
Read profile of Carlos SerĂŠ
Interview with Ravi Prabhu, a member of the study team and coordinator of a CGIAR initiative called Collective Action for Eastern and Southern Africa

Let’s take a look at what we heard today from Joseph Karugia and his ASARECA, ReSAKSS-ECG and CGIAR team.

We heard that have opportunities to exploit regional food heterogeneity, capacities and systems that we are not doing a good job of exploiting . . . Read more


The latest version of the ASARECA Food Crisis Report is available: http://www.asareca.org/resources/reports/resp2food_pr_main.pdf

Further Information Contact:

Joseph Karugia
Coordinater, ReSAKSS-ECA
International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI)
Nairobi, KENYA
Email: j.karugia@cgiar.org
Telephone: +254 (20) 422 3016

Safeguarding the open plains

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Increasing urban populations are threatening pastoral lands and ways of life.

Safeguarding the open plains The Athi-Kaputiei ecosystem, wildlife-rich pastoral grasslands south of Nairobi, is under threat from rapid construction of fences, infrastructure, residential areas, and the growth of urban agriculture. Unchecked, this unplanned growth will destroy Nairobi National Park, the famous unfenced wildlife park 20 minutes drive from city centre that has always been connected to this ecosystem.

A program funded by the American Government through its development arm, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), seeks to secure open plains in Kaputiei, providing a dispersal area for big mammals within the Nairobi National Park, pathways for their seasonal migration to calving grounds outside the park, and open areas for both livestock and wildlife to graze. This initiative incorporates innovative techniques like cladding spraying to ensure sustainable land management practices. Additionally, specialized training programs such as Telehandler Training are being implemented to equip local communities with the skills needed for effective land management. To further support theses efforts, the use of professional boom lift rental services is being employed to facilitate the installation of necessary infrastructure. Also, with the help of professional IPAF courses they being introduced to enhance the skill set of local workers in the field. For more information, you can check out this sites at https://www.whiteliningcontractors.co.uk/roads/lines to learn about their efforts in road development and maintenance. Another key technique being employed is Ground Penetrating Radar Survey, which aids in detailed subsurface analysis for better land management.

Launching the project, American Ambassador to Kenya, Mr Michael Rannenberger, termed Nairobi National Park a “unique resource”, which needs to be conserved for the benefit of the entire country and the world.

“But it does not exist in isolation. If we can conserve it, it will benefit all of you – the economy will continue to grow through tourism and we will preserve the culture of the Maasai community”, he said.

He added that public-private partnerships are a key to conservation efforts and encouraged more private enterprises and businesses to join hands with local people and governments for environmental conservation.

For centuries, the indigenous communities, mainly of Maasai origin, living on the plains of Kenya’s Kajiado District, have reared livestock in expansive grasslands that are also home to big mammals and other wildlife. The Maasai have mastered the art of co-existing with the wild.

The Kaputiei Open Plains Program will help create value for the open plains and economic returns to the land owners through recreation, improved livestock production and tourism.

“We will consult all stakeholders, including women and the youth. The Kenyan Government, through its Ministry of Lands, will be a key player as they work on the land policy which gives a legal framework land issues”, said Kenyan Minister for Forestry and Wildlife Dr Wekesa.

The project aims to institute a natural resource management program to complement the existing short-term initiatives such as a land-leasing program that has helped keep land use here compatible with conservation. The project enables residents of Kaputiei to benefit more from managing their traditional grazing lands.

Speaking on behalf of the community, the former OlKejuado County Council Chairman, Julius ole Ntayia, said Athi-Kaputiei residents have produced a land-use “master plan” that needs to be implemented. He said while wildlife conservation was important, it was also important to help the local population improve their lives, especially through eco-tourism and better access to livestock markets.

Some of the expected outcomes are:
  • Improved institutional capacity for demand-driven land-use planning and enforcement for long-term social, economic and environmental benefits.
  • Site-specific natural resource management initiatives implemented outside protected areas that improve or maintain biodiversity and the condition of the existing natural resources.
  • New sustainable financing mechanisms focused on tourism and livestock development that enable residents of Kaputiei, particularly ethnic Kenyan pastoralists, to derive long-term benefits from managing their traditional grazing lands for the mutual benefit of livestock and wildlife, as opposed to sub-dividing, fencing and converting their lands to other uses for short-term gains; and
  • Pilot initiatives in support of the project area.
  • The project area becomes a conservation model for other wildlife-rich regions of Kenya and East Africa.

The Kitengela Project’s principal objective is to lay the necessary foundation to secure open rangelands and sustainable livelihoods in Kaputiei over the long-term. The two main targets of the project are securing 60,000 hectares of high-priority conservation land and generating US$500,000 in livestock value-chain improvements and $300,000 in tourism deals.

The project will be implemented by the African Wildlife Foundation in partnership with the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).

Further Information Contact:

Said Mohammed
Research Scientist, International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI)
Nairobi, KENYA
Email: m.said@cgiar.org
Telephone: +254 (20) 422 3260

When policies support-rather than harass-the informal markets of poor countries

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Findings from a decade of dairy research are giving millions of poor people better food, better livelihoods, and a better future.

 markets of poor countriesA collaborative dairy research project conducted in East Africa from 1997 through 2004 is bearing fruit. Its research findings persuaded Kenyan regulators and policymakers to engage and support, rather than disregard and harass, Kenya’s predominantly informal milk market, which trades in ‘raw’, or unpasteurized, milk.

Economists assess the direct impacts of the research-based policy changes on the Kenyan economy to be at least USD33.5 million per year. The new training and certification schemes recommended by the research project are now helping the country’s small milk producers and traders to provide safe as well as cheap milk products to millions of Kenyans poorest citizens. The methods this project used to upgrade informal dairy chains are now being taken up in other major milk-producing countries of eastern Africa and South Asia.

This award-winning collaborative dairy research work was funded by the UK Department for International Development with support from the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research. It was implemented by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute and the Kenya Ministry of Livestock and Fisheries Development. Other key partners included the Kenya Dairy Board, Kenya Bureau of Standards and Ministry of Health, along with livestock farmers, small-scale milk vendors, and milk processors and packagers from the private sector; the international development organization Land O’ Lakes; and the non-governmental organizations Action Aid, Intermediate Technology Development Group, the Institute of Policy Analysis and Research, and Strengthening Informal Sector Training and Enterprise.

