FAO reviews stakeholder dialogue in support of sustainable livestock development

Last week, the Committee on Agriculture of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) discussed options for “stakeholder dialogue in support of sustainable livestock sector development” as a contribution to the so-called “Global Agenda of Action in Support of Sustainable Livestock Sector Development.

The Global Agenda of Action 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.

Download the Committee document

Read a statement on the proposals by the League for Pastoral Peoples and Endogenous Livestock Development

 

Can conservation agriculture work where scarce biomass feeds hungry livestock?

Rice residues after harvest, near Sangrur, southeast Punjab, India (photo credit: Neil Palmer/CIAT).

There is a new report of mixed results about the viability of adopting ‘conservation agriculture’ to enhance soil health and sustain long-term crop productivity in the developing world, an approach advocated by many. The authors of the report work at five centres of the CGIAR and conducted this research under the CGIAR Systemwide Livestock Programme (SLP). The lead author is a scientist at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). The following is based on the paper’s abstract.

One of the key principles of conservation agriculture is maintaining soil cover, often by depositing crop residues (the leaves, stems and stalks of crop plants after their grain or legumes have been harvested) on a crop field as mulch. Yet smallholder mixed crop-and-livestock farming systems across Africa and Asia face trade-offs among various options for crop residue use. This research assessed the trade-offs of using a proportion of a farm’s crop residues in contrasting settings on mixed crop-livestock farms. The paper draws from surveys in 12 villages and 9 countries across sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Sites were clustered into three groups along the combined population and livestock density gradients to assess current crop residue management practices and to explore potential challenges to adopting mulching practices in different circumstances.

Results show that in sites with high densities of human and livestock populations, although livestock face high potential pressure on resources on an area basis, biomass production tends to be substantial, with enough residues to cover demands for both livestock feed and soil mulch. In sites where population and livestock densities are at medium levels, biomass is scarce and pressure on land and feed are high, increasing pressure to use crop residues for livestock feed, and increasing the opportunity costs of using the residues for mulch. Where population and livestock densities are low, communal feed and fuel resources typically reduce pressure on crop residues on an area basis, but biomass production is also low and farmers in such sites rely largely on crop residues to get their livestock through the long dry seasons, indicating that there are substantial opportunity costs to using crop residues as mulch for croplands rather than feed for animals.

Despite its potential benefit for smallholder farmers across the density gradient, therefore, the introduction of mulching practices based on conservation agriculture appears potentially easier in sites where biomass production is sufficiently high to fulfil demands for both feed and fuel. In sites with relatively high feed and fuel pressure, any introduction of conservation agriculture needs complementary research and development efforts to increase biomass production and/or develop alternative sources of biomass to alleviate the opportunity costs of using some crop residues as mulch rather than feed.

Read the whole paper (note there is restricted access): Conservation agriculture in mixed crop-livestock systems: Scoping crop residue trade-offs in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, written by Diego Valbuena (ILRI and SLP), Olaf Erenstein (CIMMYT), Sabine Homann-Kee Tui (ICRISAT), Tahirou Abdoulaye (IITA), Lieven Claessens (CIP, ICRISAT and Wageningen University), Alan J. Duncan (ILRI), Bruno Gérard (SLP and CIMMYT), Mariana C Rufino (ILRI), Nils Teufel (ILRI), André van Rooyen (ICRISAT), Mark T van Wijk (ILRI and Wageningen University) and published online as a corrected proof in Field Crops Research on 17 March 2012.

 

Dual-purpose groundnut, pigeonpea, millet and sorghum raise milk yields in dairy-intensive India

Groundnuts (photo on Flickr by Stephen Eustace).

Jerome Bossuet, of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), based in Pantancheru, India, has an interesting article in the New Agriculturist last month about fodder innovations helping Indian dairy farmers.

Feed matters are big matters in this intensive dairy-producing country, because ‘Feed represents around 70 per cent of the cost of milk production . . . .’ But with most farm plots now too small to sustain both fodder and food crops and with areas of common grazing lands shrinking, milk prices have been rising.

Research groups are coming to the rescue by developing ‘dual-purpose’ varieties of sorghum, millet, pigeonpea and groundnut whose straw, leaves and stalks that remain after the grain or legume has been harvested are of higher-than-normal quality for feeding to farm animals and whose yields of grain for human consumption are also good.

