Dry-season milk supplies to pastoral children improves their nutrition, development and health

Fresh camel milk from Somali youths (photo on Flickr by G A Hussein).

The Feinstein International Center, at Tufts University (USA), has published a report of a study on the impact of dry-season livestock support on milk supply and child nutrition in Somali Region, Ethiopia.

Ethiopia’s Somali Region is the easternmost of Ethiopia’s 9 ethnically based administrative divisions and most of the people there are Somali. The region is remote with a mobile nomadic population and little infrastructure. It is mostly desert with high average temperatures and low bi-modal rainfall. Its economy is weak and reliant predominantly on traditional animal husbandry and marginal farming practices. The predominantly livestock-based economy has, for centuries, relied up on herding a primary stock of camels, flocks of sheep and goats, as well as the raising of cattle in settled agricultural areas where conditions are favourable. Export of live animals to the Gulf countries to the north is the main source of cash in the local economy.

The Feinstein Center provides the following synopsis.

‘Children in the pastoral areas of Somali Region Ethiopia are increasingly among the most nutritionally vulnerable populations in the world. In response to more frequent droughts and recurrent nutritional emergencies in the Region, the international community has tended to prioritize the provision of food aid and therapeutic treatment of severe acute malnutrition; Little has been done to understand the potential role of milk, a well-established pillar of the pastoral diet and one of the world’s most nutritionally complete foods, in maintaining child nutritional status.

‘This report presents the findings of two cohort studies assessing the impact of small-scale livestock interventions, designed to sustain access to and availability of animal milk at the household level over the dry season, on the nutritional status of children under 5 years of age. The studies were conducted for one calendar year, July 2010 to July 2011, in two pastoral Zones of the Somali Region.

‘The results reveal that, in sites exposed to the intervention, animal milk off-take improved dramatically, child consumption of animal milk increased, and child nutritional status stabilized compared to that of children in the control sites. Moreover, the direct costs of the livestock interventions were found to be 45 to 75 percent less than those incurred through therapeutic feeding programs, and the benefits were found to extend beyond nutrition to include developmental, health, and livelihoods aspects.

‘The study represents the culmination of four years of investigative research into the role of milk in pastoral child nutrition and a call for new, holistic, and preventative approaches to addressing child malnutrition in pastoral regions.’

Read the whole report: The Impact of Dry Season Livestock Support on Milk Supply and Child Nutrition in Somali Region, Ethiopia, By Kate Sadler, Emily Mitchard, Abdulahi Abdi, Yoseph Shiferaw, Gezu Bekele, and Andrew Catley, Feinstein International Center, at Tufts University, May 2012.

 

Market-oriented agricultural extension important for Ethiopia – ILRI tells BBC

Berhanu Gebremedhin, IPMS briefs BBC reporters

The Ethiopian economy is currently witnessing strong growth; however agricultural productivity in the smallholder sector, in dairying for example, is not as high as it could be.

The BBC reports on developments in the country, including from a dairy development project of the Dutch development organization SNV.

As part of the report, Berhanu Gebremedhin of the Improving Productivity and Market Success (IPMS) of Ethiopian Farmers project briefed BBC reporters on trends in Ethiopia’s agricultural development and reasons for increased attention in the sector. He calls for increased focus on market-oriented extension services – an area where IPMS has been working over the past 5 years.

Listen in! to the full interview (BBC – World Business Report) Berhanu talks from minute 7 of the interview.

 

Dairy scientists of the genomics age: How big data transformed the dairy industry

Holstein-Friesian cow, Biggle cow book, Philadelphia, W Atkinson Co., 1898 (photo on Flickr by Biodiversity Heritage Library).

Dairy scientists are the Gregor Mendels of the genomics age, developing new methods for understanding the link between genes and living things, all while quadrupling the average cow’s milk production since your parents were born.

‘While there are more than 8 million Holstein dairy cows in the United States, there is exactly one bull that has been scientifically calculated to be the very best in the land. He goes by the name of Badger-Bluff Fanny Freddie. . . .

‘Data-driven predictions are responsible for a massive transformation of America’s dairy cows. While other industries are just catching on to this whole “big data” thing, the animal sciences—and dairy breeding in particular—have been using large amounts of data since long before VanRaden was calculating the outsized genetic impact of the most sought-after bulls with a pencil and paper in the 1980s. . . .

‘One reason for the change in breeding emphasis is that our cows already produce tremendous amounts of milk relative to their forbears. In 1942, when my father was born, the average dairy cow produced less than 5,000 pounds of milk in its lifetime. Now, the average cow produces over 21,000 pounds of milk. At the same time, the number of dairy cows has decreased from a high of 25 million around the end of World War II to fewer than nine million today. This is an indisputable environmental win as fewer cows create less methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and require less land.