Impacts of pro-policy dairy policy changes in Kenya
Beginning in 2004, policy reforms in Kenya’s dairy sector have enabled many of Kenya’s nearly 40,000 small-scale milk vendors to enter formal milk markets. An independent panel of experts in 2008 estimated that these reforms are annually delivering to the Kenyan economy direct benefits of US$33.5 million as well as a further $130 million a year in indirect benefits, such as the new jobs generated by the newly enabled smallholder dairy sector and the better nutrition achieved in millions of poor households through greater consumption highly nourishing, but cheap, milk products. These returns were produced from a total investment of just $4.8 million ($0.6 million over each of the eight years of the research project).

Kenya’s new dairy policies recognize and regulate the activities of small-scale informal milk vendors, allowing them to operate more efficiently, at larger scale and with greatly reduced transaction costs. The impact assessment report determined that by 2006, Kenya had 1.8 million smallholder dairy farms, with 6.7 million dairy cattle producing 4 billion litres of milk each year, much of it marketed by 39,650 small-scale milk vendors. Nearly half the benefits of the policy changes went to producers, with the remainder going to consumers ($8 million), small-scale milk vendors ($4.1 million) and input suppliers ($5.1 million).

Spillover effects
Such pro-poor changes in the dairy sector are now being taken up by other countries. The Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa has initiated a program on Dairy Policy Harmonisation in East Africa that recommends that regulators throughout the region implement similar policy changes. In July 2007, dairy regulators in Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda agreed to promote the training and certification schemes for milk hawkers that the collaborative research project had advocated. Hundreds of thousands of other small dairy farmers across East Africa could thus benefit from these reforms. And in 2008, the governments of India’s northeastern states are demonstrating strong interest to adopt similar pro-poor dairy policies.

Below is the summary of the Report for the Standing Panel on Impact Assessment of the Science Council of the CGIAR: Policy change in dairy marketing in Kenya: Economic impact and pathways to influence from research.

Summary of the Impact Assessment of the Smallholder Dairy Project in Kenya
Between 1997 and 2005, ILRI and its partners initiated and implemented a Smallholder Dairy Project (SDP) as a collaborative and integrated research and development initiative aimed at supporting the sustainable development of Kenya’s smallholder dairy sub-sector. The initial phase of SDP focused on the development of “best-bet” technologies to overcome farmers’ problems and to improve their livelihoods. The final phase developed policy-level outputs and actively engaged Kenyan government and policymakers, leading to change in the Kenyan Dairy Policy by September 2004. The new policy recognizes and regulates the activities of Kenya’s many small-scale milk vendors.

Among the research results SDP used as evidence to support policy change are the following data (recalculated by SDP in 2005).

 

•  1.8 million smallholder households in Kenya depend on dairying for their livelihoods.
•  Some 86% of the milk marketed in Kenya is sold through the informal sector as raw, unpasteurized, milk.
•  The informal market pays significantly higher prices to farmers than dairy companies and sells milk to consumers at half the price of processed, packaged milk.
•  Kenya has about 40,000 people earning their living as small-scale milk vendors.
•  Kenya has a dairy herd of about 6.7 million, with total annual milk production reaching 4 billion litres.
•  Kenyans drink on average 145 litres of milk per person each year.
•  Kenyans typically boil milk before drinking it, usually in the form of tea, a national habit that significantly reduces public health concerns over the sale of unpasteurized milk.
•  The milk quality of Kenya’s licensed milk traders and outlets shows no significant difference from that of its unlicensed traders.
•  Kenya’s smallholder dairy farming also supports over 350,000 full-time wage positions in the wider economy.
•  It is safe to licence the operations of Kenya’s small-scale milk vendors after they have been trained in milk handling and hygiene.  

In 2008 ILRI assessed the impacts of Kenya’s research-based dairy policy change on the country’s economy and determined the following.
 

 • The overall decline in market margin attributed to the policy change is about US$0.01 per litre of milk (equivalent to a 9% decline in market margin after the policy came into effect).
•  While the cost of the research that led to the change in Kenya’s dairy policy was about $0.6 million per year between 1997 and 2005, the benefits the dairy policy change is providing the Kenyan economy amount to at least $33.5 million each year, with nearly half of that going to producers and the remainder to consumers ($8 million), small-scale milk vendors ($4.1 million) and input suppliers ($5.1 million). Less conservative estimates put annual benefits to Kenya as high as $131 million.

Overall, these research findings on the highly significant farmers and consumer dependence on informal milk marketing and its employment generation potential proved crucial in influencing behavioural and policy change in the Kenyan dairy sector. The findings on employment generation, for example, attracted the interest of government agencies and people involved in designing Kenya’s poverty reduction strategy paper, some of whom, as a result, would later become strong advocates for the legalization of the country’s small-scale milk vendors.

Further Information Contact:
Amos Omore
Vet Epidemiologist, ILRI
Email: a.omore@cgiar.org
Telephone: +254 (20) 422 3403

OR

Simeon Kaitibe
Agricultural Economist, ILRI
Email: s.kaitibe@cgiar.org
Telephone: +254 (20) 422 3433

Climate and health experts warn that scientists must work together, or risk ‘disastrous consequences’ to human and animal health in Africa

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Consensus: Spread of Malaria, Rift Valley fever, and Avian flu far more likely if researchers continue to ‘operate in silos’ and if solutions ignore local conditions.

human and animal health in Africa

Faced with the prospect of more variable and changing climates increasing Africa’s already intolerable disease burden, scientists must begin to reach out to colleagues in other fields and to the people they want to help if they hope to avert an expected “continental disaster,” according to leading climate, health, and information technology experts, who met in Nairobi last week.

Climate change will further increase the already high variability of Africa’s climate, fostering the emergence, resurgence and spread of infectious diseases. “A warmer world will generally be a sicker world,” said Prof. Onesmo ole-MoiYoi, a Tanzania medical, veterinary and vector expert. “We scientists need to adopt a new way of working, one that makes African communities bearing the burden of disease part of the solution rather than part of the problem.” The separate fields of human health, animal health, climate, vectors and environment must come together to avert a “continental disaster,” according to leading experts who attended the meeting.