‘Crop residues . . . are already an important source of fodder in India, providing more than 40 per cent of the available dry matter for feeding livestock; some experts estimate this could rise to 70 per cent by 2020. But residues, especially from cereals, are often of low nutritional quality, which affects the productivity of cattle and buffalo.’

The new dual-purpose crops manage to produce both high grain yields for people and nutritionally rich residues for their animal stock.

‘Anantapur district, in Andhra Pradesh, is a key groundnut producing region and also one of the most drought-prone areas in India. Seventy per cent of the agricultural land is planted with groundnut, supporting over 300,000 smallholders, therefore crop residues are mainly composed of groundnut stems, known as haulm. “Groundnut haulm’s energy and protein content, and its palatability and digestibility can vary significantly from one variety to another,” says Dr Michael Blummel, a scientist from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).

‘In 2002, ICRISAT introduced an early maturing, high yield and drought-tolerant groundnut variety (ICGV91114), which produced 15 per cent higher pod yields, 17 per cent more haulm and better quality fodder than the locally grown variety. After giving their cows and buffalo the improved fodder, dairy farmers noticed an immediate impact as their milk production increased by 11 per cent.

‘A recent participatory feeding trial found that 400 ml of extra milk was produced daily by animals that had been fed the improved variety. A separate impact study by ILRI also estimated that during the main growing season, adopters would earn about 48,000 rupees per hectare (US$970 from sales of groundnuts and milk)—four times more than from growing the local variety. . . .

‘Dual-purpose crops have also created new value chains for the animal feed sector. In Hyderabad, for example, sorghum stover-based feed blocks are being marketed by animal feed companies. One block feeds one dairy animal per day, ensuring a production level of eight to 12 litres of milk per day compared to an average of three to four. Traders are therefore beginning to pay sorghum farmers a premium for their crop residues.

‘Following on from ILRI and ICRISAT’s innovative crop breeding research, the IFAD-supported MilkIT project, led by ILRI, aims to improve access to animal feed for poor dairy farmers in India and Tanzania by using dual-purpose crops. The ILRI and ICRISAT researchers, and members of the CGIAR’s Systemwide Livestock Program, are also transferring the dual-purpose crop breeding approach to African countries, through improved sorghum varieties. They are also studying the trade-offs when crop residues are used to feed animals, including the consequences for soil fertility. . . .’

Read the whole article at the New Agriculturist: Fodder innovations to help Indian dairy farmers, Mar 2012.

For more information, visit the websites of ILRI and ICRISAT.

 

Experts meet in Addis Ababa to design new agricultural research project for Ethiopian Highlands

Around 60 experts are meeting at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Addis Ababa on 30th and 31st January to plan an exciting new research project that aims to transform agricultural systems in the Highland of Ethiopia. As in many part of Africa, farming systems in the Ethiopian Highlands are a mix of crop and livestock enterprises. The key to improving the productivity of these mixed crop-livestock systems, to increase food production and improve the livelihoods of the 60 million people who depend on them is to produce more output from the same area of land or per animal while reducing the negative environmental impacts and at the same time increasing contributions to natural capital and the flow of environmental services, a process which has been called ‘sustainable intensification.’

ILRI staff led a consortium of research partners to produce a draft project design focused on the Ethiopian Highlands.  Dr Shirley Tarawali from ILRI explained that an important part of the design is to bring together crop scientists, animal scientists, environmental scientists and socio-economists to work together to tackle the complex challenges associated with these mixed farming systems.

“Often we find that scientists from different disciplines are working on different components of farming systems without taking account of the interlinkages between the different components,” she explained.

“For example, crop scientists don’t often take account that crop residues such as straw are an important component of animal feed and livestock scientists don’t necessarily take account of the environmental impact of livestock.  We aim to bring together a multi-disciplinary research team from international and Ethiopian organizations and link the project to development partners to undertake research that can help development organizations such as government agencies and non-governmental organizations design more effective programmes for development”.

View her introduction to the project:

The workshop provides an opportunity for a broad group of important stakeholders to learn about the project plans and to share their views on expectations from and opportunities for synergies with the project. It is attended by representatives from government, research organizations, donors and development organizations. Following the two day workshop the research consortium will refine the project design.