‘At the same time, it turns out that cow genomes are more complex than we thought: as milk production amps up, fertility drops. There’s an art to balancing all the traits that go into optimizing a herd.

‘While we may worry about the use of antibiotics to stimulate animal growth or the use of hormones to increase milk production by up to 25 percent, most of the increase in the pounds of milk an animal puts out over the pastoral days of yore come from the genetic changes that we’ve wrought within these animals. It doesn’t matter how the cow is raised—in an idyllic pasture or a feedlot—either way, the animal of 2012 is not the animal of 1940 or 1980 or even 2000. A group of USDA and University of Minnesota scientists calculated that 22 percent of the genome of Holstein cattle has been altered by human selection over the last 40 years.

‘In a sense that’s very real, information itself has transformed these animals. The information did not accomplish this feat on its own, of course. All of this technological and scientific change is occurring within the social context of American capitalism. Over the last few decades, the number of dairies has collapsed and the size of herds has increased. These larger operations are factory farms that are built to squeeze inefficiencies out of the system to generate profits. They benefit from economies of scale that allow them to bring in genomic specialists and use more expensive bull semen.

‘No matter how you apportion the praise or blame, the net effect is the same. Thousands of years of qualitative breeding on family-run farms begat cows producing a few thousand pounds of milk in their lifetimes; a mere 70 years of quantitative breeding optimized to suit corporate imperatives quadrupled what all previous civilization had accomplished. And the crazy thing is, we’re at the cusp of a new era in which genomic data starts to compress the cycle of trait improvement, accelerating our path towards the perfect milk-production machine, also known as the Holstein dairy cow. . . .

‘With that in mind, allow me to suggest, then, that the dairy farmers of America, and the geneticists who work with them, are the Mendels of the genomic age. That makes the dairy cow the pea plant of this exciting new time in biology. Last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science[s], two of the most successful bulls of all time had their genomes published.

This is a landmark in dairy herd genomics, but it’s most significant as a sign that while genomics remains mostly a curiosity for humans, it’s already coming of age when it comes to cattle. It’s telling that the cutting-edge genomics company Illumina has precisely one applied market: animal science. They make a chip that measures 50,000 markers on the cow genome for attributes that control the economically important functions of those animals.

‘. . . The unique dataset and success of dairy breeders now has other scientists sniffing around their findings. Leonid Kruglyak, a genomics professor at Princeton, told me that “a lot of the statistical techniques and methodology” that connect phenotype and genotype were developed by animal breeders. In a sense, they are like codebreakers. If you know the rules of encoding. it’s not difficult to put information in one end and have it pop out the other as a code. But if you’re starting with the code, that’s a brutally difficult problem. And it’s the one that diary geneticists have been working on. . . .’

Read the whole article at the Atlantic: The Perfect Milk Machine: How Big Data Transformed the Dairy Industry, 1 May 2012.

 

World Bank injects USD352 million into Indian dairy farming

Measuring milk for sale in India (photo credit: ILRI).

‘The World Bank signs an agreement with India to inject $352 million into the National Dairy Support Project, an initiative designed to revive the flagging fortunes of milk production in the country.

Other than being crucial to the nutritional security of the country’s population; dairy farming or dairying is also a major source of livelihood for 147 million rural households in India.

‘Spurred by the success of the White Revolution of the 1970s, milk and other dairy-products related production grew drastically over decades in the country. But of late, there has been a marked drop, with annual production decreasing to 3.8 per cent in the 2000s from 4.3 per cent in the 1990s. The Government’s latest initiative with the World Bank is meant to remedy this drop in production in anticipation of expected increase in demand.

‘India currently produces 120 million tons of milk per annum. By 2021-22, the demand is expected to be for 180 million tons, according to government estimates. This implies that for the next ten years from now, production would have to grow at 5.5 per cent year on year. To achieve this India would have to primarily find ways of boosting the productivity of its milk animals from a daily average of 3.4 kgs to 6.3 kgs, which is the global standard. . . .

‘The project will primarily focus on increasing milk production by improving the genetic quality of dairy herd and optimal use of feed and fodder. It will support long-term investments in animal breeding, extensive training of dairy farmers and doorstep delivery of artificial insemination. It will also aim at creating ration balancing advisory services, which will promote balanced animal feed and nutrition to not only increase milk yield and reduce productions costs, but also contribute to reduced methane emissions. . . .