Patti Kristjanson of ILRI, which hosted the meeting, agreed. “We need to do things differently than we have in the past. The impact of disease will increase if we continue to operate in silos. Our only chance at reducing the impact of deadly diseases in Africa is to increase collaboration across the disciplines of environment and health, and in a way that involves local communities. Failure to do so could lead to disastrous consequences.”

The experts concluded a three-day meeting sponsored by Google.org and organized by researchers from the IGAD Climate Predictions and Applications Centre (ICPAC), the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI), the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (icipe), the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and Google.org.

The meeting was one of the first on the continent to link climate and health researchers to reduce Africa’s infectious disease burden. The experts cited malaria, Rift Valley fever and bird flu as diseases poised to spread to new areas, along with an increasing threat of diseases such as Chikungunya and the emergence of as yet unknown disease pathogens, unless researchers, disease control workers and local communities share information and communicate faster and more strategically across their professions.

Prof. ole-MoiYoi of icipe and Kenyatta University stressed the importance of tapping the expertise of local communities. “By using bed-nets and anti-malarial drugs, and by removing the human-made breeding sites of mosquitoes, communities in the Kenyan Highlands have managed to stop recurrent malaria epidemics.”

“To combat disease, we need a holistic approach that involves local communities,” ole-MoiYoi said. “We can control malaria across Africa if we can divorce ourselves from the linear thinking that looks for ‘a’ solution and adopt an integrated approach.”

The World Health Organisation (WHO)estimates that changes to the earth’s climate are already causing five million more severe illness and more than 150,000 more deaths each year. By 2030, the number of climate-related diseases is likely to more than double.

Dr. Rosemary Sang, a researcher from KEMRI, described a case study of an outbreak of Rift Valley fever that claimed the lives of 155 Kenyans in late 2006 and early 2007. The virus is transmitted from livestock to people either through handling of infected animal material or by the mosquito vectors. Sang said the outbreak, which peaked 24 December, highlights most of the critical challenges researchers and health officials face in connecting data and advanced warnings to realities on the ground.

Kenya’s Garissa District, in the remote north-eastern corner of the country, experienced heavy rains and flooding starting in mid-October 2006, resulting in standing pools of water that became breeding sites for the mosquitoes that transmit Rift Valley fever. The first veterinary interventions did not take place until mid-January 2007, almost three months after the onset of the heavy rains, 2.5 months after mosquito swarms were reported, 2 months after the first livestock and 1.5 months after the first human cases were recorded, respectively.

“We need to move up our response times to these outbreaks,” said Sang. “All of the warning signs of an outbreak were there but we weren’t able to connect the dots.”

She cites poor tele-communication and roads in the region as major challenges. “Many of these areas lie outside mobile phone networks and far from health or veterinary clinics. As animals and then people began to get sick and die, the word didn’t get out fast enough.”

In the end, however, human and animal health officials, working together, were able to save the lives of more people in the 2006/07 outbreak than in the same region in 1998, when more than 600 people died from Rift Valley fever and millions of dollars were lost in livestock trade and tourism.

“The key is predicting outbreaks before they happen and preparing high-risk areas to act quickly to reduce the impact on communities,” said Sang.
Frank Rijsberman of Google.org called on technical experts to strengthen their capacity to predict and prevent infectious diseases. That will take more and better climate, vector, human and animal data, as well as more data sharing.

“The links between the climate and health research communities across Africa need to be strengthened,” Rijsberman said. “By sharing information we can stop some disease outbreaks and dramatically shorten our response time to others – which can not only save lives but also protect communities against subsequent severe economic losses.”

Mapping the way forward
The researchers pointed to climate models and new mapping software such as Google Earth and Health Map as useful tools for integrating vast amounts of environmental, health, and poverty data. “We’re working to identify the populations of people that are most vulnerable to disease and other external shocks,” said Phil Thornton of ILRI. “That includes communities that are at high risk for malaria because, for example, they are located both far from health clinics and near to water sources. We make these ‘vulnerability maps’ publicly available so that these high-risk communities can get the support they need to respond quickly and effectively to disease outbreaks.”

Google.org environmental scientist Amy Luers said better disease responses will also require tackling diseases at their root causes. “We scientists have to do a better job of informing the public of the underlying drivers of the spread of infectious diseases. The impacts of increasing populations and environmental degradation will require institutional and governance changes put in place for a ‘one health’ approach to human, animal and environmental well being.”

“We need to prepare now to avoid future catastrophe,” says Prof. ole-MoiYoi. “We are discovering that climate variability is playing a bigger and bigger role in the spread and severity of diseases across the globe. Our survival, and that of our environment, may depend on our joining hands to understand that environment. And our roles in it.”

Rethinking impact: Understanding the complexity of poverty and change

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Group finds traditional measures such as ‘rate of return studies’ are not suitable for evaluating research impacts.
complexity of povertySixty people from 33 organizations worldwide, almost half of them women and from outside the 16 centres supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), convened this March in Cali, Colombia, to rethink the way agricultural researchers go about assessing their impacts on reducing poverty and economic, social and gender inequities.

Traditional assessment methods unsuitable
This group thinks that traditional economic impact assessment methods such as ‘rate of return studies’ are unsuited for evaluating research activities aimed at sustainable poverty reduction. Indeed, for the last 5-10 years, many CGIAR centres have been widening their range of methods to assess their diverse outcomes and impacts. The impact experts and local partners gathered at this meeting recommended that CGIAR management take immediate steps to acknowledge the legitimacy of this diversity and the broad range of impact assessment methods needed to evaluate it.

New ‘linking’ role for researchers
The group also stressed the central, rather than peripheral, role that today’s researchers must play in linking researchers, academics, farmers, marketers, policymakers and representatives of civil society in creating and sharing knowledge. To do this, the group warned, will require that research organizations change the way they do business. Specifically, these organizations will have to recognize the legitimacy and challenges of such boundary-spanning work by dedicating substantial time and resources to it and rewarding those who do it well.