The project is part of the US government’s Feed the Future initiative (http://www.feedthefuture.gov/).  Feed the Future is the United States Government’s global hunger and food security initiative. It supports country-driven approaches to address the root causes of hunger and poverty and forge long-term solutions to chronic food insecurity and under-nutrition. Drawing upon resources and expertise of agencies across the U.S. Government, this Presidential Initiative is helping countries transform their own agriculture sectors to grow enough food sustainably to feed their people.  The US Agency for International Development (USAID) is supporting three multi-stakeholder agricultural research projects to sustainably intensify key African farming systems that overlap with and focus on the focus countries of Feed the Future.  These are intended to catalyze concerted research and action by governments and donor agencies around pressing issues.

The overall aim is to transform agricultural systems through sustainable intensification projects in three regions of Africa:

• the Sudano-Sahelian Zone of West Africa
• the Ethiopian highlands
• East and Southern Africa

The consortium in Ethiopia is led by the The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI – www.ilri.org) and includes: The Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR – www.eiar.gov.et), International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT – www.cimmyt.org), International Centre for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA – www.icarda.cgiar.org), International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT – www.icrisat.org), International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI – www.ifpri.org), and the International Water Management Institute (IWMI – www.iwmi.cgiar.org).

Information on the project and workshop is online at http://agintensificationafrica.wordpress.com

The project workspace, with event plans, reports, presentations etc is at: http://agintensificationafrica.wikispaces.com

 

Transforming African agricultural systems through sustainable intensification: Project design workshops

As part of the US government’s Feed the Future initiative to address global hunger and food security issues in sub-Saharan Africa, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) is supporting three multi-stakeholder agricultural research projects to sustainably intensify key African farming systems. Based in three priority agro-ecological zones, the three projects are focused on sites in Ghana and Mali, Ethiopia and Tanzania.

The regions were chosen based on analysis of cropping systems, poverty, population, country development priorities, and the potential for successfully improving agricultural productivity.

On 9 January 2012, a design workshop for the West Africa project starts in Tamale, Ghana. Led by the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA), the ‘Sustainable Intensification of Cereal-based Farming Systems in the Sudano-Sahelian Zone of West Africa’ project aims to improve livelihoods through sustainable increased productivity of maize-legume and crop/tree/livestock systems in the northern Guinea and Sudan savanna zones of Ghana and Mali.

The second design workshop, from 30 January – 2 February 2012 in Addis Ababa, is hosted by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). This project – ‘Sustainable intensification of crop-livestock systems to improve food security and farm income diversification in the Ethiopian highlands‘ – aims to “identify options for sustainable intensification of mixed crop livestock systems in the Ethiopian highlands that will enable communities to participate in emerging market opportunities in environmentally friendly ways whilst improving resilience to risks.”

The third design workshop is in Dar es Salaam from 6-9 February 2012 will kick off the  ‘Sustainable intensification of maize-legume-livestock integrated farming systems in Eastern and Southern Africa’ project, also led by IITA.

The goal of this project is to “sustainably increase agricultural productivity growth, economic growth, food production, food and nutrition security and improve natural resource management in order to reduce poverty and hunger in the target areas in Tanzania and in the eastern and southern Africa region.” It will “increase the productivity of maize-legume-livestock production systems, system resilience and agro-ecosystem services including provisioning of food and feed; improved water and soil conservation, soil nutrient supply and cycling, soil health and soil structure; carbon sequestration and biodiversity; and adaptation to climate variability and change.”

ILRI is involved to various degrees in each of the projects, with a leadership role in the Ethiopian one. The projects each bring together a range of research for development expertise and partners, including US universities, international agricultural research centers, national agricultural research systems, the private sector, non-governmental organizations and local and international development donor communities.

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In the project concept notes, sustainable agricultural intensification is defined as producing more output from the same area of land while reducing the negative environmental impacts, and at the same time increasing contributions to the natural capital and the flow of environmental services (Pretty et al. 2011).

 

Beef production in crop–livestock systems

This new report from the ACIAR – the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research – argues that  the “improvement of production and profitability in smallholder beef enterprises is typically not limited by a lack of promising feeding and management technologies. It is more due to low access to, and uptake of, these technologies. There has generally been little understanding of how these technologies can be adapted to and integrated into smallholder systems.”

The case studies in this publication highlight approaches that have been taken by recent ACIAR-funded projects in Indonesia, Vietnam and China
to better understand the social, economic and technical drivers and inhibitors of uptake of these promising technologies.

 

Download the report …

 

Pathways for sustainable development of mixed crop-livestock systems in developing countries

On 3 November 2011, Shirley Tarawali presented ILRI work on crop-livestock systems at the Wageningen symposium ‘Assessment for sustainable development of animal production systems.’