The project will also raise farmers’ awareness about the importance of good quality milk and build their capacity for hygienic milk production, collection and sale,” said Deepak Ahluwalia, the Project’s Task Team Leader and Senior Economist, World Bank.

Read the whole article in OneWorld South Asia: A second White Revolution for India?, 16 Apr 2012.

Information on ILRI’s work in India

 

Milk matters are serious matters in northeastern Uganda

Karamojang woman and child in Kotido, Uganda (photo on Flickr by Courtney Chance).

An interesting report on ‘milk matters’ has been produced by the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University, USA, in collaboration with Save the Children. It looks at milk in children’s diets and household livelihoods among the Karamojang, a pastoral tribe in northeastern Uganda.

The blurb for the book says that households in the Karamoja region of northeastern Uganda have seen a precipitous drop in access to and availability of animal milk in recent years. The declining milk supply affects livelihoods, food security, and markets, but has the greatest impact on the diets and nutrition of young children.

The research illustrates both how significant the loss of milk has been to diets and livelihoods and how households have responded to this loss.

The authors, Elizabeth Stites and Emily Mitchard, say that information from impact evaluations of interventions made to increase milk supply among herds in pastoral areas is limited, ‘making it difficult to recommend one intervention over another based on the likelihood of success. The context for a given intervention plays an important role. In Karamoja, the combination of politics, conflict and insecurity create an extremely complex operational environment for any intervention.

‘The tested intervention with perhaps the most promise for Karamoja is improving livestock health through veterinary or [community animal health worker] projects. . . . Importantly, pastoralists themselves are well aware of the impact of animal diseases on milk production, and are quick to point to poor health of their herds as a constraint to adequate milk supply. Such programs are already in place across Karamoja, but respondents report problems in the consistency and reach of treatment. The military policy of protected kraals, insecurity and the various policy and political impediments to livestock mobility have negative repercussions on animal health; hence even if such interventions are comprehensive in nature, it is unknown if they can counter the negative impacts of overcrowded and sedentarization of herds.

.’ . . [M]obile livestock husbandry would likely be strongly endorsed by both livestock owners (for improvements to animal health) and by programmers (for its cheap bottom line). Successful implementation of this recommendation would require a national policy that promotes and values pastoralism, the opening of district borders to allow herders to access their traditional dry season grazing areas, providing mobile security (as opposed to protected kraals) in areas where needed, careful location of any ‘resettlement’ areas or other agrarian settlements to ensure balanced interests between agricultural groups and herders in the fertile zones, and improved representation of pastoral interests at the local, regional and national political level. . . . ‘

The following are among the study’s conclusions and recommendations.

‘This report highlights what is obvious to those who follow the situation in Karamoja: there are no quick fixes or easy solutions to the situation in the region. And this situation—one of chronic poverty, protracted conflict, and decades of marginalization—impacts not only the prospects for economic development or sustainable peace, but also reaches into households to affect the youngest children.

A discussion of milk, therefore, is not simply a discussion of what children eat and what they do not. A discussion of milk is a conversation about processes that extend back in time and reach into the social, economic and political sphere. The absence of milk in households represents the loss of a way of life, anger with political and military systems, and desperation among parents seeking ways to provide for their children. . . .

‘For international and national actors to address the nutritional impacts of the absence of milk they will have to take on the processes and systems that contribute to the wider problems in the region. To have milk is to have health and well-being. Health and well-being are possible without milk, but are not possible without fixes at multiple levels.

‘In the meantime, organizations and agencies need to continue with those programs and projects that support local priorities—such as animal health—and also those projects that encourage greater well-being for children. School feeding remains critical in the region, as parents will send children to school so that their children can eat. . . .

‘Programs that support [community animal health workers] and veterinary outreach should continue and should be evaluated to learn what models, in the eyes of herders and livestock owners, are most effective and have the greatest impact on animal health and milk production. . . .

‘This study sought to understand how changes in livelihoods in Karamoja in recent years have affected the ability of households to provide milk for their children and how households are coping with these changes.

The overall message from this work is that milk matters, and people know it. Parents recognize the signs of under nutrition and seek means to address these problems. Milk may be scarce or even nonexistent in many households, but young children are consistently prioritized to receive milk at the expense of consumption by other family members, social norms and exchanges, and important cultural rituals.

‘By working at multiple levels to improve the policy, economic and security environment in the region, external actors should be able to improve both child nutrition and livelihood sustainability of local populations. This will require political will, continued efforts to promote national policy change, and programming that focuses on longer term and incremental improvements. In the interim, nutritional surveys and targeted interventions for young children and pregnant and lactating women will continue to be required.’