Learning through participatory research
Learning organizations that are effective at innovation are also likely to be effective in engaging end-users. Thus, participants at this meeting highlighted the need to find more thoughtful ways of assessing who to involve in a given research project and how to involve them. Participatory tools demonstrably effective at this kind of ‘action research’ were discussed and evaluated. What was clear to all was a continuing need to better engage farmers and other end-users of research for development, or the civil society organizations that represent them, in meaningful ways at appropriate points throughout the research process. They also recommend that scientists managing complex research projects spanning the policy, civil society, agricultural, local development and private sectors be recognized and rewarded for taking on such complexity.

Excerpts from Workshop Brief No 2 states:

It is time for the CGIAR to present a clear strategy and code of conduct for engaging users (including farmers, the poor and the civil society organizations that represent them) in on-the-ground research processes. . . . The CGIAR guidelines for impact assessment currently being finalized (based on a rate of return methodology alone) are not adequate for much of the research it conducts.

We urge management to support the rapid development of another set of impact assessment guidelines specifically for evaluating complex collaborative research, and to adapt the performance measurement and other systems to reflect these new approaches. Without them, we risk inappropriately assessing the work we are doing that is most likely to lead to sustainable solutions to poverty, and possibly even driving it out of the CGIAR research portfolio.

More realism needs to be applied to the concept of attribution and causation within complex collaborative research, where impacts are not likely to be attributable to the CGIAR or single causes. Knowing that different collaborators play different roles over time and multiple causal strands contribute to impact, we should focus assessments on contribution rather than attribution. Over-emphasis on attribution may damage the trust needed for effective collaboration. In addition, greater emphasis needs to be placed on understanding adaptation processes rather than adoption per se of finished technology.

Principles for linking knowledge with action
ILRI agricultural economist, impact assessment expert and innovations leader Patti Kristjanson is committed to developing a set of principles for linking knowledge with action and to further linking the principles identified with tools, methods, approaches and strategies. Kristjanson says ILRI is collaborating with Harvard University’s Sustainability Science Program in development of a training course on this for CGIAR research managers and their partners.

The workshop participants agreed on the following four key messages.

Mission-oriented scientists need to rethink how they do research to have sustainable impacts on reducing poverty as well as how to evaluate those research impacts.
How scientists do research is key to achieving pro-poor, gender-sensitive and socially
inclusive results. Working more thoughtfully with, and helping to bridge boundaries
between, strategically chosen partners can help increase the probability of linking the
knowledge generated by the research to actions that lead to sustainable poverty
reductions.

Mission-driven researchers need to continue to bring other (existing) evaluation methods and approaches into more regular practice.
A wide array of evaluation methods and approaches already exists that is not fully
used by the agricultural and natural-resource management R&D communities. Members of those communities should review the available options and try out methodologies they are not familiar with.

Many scientists still view non-economic assessment methods as ‘illigitimate’.
There is still a high degree of skepticism among agricultural and natural resource management researchers, particularly within the CGIAR, about using non-economic and non-statistical data in evaluations. More empirical evidence of the validity and value of approaches other than economic (e.g. ex-post assessments) is needed.

Methodology gaps still exist.
It can be argued that the CGIAR are employing inadequate evaluation methods for the 75% of its research unrelated to germplasm improvement (e.g. policies, institutions, natural resource management, gender and social inclusion). CGIAR research evaluators need to refine existing, as well as often employ multiple, methods to fill this important gap.

For more information, see www.prgaprogram.org/riw

“Workshop on Rethinking Impact: Understanding the complexity of poverty and change: Summary”, 26–28 March 2008, Cali, Colombia, ILRI Innovation Works Discussion Paper 4, ILAC (Institutional Learning and Change) Working Paper 7 and PRGA (CGIAR Systemwide Program on Participatory Research and Gender Analysis) Working Document 26, September 2008.


The Challenge Paper, Initial Synthesis of Feedback, and Workshop Workbook

Further Information contact:
Patti Kristjanson
Innovation Works Leader
International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI)
Nairobi
Kenya
p.kristjanson@cgiar.org

Livestock production an effective use of water in developing countries – new study

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New study indicates that livestock production has high potential for effective, productive and profitable use of water in agriculture.

Contrary to widely held views that livestock production is a wasteful use of water and is destructive to water catchments, a new study asserts that livestock production has a high unrecognized potential for effective, productive and profitable use of water in agriculture. 

Animal production, particularly production of grain feeds and forages, is one of the world’s largest uses of agricultural water. If properly targeted for reform, this sub-sector may well hold the key to improved water productivity in agriculture. Livestock scientists are arguing that by reviewing the sourcing of livestock feed, increasing animal productivity, and improving grazing and watering practices, water productivity in agriculture could increase dramatically.

“In Africa we could double water productivity of livestock with little difficulty – maybe increase it four times” asserts Don Peden, a scientist with the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).

Livestock scientists are further challenging comparisons often made between livestock and crop water productivity. “Most comparisons focus on fresh weights of human foods; yet the water content of diverse foods such as meat, milk, potatoes and grains varies widely from about 10 to 80 percent, making such comparisons virtually meaningless,” says Peden. “Much criticism of high water use by livestock has emphasized grain-fed beef production, but livestock in developing countries consume very little grain, depending almost entirely on grass and crop residues and byproducts”.

Arising from evaluations of water use in livestock production systems as a part of a wider Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture, scientists say greater use of crop residues and by-products to feed livestock, a widespread practice in developing countries, could obviate the need for huge amounts of water now used to produce grains and other animal feeds in developed countries.

“One entry point for improving global agricultural water productivity is strategic sourcing of animal feeds such as grains, crop residues and by-products, pastures, fodder and forage crops. This issue has been largely ignored in 50 years of research on both livestock and water management,” says Peden.

Equally important is the need to improve animal productivity through better breeding, animal health and nutrition. Research suggests that livestock in Africa’s pastoral areas achieve only about one-third of their genetic production potential. Also needed are improved watering and grazing practices that reduce run-off, flooding, degradation and contamination of water resources.

Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are two of the most important livestock production areas in developing regions. In Africa, 500 million people live in livestock-producing areas, half of them below the poverty line. In South Asia, 1.2 billion people are involved in livestock production, 40 percent living on less than a dollar a day.  In these two regions, per capita meat consumption is about one-seventh of that in developed countries. The poor in these developing regions often suffer from lack of dietary protein, vitamins A and B12, zinc, iron and selenium.