Watch the video of her presentation (Tarawali starts 40 minutes into the video)

View Tarawali’s presentation:

 

Crop residues in smallholder systems: Pressures and trade-offs

For the November 2011 ‘liveSTOCK Exchange’ event at ILRI, Alan Duncan, Bruno Gérard, Diego Valbuena, Michael Blümmel, and Shirley Tarawali prepared an issue brief on the contributions of crop residues to mixed crop and livestock systems in developing countries …

Contrary to the popular view that cereal crop residues are just a low quality by-product of arable production, crop residues are increasingly seen to play a critical role in smallholder mixed crop-livestock systems in the developing world. Crop residues represent biomass, an increasingly valuable resource as these systems evolve. In these systems, crops provide food for the household and the market as well as residues to feed livestock. Livestock provide traction for cultivation and transport as well as converting residues into manure. This interlinking of crop and livestock production is a central feature of mixed crop-livestock systems. However, the equilibrium is increasingly disturbed by various external drivers.

Worldwide, crop-livestock systems are in transition and we expect them to evolve differently in different places and contexts. The challenge is to make this transition a positive one for people, the environment and national economies.

This brief considers the growing pressures on crop residues in mixed systems and highlights ways that ILRI and its partners have developed our understanding of trade-offs and their implications for farm livelihoods and environmental sustainability.

Download Issue Brief 2.

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On 9 and 10 November 2011, the ILRI Board of Trustees hosted a 2-day ‘liveSTOCK Exchange’ to discuss and reflect on livestock research for development. The event synthesized sector and ILRI learning and helped frame future livestock research for development directions.

The liveSTOCK Exchange also marked the leadership and contributions of Dr. Carlos Seré as ILRI Director General. See all posts in this series / Sign up for email alerts

 

ILRI – ICRISAT collaborating to meet food and feed security needs

For the November 2011 ‘liveSTOCK Exchange’ event at ILRI, William Dar, of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), reflects on ILRI-ICRISAT collaboration on crops-livestock integration in mixed systems …

When Michael Blümmel and team organized the inauguration of ILRI’s experimental feed processing unit in their field office at ICRISAT headquarters in Patancheru, India, it struck me that the ILRI-ICRISAT collaboration was truly a partnership with a purpose.

Three machines comprise the feed processing unit, which is designed and supported by the ICRISAT-led National Agricultural Innovation on Sweet Sorghum Bio-Ethanol Value Chain. The unit will enable exploration and work on optimizing usage of by-products from crops, particularly dryland crops, besides biofuel production, for livestock feeding. It will facilitate uptake of such by-products, create job opportunities in feed transaction and processing, and ultimately contribute to the mitigation of feed scarcity.

Feed scarcity and high feed costs are major constraints to benefits from livestock rearing. Crop residues are the single most important feed resource in India and several parts of the developing world, and predictions have it that their importance as feed will further increase. Therefore, improvement of crop residues through multidimensional crop improvement has become the focus of collaborative research between our two institutes.

ICRISAT has collaborated with ILRI (formerly ILCA) since 1982, and so far our institutes have successfully concluded 10 joint projects. In the last few years, with active support from Dr Carlos Seré, the collaboration has strengthened appreciably, and now ILRI and ICRISAT are working closely to maximize the benefits to poor farmers through better crop-livestock integration under mixed farming systems. At present we are collaborating on three projects :

1. Delivering new sorghum and millets innovations for food security and improving livelihoods in Eastern Africa” under Bio-Innovate program funded by Sida, Sweden.
2. Optimizing livelihood and environmental benefits from crop residues in small holder crop-livestock system in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia regional case study, and
3. ACIAR funded project: “Improving postrainy sorghum varieties to meet the growing grain and fodder demand in India”.

In the next few years we hope to see an upscaling of our efforts as we work closely with research partners and private feed producers to create crop cultivars that better match the needs of farmers, and to build bridges for marketing opportunities and commercial ventures that will eventually address food and feed security needs.

Contributed by William Dar, Director General of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT).

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On 9 and 10 November 2011, the ILRI Board of Trustees hosted a 2-day ‘liveSTOCK Exchange’ to discuss and reflect on livestock research for development. The event synthesized sector and ILRI learning and helped frame future livestock research for development directions.