The whole report is available at the website of the Feinstein International Center, at Tufts University: Milk Matters in Karamoja: Milk in Children’s Diets and Household Livelihoods, by Elizabeth Stites and Emily Mitchard, Oct 2011.

 

Scaling sustainable and equitable agri-food and livestock value chains

In April 2012, the ‘Seas of Change’ international learning workshop will be held in the Netherlands.To help guide the workshop, the organizers of the initiative have collated a number of case studies pointing to successes in scaling inclusive agri-food market development.

Several livestock and dairy examples are included in the case studies:

• Bangladesh, dairy and livestock
• Bangladesh, milk marketing
• India, dairy
• Kenya, livestock

“The Seas of Change Initiative is a learning and research initiative that has arisen from discussions between a group of business players, development agencies and researchers. The focus of the initiative is on how businesses with the right support from government, donors, NGOs and research can scale up inclusive agri-food market development to ensure food security for 9 billion people and help to tackle poverty.”

The initiative web site also has an Interview with Sonja Vermeulen from the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS).

 

East Africa Dairy Development – Tackling the Ethiopian challenge and the ‘white revolution’

Extending a project into a new phase is always a perilous exercise. The East Africa Dairy Development (EADD) project is (re-) learning this lesson.

In the stakeholder consultation workshop that took place from 27 to 29 February, the project team sought feedback from participants regarding initial ideas for the extension of the program (a so-called ‘EADD-2’). The workshop aimed to pave the way for the development of a proposal which will be submitted in June 2012 to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

This extension is a delicate balancing act between, on the one hand, the legacy from the Phase I of EADD and on the other, the challenges (and opportunities) of the new context i.e. Ethiopia and Tanzania (in addition to the current EADD countries: Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda).

EADD – the legacy

The extended project builds on strong credentials from the first phase of the EADD project which is taking place in Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda.

By relying on demand and opportunities for potential beneficiaries, working through dairy cooperatives and ‘dairy hubs’ and by providing technical assistance, EADD-1 has achieved significant results that led Moses Nyabila, regional director of EADD, to state “we know that it works”:

• Over 170,000 farmers were mobilized into more than 4.000 active producer communities;
• Almost 70 producer companies have been set up or revitalized;
• Farmers involved in EADD-1 are earning about a third of the retail price (US$ 33 million in 2011);
• US$ 5 million was achieved in farmer investment and savings;
• About a quarter of these dairy companies are led by women.

The second phase builds upon the lessons and experience from the first phase. EADD-2 promises to be more participatory (with a much stronger emphasis on scaling up and out and engaging a variety of dairy value chain actors from the start), more learning-focused (through ongoing documentation of the work undertaken to inform implementation along the way) and more attuned to stimulating enabling environments to develop better market access and enhance dairy productivity.

These factors fuel the hope that the extended project will double household dairy incomes by 2018 for an estimated 300,000 to 589,000 families. Ethiopia has a crucial role in this agenda, provided that some limitations are turned into opportunities.

Limitations and opportunities in Ethiopia

The choice of Ethiopia as one of the additional target countries in EADD-2 is justified by the great many challenges ahead. The Ethiopian dairy sector indeed leaves much room for improvement, as explained by Dr. Zelalem Yilma from Heifer International:

• Africa accounts for less than 5% of the world’s milk production but on the continent, Ethiopia, despite an important cattle population, lags behind Egypt, Kenya, South Africa and Sudan;
• An Ethiopian cow is approximately 33 times less productive than an Israeli cow;
• In the USA, numbers of cows and dairy farms started to decline and the production (and thus productivity) of dairy products to increase from the 1950’s onwards. In Ethiopia, both curves (dairy cattle population and production) are rising in parallel;
• A lot of dairy enterprises in the country are operating sub-optimally, sometimes as low as half capacity;
• Inseminations are also sub-optimal, leading to lower rates of pregnancies (around 40%);
• A very poor documentation system does not allow public authorities to review their statistics and approach on a realistic basis;
• Linkages among actors in the dairy industry are weak, e.g. between the private sector and the Ministry of Agriculture, between researchers and farmers, between non-governmental organizations and the private sector, between training service providers and farmers and generally with financial institutions.

In general then, Ethiopian dairy farm inputs (feeds, artificial insemination and veterinary services), labor, area and environment can be much improved. This is all the more crucial as the Ethiopian dairy sector is estimated to have created almost 600.000 full-time on-farm jobs in 2010. The limitations are also gaps that can be filled by initiatives that know how to join up the dots.