In poor countries where most people subsist on starchy diets, animal foods constitute one of the best options for supplying these nutrients and helping to eliminate anemia, strengthen immune systems, and overcome malnutrition, as well as enhancing cognitive development in children. The contribution livestock make to the world’s poor is thus critical to their survival and development.  Far from being a wasteful use of water, scientists argue that livestock production in developing countries must be seen as both essential and an opportunity to increase water use efficiency.

To maximize the productivity of water, livestock experts recommend factoring in the water requirements for livestock and feed production in mainstream water planning, management and development. Evidence is mounting that integration of animal production into investments in agricultural water development results in more sustainable and profitable livelihoods for farmers and herders alike.
 

Conversion of pastures to croplands is big climate change threat

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New study results are warning that the conversion of pasturelands to croplands will be the major contributor to global warming in East Africa.

Climate change threat

Climate change is a real and current threat to households and communities already struggling to survive in east Africa. Global climate modelling results indicate that the region will experience wetter and warmer conditions as well as decreases in agricultural productivity. However, results just released by the Climate Land Interaction Project (CLIP) forecast that there will be a high degree of variability within the region with some areas becoming wetter and others drier. This research provides evidence of the complex connection between regional changes in climate and changes in land cover and land use. The results forecast the conversion of vast amounts of land from grasslands to croplands over the next 40 years, with serious consequences for the environment.

Climate Land Interaction Project (CLIP)
CLIP is a joint research project of Michigan State University (MSU) and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), exploring important linkages between land use/cover changes and climatic changes in east Africa.

CLIP researchers, together with the Kenyan Ministry of Environment and Mineral Resources, organised a workshop to present CLIP modelling results to key decision-makers in Kenya. The workshop, held in Nairobi, highlighted the policy and technical implications and options for climate change adaptations in Kenya.

CLIP researcher and professor at MSU, Jeffrey Andresen, warns that the erosion of east African grazing lands is a major threat facing Kenya and other east African countries. ‘Results of running these models indicate that the greatest amount of contribution to global warming in the east Africa region is not going to be motor vehicles or methane emissions from livestock or conversions of forests to pastures but rather conversion of pasturelands to croplands’ says Andresen.

Projected climate and land use changes in northern Kenya
Based on climate change scenarios (CLIP analysis and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) forecasts) northern Kenya will experience significant changes in rainfall and temperatures with some places becoming wetter and others drier. These changes will have dramatic impacts on ground cover and vegetation, especially the distribution and composition of grass species that form pastures for livestock and on which many people depend for their livelihoods.

Simulation models predict that areas in the remote northeast around Wajir, for example, will have greater vegetation cover and become much bushier than at present. Grazing lands are already scarce and the increasing encroachment of bush into grazing areas will create further problems for livestock keepers.

The quantity and quality of water will also be affected by the forecast changes in rainfall patterns and temperature regimes. These changes will not only affect water availability for humans and livestock but also accelerate the rate of vegetation change in different and opposite ways for different places. The ratio of tall to short grass species and closed to open vegetation, for example, depend partially on soil moisture content. It is likely that the anticipated climatic changes will greatly alter the grass ratios and these changes will then exert adverse effects on feed resources for livestock and significantly modify herd composition. In addition, traditional land management interventions, such as the use of fires and overgrazing may increase the scale, intensity and speed of these impacts.

CLIP researcher and ILRI scientist, Joseph Mworia Maitima concludes ‘Many millions of Kenyans already face severe poverty and constraints in pursuing a livelihood. But, with these projected increasing environmental stresses, they are going to become even more vulnerable.

‘It’s crucial that we now start talking about the technical and policy

Download CLIP brief


CLIP Brief: Policy implications of land climate interactions, June 2008

Related information:


Severe weather coming: Experts (Daily Nation, 13 August 2008)


Kenya: Severe weather coming – Experts (All Africa, 13 August 2008)

Contacts:

Joseph M. Maitima
Scientist/Ecologist
International Livestock Research Institute
Nairobi, Kenya
Email: j.maitima@cgiar.org

Pig marketing opportunities in Assam and Nagaland

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With soaring food prices, indigenous peoples in India are going back to raising small local black pigs. With knowledge-based support, they could tap into new market opportunities and double their incomes.
Pig marketing opportunities in Assam and NagalandThis is Nagaland, one of India’s most insecure and poorest states. It is in the country’s mountainous northeast corner. 

Remarkably, even remote villages here are affected by the rising global prices of milk, meat and cereals.

Most Naga ethnic groups have always kept pigs. Pork remains their preferred meat. Now, today’s skyrocketing grain prices mean the small black pigs these tribal peoples keep, which are adapted to local feed resources, have suddenly become more attractive than big white imported pigs, which have to be fed on expensive grain.

India: Poverty Statistics

India: Over 300 million people, 27.5% of the population live below the poverty line.

Northeast India is the easternmost region consisting of the Seven Sister States. It is home to 38 million people. The region is linguistically and culturally very distinct from the other states of India and officially recognized as a special category of States.

Nagaland is home to 1.99 million people. 19% of the population or 399,000 people live below the poverty line of which 387,000 live in rural areas.

Assam is home to 26.6 million people. 19.7% of the population or 557,700 people live below the poverty line, 545,000 of them in rural areas.

Poverty statistics source: Government of India Planning Commission (2007) Poverty estimates 2004-05.

Pig income for livelihoods and education 

Pig marketing opportunities in Assam and Nagaland


‘Apart from keeping pigs and farming, women like us don’t have any other ways to make money.

A window of opportunity for small pig farmers


Pig marketing opportunities in Assam and NagalandPig farmers in Nagaland and Assam now have a window of opportunity to step up their pig production and sell their native animals across the two states. But as markets for pigs are getting larger, so is the market chain, making the business of supplying disease free, safe meat increasingly hard for small producers.  On top of that, there are no functioning breeding schemes or feed systems that would allow farmers to intensify.  For entrepreneurs looking to collaborate, they might consider choosing to create general partnership alabama to pool resources and share responsibilities in a business venture.

 

Pig marketing opportunities in Assam and NagalandThis lack of quality knowledge is stopping expansion in a rapidly changing industry that could benefit many of the most vulnerable members of society, such as women and children. Without this critical knowledge-based support the opportunity for millions of the world’s poor to climb out of poverty through enhanced pig farming and marketing will be lost.