The liveSTOCK Exchange also marked the leadership and contributions of Dr. Carlos Seré as ILRI Director General. See all posts in this series / Sign up for email alerts

 

The triple challenge facing livestock research for development in Africa

For the November 2011 ‘liveSTOCK Exchange’ event at ILRI, Tim Williams – Africa Director at the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) reflects on ILRI’s livestock work in West Africa …

Two key questions
Back in 2000, two key questions occupied the minds of those of us who worked on the development of the ILRI’s Strategy–Livestock: A Pathway out of Poverty—Where are the poor livestock producers located and how can livestock research be applied to lift them out of poverty in an environmentally sustainable way? Ten years on, it is pertinent to review how ILRI has dealt with these two questions.

While the institute satisfactorily answered the first question, dealing with the second question remains a work in progress. To be sure, notable achievements have been recorded in linking livestock producers, particularly dairy producers to markets, in improving crop-livestock integration to increase food output and enhance soil fertility and in application of biotechnology and landscape genomics to improve livestock breeding and vaccine production. Despite these achievements, food insecurity and poverty persist in many livestock producing areas in Africa. Today, and arguably with more pressing urgency, livestock research for development needs to contend with the triple challenge of improving food and nutrition security, reducing poverty and enhancing environmental sustainability.

A balancing act?
The increasing demand for meat and dairy products in emerging economies, the competition for land and water resources between human food, animal feed and energy and the adverse impact on the environment of intensive livestock production have all combined to give livestock a bad press in the West. The image portrayed in the news media is that of a grain munching, water gulping and gas belching pollutant. What this imagery misses is the role that livestock play in the existential battle of poor livestock producers against food insecurity and poverty in the face of climate variability and change. The balancing act for ILRI then is to use its scientific research to address the global concerns of greenhouse gas emissions, environmental pollution and spread of zoonotic diseases caused by livestock without losing track of the triple challenge faced by poor livestock producers in developing countries, particularly Africa.

What will it entail to walk this tight rope? Research will be required to increase livestock productivity while using less arable land and water resources. Increase in productivity will come from the development of new technologies and better adoption and utilization of existing ones. Improvements in the quantity and quality of feed, in nutritional management and in the development of vaccines and other new drugs that target the animal health problems faced by livestock producers in Africa will be essential. Establishment of innovation platforms that bring together livestock producers, researchers, private sector entrepreneurs, representatives of civil society and the government will help facilitate adoption of new technologies. Enhancing the access of poor livestock producers to markets and creating the policy environment that will allow them to enter and move up viable livestock value chains will be equally important. Producing more products from fewer animals will save land and water resources and will minimize adverse environmental impacts. This is a tall order, but it is a task that ILRI together with its partners must address in the coming years.

The dire consequences that followed the recent drought in the Horn of Africa demonstrate the vital importance of water to both human beings and livestock. For Africa, climate change predictions point to an era of lower water availability in the future. In the face of dwindling water resources, the water needs of livestock must be balanced with the needs of the other agricultural subsectors—crop, horticulture and fisheries—as well as the ecosystem. On-going work between ILRI, IWMI, and the CGIAR Challenge Programme on Water and Food on multiple uses of water resources, rainwater management in mixed crop-livestock systems and improved management of wetlands and rangeland must be continued and deepened.

Rebuild core competencies in Africa
To address the triple challenge, ILRI’s presence in Africa, especially outside the headquarters, needs to be strengthened. Core expertise in livestock production (i.e. animal nutritionists, forage agronomists, range ecologists) seems to have declined over the last ten years and the number of scientists in this category appears incongruent with the scale of the problem to be addressed. Going forward, ILRI needs to rebuild core competence in these areas and deploy them to critical sub-regions on the continent. The opportunity for closer collaboration and sharing of expertise across CGIAR centres in the context of the CGIAR Research Programs should be exploited.

Contributed by Tim Williams, International Water Management Institute, Ghana. In the past, Williams held the position of Regional Representative and Research Team Leader (West Africa) at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).

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On 9 and 10 November 2011, the ILRI Board of Trustees hosted a 2-day ‘liveSTOCK Exchange’ to discuss and reflect on livestock research for development. The event synthesized sector and ILRI learning and helped frame future livestock research for development directions.

The liveSTOCK Exchange also marked the leadership and contributions of Dr. Carlos Seré as ILRI Director General. See all posts in this series / Sign up for email alerts