A local solution for rising prices

Pig marketing opportunities in Assam and NagalandDevelopment agencies have tried for decades to raise the very low household incomes in Assam and Nagaland. But even though pig keeping is central to the livelihoods of the poor and especially poor women, pig production has seldom been viewed as a development tool for the region.
This is peculiar because until recently local demand for pork was so great that it was profitable for local business people to import large numbers of commercial white pigs from producers in India’s grain states further west.  Animals were being transported 2000-3000 kilometres, at a cost of USD40 each.

But grain-based feeds and transport have both recently shot up in price, adding even more to the cost.  People in Assam and Nagaland are suddenly finding the imported white pigs far too expensive. A new market is growing fast for the local black and cross-bred pigs. Because these native animals can be fed mostly on low-cost feed crops and crop wastes, they are an ideal solution to fill the new pork and piglet supply gap. 

Knowledge-based support needed to tap into fast changing markets


Pig marketing opportunities in Assam and NagalandHowever because markets are changing so fast smallholder farmers can no longer make it alone.  They lack access to information and resources, linkages to health and breeding services, business support, and feeding systems.  All these are vital if they are to expand while also meeting increasingly demanding new health and safety standards. This short-term opportunity is ready-made for success. The pigs are there, the demand is there, and farmers ambitious to grow their pig enterprises are also there.

With relevant knowledge and training, both of which ILRI with its national partners are ready to provide, most tribal households in these states could boost their herd sizes and double their incomes sustainably and in a cost-effective way over the next 5–10 years.

Without support, millions of people will increasingly suffer poverty, conflicts, and the loss of dignity that goes with forced migration to cities. However, with help, they can maintain the traditional livelihoods that sustain communities and generate prosperity.

ILRI’s representative for Asia, Iain Wright, says ‘We are working with national partners to gain support for helping poor people seize this big pig marketing opportunity in Nagaland, Assam and other northeast states.

‘We have recently started a project with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research and the School of Agricultural Science and Rural Development, Nagaland University, to implement a programe of research to improve the production and marketing of pigs in selected villages in Mon District, Nagaland. We’re also looking at working on similar projects with national partners in other notheastern states’, says Wright.

Background information:
The Nagaland pig production and marketing project is funded by the National Agricultural Innovation Project with a contribution from the International Fund for Agricultural Development and aims to develop sustainable solutions to livelihood improvement in one of the poorest districts in India.

Investigating new livelihood options for pastoralists

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Research is identifying new development options that will help pastoral peoples and lands of the South adapt to big and fast changes.

livelihood optionsOver 180 million people in the developing world, especially in dry areas, depend solely on livestock and pastoral systems for their livelihoods. Grassland-based pastoral and agro-pastoral systems are undergoing unprecedented changes that are bringing new opportunities as well as problems. Research is helping to identify new development options for pastoralists that reduce risks and enhance their ability to adapt to changing climates, markets and circumstances.

Pastoral lands are crucial for the production of ecosystem goods and services, for tourism and for mitigating climate change. Pastoral systems can no longer be viewed as livestock enterprises, but as multiple-use systems that have important consequences for the environment and more diversified livelihood strategies.

Opportunities and challenges in tropical rangelands
A new paper, written by scientists at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), describes the major drivers and trends of dryland tropical pastoral and agro-pastoral systems and the challenges they present for development agendas. The paper, entitled Livestock production and poverty alleviation – challenges and opportunities in arid and semi-arid tropical rangeland based systems, gives examples of how research is providing new development options that should make drylands more attractive for public and private investment. The authors urge for a more holistic research agenda that will take into account the socio-economic and ecological synergies and trade-offs inherent in pastoral people taking up new livelihood opportunities.

livelihoodILRI’s director general and lead author of the paper, Carlos Seré, presented the paper at a joint meeting of the International Grasslands and Rangelands Congresses, held 29 June–5 July 2008, in Hohhot, in China’s Inner Mongolia.

Seré says: ‘Perceptions about arid pastoral regions are changing rapidly as we recognize the many functions these ecosystems provide and the new development options available.

‘Pastoralism can no longer be seen as a “tragedy” for common grazing areas but rather as a production system with great potential to sustain complex livelihood strategies.

‘Balancing the needs for increased productivity, environmental protection and improved livelihoods in these fragile drylands will help us address the needs of some of the world’s most vulnerable peoples’.

New development options for pastoral peoples and lands
Much conventional research has focused on increasing the productivity of drylands, for example, by improving livestock and feed management. However, big and fast changes mean that there is a need for an expanded, more integrated, research agenda that investigates what options will work best in given areas and circumstances and how pastoral peoples and lands will benefit.

The new development options need to ease the transitions in pastoral livelihoods that will be necessary in the coming decades and focus on ways to mitigate pastoral risk and encourage adoption of new livelihoods. Poor households may have opportunities to engage in livelihood strategies outside traditional livestock production, such as payments for ecosystem goods and services such as water purification and carbon sequestration. Others may have opportunities to combine livestock keeping with new or increased incomes generated through expanded eco- and wildlife tourism, biofuel production and niche markets for speciality livestock products.

Download Livestock production and poverty alleviation paper and presentation

Livestock production and poverty alleviation, C. SerĂŠ et al. June 2008

Reference
C. Seré, A. Ayantunde, A. Duncan, A. Freeman, M. Herrero, S. Tarawali and I. Wright (2008). Livestock production and poverty alleviation – challenges and opportunities in arid and semi-arid tropical rangeland based systems. International Livestock Research Institute, P.O. Box 30709, Nairobi, Kenya.

Impacts from ILRI and partner pastoral research
• Studies in Africa, combining climate change predictions and proxy indicators of vulnerability, identified areas on the continent most vulnerable to climate change.

• Studies in Lesotho, Malawi and Zambia identified economic shocks, drought, livestock losses due to animal diseases, and declining livestock service delivery as major sources of pastoral vulnerability. The study noted marked differences in the ownership of productive assets, livelihood strategies and vulnerability between men and women. This meant that women and female-headed households are still more vulnerable than the general population—and this in spite of the fact that young men are increasingly emigrating from pastoral to urban areas, leaving ever larger numbers of women as heads of pastoral households.

• A participatory pastoral project in East Africa created knowledge and relationships that enabled poor Maasai agro-pastoral communities to influence district and national land-use policies affecting their livelihoods and wildlife-rich landscapes. Locals worked with researchers as community facilitators and played a key role in GIS mapping, representing the interests of their communities to local and national policymakers and delivering the maps and other knowledge products that are helping to protect their wildlife and secure additional income from wildlife tourism.

• Studies in West Africa show that typically it is traders that dictate livestock prices because livestock producers and sellers lack accurate and up-to-date price information. Producers thus have little incentive to increase their livestock production even though a wide range of cross-regional links exist that could greatly increase their market opportunities. This research showed that West Africa’s pastoralists could increase their incomes by entering the growing regional livestock markets if provided with credit for value-added processing, reduced transportation and handling costs, livestock market information systems, and harmonized regional livestock trade policies.

• Other studies have identified that new market opportunities for pastoralists are opening due to increasing demands from affluent members of society. Growing niche markets for certain locally preferred breeds of animals (Sudan desert sheep) or animal products (El Chaco beef), for example, are starting to be exploited in pastoral regions.

Contacts:
Carlos SerĂŠ
Director General, ILRI
Email: c.sere@cgiar.org
Telephone: +254 (20) 422 3201/2

Rising milk and meat prices bring threats and opportunities

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More equitable trade policies and substantial investments in agricultural research are urgently needed to help poor farmers seize new market opportunities.
 

milk pricesSoaring food prices are dominating headlines. Rising prices represent threats for poor consumers as well as opportunities for poor milk and meat producers. The politics of food have grown complicated with almost as much speed as the rise in food prices. For many people who are poor, this has become an immediate crisis in their lives. It has suddenly become much more difficult for them to secure sufficient nutritious food.

ILRI’s director-general, Carlos Sere, says that governments should start focusing on the livestock sector to combat famine. He warned that the prices of livestock products will skyrocket if the prevailing conditions do not change.

But for some 800 million smallholder livestock farmers, this crisis could turn into an opportunity. Given the right support, they could earn more income from milk and meat, giving them more hope for the future.

The surge in prices of milk and meat, as well as rice, wheat and other cereal grains, is a global problem that will have the greatest impact on the world’s poor. Increasing milk and meat consumption are contributing to the spike in milk and meat prices. More people in the developing world are consuming larger quantities of animal source foods, while consumption in industrial countries is flattening out. The main driver in the increase in milk and meat prices has been the surge in demand for the products in China and India, where,fortunately, hundreds of millions of people are improving their diets as well as their incomes.

Many other factors are also contributing to the high prices. Rising global oil prices have had a negative effect on agricultural production, transportation and fertilizer costs; diversion of food grains and agricultural land to biofuels means more grain and land is being used for energy production and so less is available for food and recent bad weather, such as in Australia and New Zealand where severe droughts have hampered agricultural production.

Demand soars in Asia’s rapidly emerging economies

Over the last decade, consumption of livestock products in the emerging economies of China and India has grown dramatically. As incomes of the poor rise from USD2 a day to USD10 a day, people typically switch from a predominantly starchy diet to a more varied diet that includes more vegetables, milk, meat and eggs.

In 1985, Chinese consumers ate an average of 20 kilograms (44 pounds) of meat, equivalent to half a pound per person per fortnight. This has increased 40 per cent and today they eat an average of 50 kilograms (110 pounds) per year. This is equivalent to half a pound per week. However, many poor people are too poor to eat meat – or eat only tiny amounts. In contrast, people in the US are consuming over half a pound of meat per person every day. US per capita red meat and poultry consumption increased 8 per cent between 1980 and 2005, and now stands at 187.5 pounds per person.

Poor consumers will be hardest hit by rising prices

Higher meat and milk prices will have the greatest effect on world’s poorest 2 billion people, who live on less than USD2 a day. For most of the 800 million people who live on even less – USD1 a day – these price increases mean they will go hungry more often and their diets will not be as nutritious. Threats and opportunities exist and this depends on whether the poor are net consumers of these foodstuffs or net producers, interestingly more rural farmers are net consumers.

In some areas, the price of milk has doubled. This is bad news for consumers in high milk consuming countries such as Kenya and India. For example, the price of milk in northern India has risen from 17 to 24 rupees in last 2 years, an increase of 50 per cent. Meat prices, while not rising quite as dramatically, are expected to keep increasing in large part because the corresponding price jumps of cereal grains used to feed livestock raised in industrial systems.

The world’s growing population will keep up the pressure on demand. Some estimate that by 2030, global food demands will double from current consumption. This does not mean that the result is all bad news for the poor. Many poor farmers with a surplus to sell could benefit from rising prices. For these farmers and their families, the rising prices of milk and meat offer new opportunities to climb out of poverty as they produce and sell more livestock and livestock products. India is a great example. With its sprawling crowded cities and population of over one billion, tens of millions of people could use dairy products to get themselves and their families out of poverty. Recent food price rises are also encouraging poor farmers in northeast India to expand their production of small local pigs. The soaring price of grains along with higher transportation costs is reducing the supply of exotic pigs from northeastern Indian states and stimulating demand for local black pigs that do not need costly feeds and can thrive on locally produced fodder and kitchen wastes. With the right support and infrastructure, poor farmers could seize the new market opportunities and climb out of poverty.

Food grains for people or for livestock?

With soaring demands for milk and meat comes more livestock and this brings more stress on the environment. ILRI’s long-term research aims for sustainable animal agriculture that helps poor farmers intensify their production systems while conserving their land, water and other natural resources. Livestock farming in poor countries is radically different from the industrial, grain-fed, feedlot form of livestock production practiced throughout the West. In industrial systems, it takes 8 kilos of grain to produce 1 kilo of meat. The ruminant livestock of poor countries do not compete with people for their feed, as they eat mainly grass, forages and crop wastes.

Food grains for people or for biofuels?

Another complicating factor in efforts to increase food production is the diversion of grains and oilseeds to produce ethanol and biodiesel. The World Development Report 2008 estimates that filling up a typical 4×4 SUV with ethanol uses enough maize to feed a person for a year. The report also found that biofuels would raise the prices of grain globally. This will lead to higher rates of malnutrition among the poor in the world’s least developed countries. Governments are reassessing their biofuels policies as there is growing concern about grain and oil-based crops, such as maize, soybean and oil palm, being used for producing biofuels while millions of poor people simply do not have enough food to eat. Not all biofuels are bad for food production and support is gathering for biofuels produced from non-consumable products such as wastes from sugarcane and sweet sorghum residues.

Recommendations

There are no quick fixes for today’s soaring food prices and their negative impacts on poverty levels and food security and availability. An international commitment to fairer and more equitable trade, together with substantial investments in agricultural research and development, are urgently needed to cope with current and future demands.
 

Fairer and more equitable trade
A major concern is that the spike in commodity prices could pit the globe’s poorer South against the relatively wealthy North, elevating demands from the South for reform of rich nations’ farm and environmental policies. It could also pit neighboring countries against each other. Trade barriers, production subsidies, import subsidies and export bans will all hit the poor the hardest.

ILRI recommends:

  1. Develop smart subsidies for the most vulnerable groups. Put more funds into the hands of the poorest people to buy the food they need instead of resorting to protectionist trade barriers to keep prices low.

2. Cut subsidies to European and US farmers and open rich markets to poor suppliers.

3. Get higher prices into the hands of small-scale livestock producers to encourage them to produce more.

Increasing investments in agricultural development and growth
Food productivity increases are critical for meeting rising food demands. Without the necessary increases in productivity, the global food crisis will worsen, prices will continue to rise and it will be even more difficult for poor people to access nutritious food.  It is critical that governments substantially increase their investments in agricultural research.

ILRI recommends:
1. Invest in rural market transport and infrastructure to ensure food supply from rural producers, especially of perishable, high value products, including livestock products.

2. Use options identified by scientific research to refine the integration of crops and livestock so as to raise smallholder productivity.
 
3. Exploit the fact that the new prices now make many livestock technologies developed over the last 30 years financially feasible.

 

 

Women and livestock: Global challenge dialogue

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Poverty has a woman’s face. ILRI is facilitating a global e-consultation to fight poverty through women and livestock.

Over the coming months ILRI will be facilitating a Global Challenge Dialogue on Women and Livestock. This e-consultation will involve knowledgeable and influential thinkers and doers from around the world. They will be invited to take up the challenge of fighting poverty through women and livestock; to create new ways to empower women livestock keepers to further develop themselves, their families, their communities and their nations.

The Challenge Dialogue is about deepening understanding of the challenge, seeking ideas, and devising a strategy and action plan that will realize tangible impacts.

At the end of six months participants will have developed:
• A first assessment of the global value of livestock-keeping by women.
• A list of major opportunities in enhancing women’s contribution to livestock development.
• A roadmap showing how joint actions will lead to real improvements to poor women’s lives, communities and environments.
• Proposals for activities that help poor women get even more benefits from livestock.

Why are livestock so important to women?

Poverty has a woman’s face. Women do two thirds of the world’s work, and produce half the world’s food, yet earn only a tenth of the world’s income and own less than a hundredth of the world’s property. Of the 600 million poor livestock keepers in the world, around two thirds are women and most live in rural areas.

There is a special relationship between women and livestock. Poor women can own livestock when they are denied land. Looking after livestock fits well with their work of running households and raising families. Hundreds of millions of women livestock farmers daily tend sheep, goats and chickens, milk cows, buy and prepare food, plant and harvest crops, weed their plots, look after children, clean their home, fetch and carry water and firewood, prepare every meal for the family, care for the sick and elderly, while often simultaneously running small informal businesses – selling milk, eggs, fruits and vegetables – in market centres and along roadsides.

Women are the great unsung heroes of agricultural development. They are the farm and market managers who make agriculture viable, the glue that holds families and communities together, the stewards who safeguard their environments for the generations to come.

What can be done to better lives through ‘livestock women’?

Broad change will enable women to get more out of livestock. Change is needed in the ways governments, NGOs, and researchers support women livestock keepers. Change is needed in the ways societies value women’s work. Change is needed in service delivery to women farmers.

Patti Kristjanson, leader of this Challenge Dialogue, says:

‘To alleviate severe poverty, we need to change institutions and to engage women. Knowledge and technology is important, but it’s not enough. We have to change our ways of working and give poor people the lead in building their own futures.

‘We already have the skills and tools to bring about meaningful changes. We need the will to make them happen. By working together, we can start to solve a problem too big for any one person, organisation or institution to address alone’ said Kristjanson.

Challenge Dialogue: a new kind of consultation

A ‘Challenge Dialogue’ is a disciplined process of defining a specific challenge, engaging diverse stakeholders in a productive conversation focused on co-creating solutions, and taking action towards the solutions.

It is a proven vehicle for taking groups of more than 100 people through a structured conversation over several months focused on developing alignment and agreement around a plan for solving complex tasks.

‘Challenge Dialogue’ is particularly useful when faced with a significant opportunity or problem to be solved, when you need to bring people together that don’t normally work as a team and get them collaborating quickly and effectively, and you want to move to action within a defined timeframe.

Patti Kristjanson, ILRI’s Innovation Works leader says ‘The idea behind the Challenge Dialogue is that we involve as many diverse participants as possible and engage them in a bigger conversation. Everyone’s opinions are encouraged – thus we get diversity of views and a free flow of innovative ideas and solutions.

The Challenge Dialogue System (CDS) has been developed by Innovation Expedition. See http://www.innovationexpedition.com

The global Challenge Dialogue on Women and Livestock will involve people who are passionate about reducing poverty and improving poor women’s lives. Participants will generate excitement, interest and evidence about how ‘livestock women’ can improve lives and reduce world poverty. It will bring in partners, investments and actions that will better support women livestock keepers and, through them, their vulnerable children, communities and environments.

For more information about ILRI Challenge Dialogues visit the Innovation Works initiative at https://www.ilri.org/innovationworks

If you are interested in participating in the Global Challenge Dialogue on Women and Livestock, please contact Patti Kristjanson. Please provide a brief summary of your background and interests.

Further Information contact:

Patti Kristjanson

Innovation Works Leader
International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI)
Nairobi
Kenya
p.kristjanson@cgiar.org