Embracing the challenge and embedding change

EADD-2 is tackling the challenge and determined to embrace the ‘white revolution’ hailed by Dr. Yilma in his inaugural presentation. The knowledge, capacity and experience assets of EADD-1 are precious. They can become instrumental in meeting the EADD-2 challenge if they are combined with the firm intention to build on existing initiatives and related projects such as the Agriculture Growth Program – Livestock Growth Project (AGP-LGP, funded by the United States Agency for International Development), the Livestock and Irrigation Value-Chains for Ethiopian Smallholders (‘LIVES’) project, funded by the Canadian International Development Agency and led by the International Livestock Research Institute or the Market-linked innovation for dairy development (MIDD) Programme of Wageningen UR and SNV.

The Ethiopian dairy might be in for major change. The intention of the EADD team is clearly to embed this change into ongoing policies and processes.

Will the “transformation, determination and synergy” hoped for by Dr. Yilma be enough to overcome the black holes in the Ethiopian white revolution?

More information on EADD.

 

East Africa Dairy Development consultations in Ethiopia

From 27 to 29 February, the East Africa Dairy Development (EADD) project is holding a stakeholder/investor consultation meeting in Ethiopia. The specific objectives of this workshop are: To share the vision of EADD2 with key dairy stakeholders in Ethiopia; to obtain views of key dairy sector stakeholders on the current state and development opportunities for the sector in Ethiopia; and to identify need and priority areas for EADD2 for Ethiopia and outline what an appropriate design and implementation arrangement might look like.

East Africa Dairy Development (EADD) is a 10 year regional dairy industry development program managed by a consortium of partners led by Heifer International with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). Currently in its last year of 4 year pilot phase (EADD1) of implementation; the program is running in Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda.

EADD is in the process of developing a proposal for a proposed 6 year scale-up and scale-out phase, commonly referred to as EADD 2, that envisions to increase its coverage within the 3 countries (Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda) as well expand to 2 more Eastern Africa countries (Ethiopia and Tanzania). EADD 2 will be built on a foundation of enhanced Public Private Partnership (PPP) that will include country/milk-shed level alliances of dairy processors; commercial and development banks; insurances; local and national governments; private, bilateral and multilateral donors; universities; research institutions; and NGOs. The proposal will be tailored to the unique market oriented needs, aspirations and realities of each country and/or milk-shed.

More information on EADD

 

Multi-stakeholder innovation in Africa: Dairy and beef cases feature in new report from FARA

The Forum on Agricultural Research in Africa just published a new report on agricultural innovation in sub-Saharan Africa: experiences from multiple-stakeholder approaches.

The report draws together case experiences across Africa with an ‘integrated agriculture research for development (IAR4D) approach’ that brings together multiple actors along a commodity value chain to address challenges and identify opportunities to generate innovation.

Included in the cases are assessments of dairy development in Kenya and Uganda as well as the beef sector in Botswana.

On Kenya, the report observes: ‘The development of a successful smallholder industry requires two complimentary elements. Firstly, increased productivity requires improved livestock breeds, strong disease control and veterinary services and improved quality and quantity of feeds. Given the need to encourage many smallholder dairy producers, delivery of support services remains dependent on local institutions and their development. Secondly, expanding market institutions with facilities for milk bulking and collection, and group organisational structures are essential and can be most effectively supplied by the private sector. Although formal licensed markets based on processed milk products are important, informal markets selling raw milk, informal dairy products with low-cost processing remain an essential component of a successful dairy industry.’

On Uganda, the report observes: ‘A key lesson is the need for ongoing discussions and coordination efforts by stakeholders along the value chain. This includes smallholder farmers and traders, development agencies, and policymakers. Although the dairy industry and its supporting services were liberalised, there is a need to coordinate business development services, involving farmer organisations, while avoiding direct subsidies that are known to stifle markets.’

On Botswana, the report observes: ‘Understanding the role the private sector plays in facilitating change at local, regional, and national government levels is important when considering changes to the enabling environment for value chains. It is essential that the private sector is able to speak with an informed and unified voice and is able to engage with Government.’

Overall:

The case studies demonstrated that successful innovation is dependent on a wide range of factors and interventions, the most important being the existence or creation of a network of research, training and development stakeholder groups drawn from public, private and NGO sectors.

Download the report …

 

Livestock reduce poverty in Asia – Stories from IFAD

TagCloud from the International Fund for Agricultural Research (image credit: IFAD).

An Asia and Pacific newsletter published by the International Fund for Agricultural Research (IFAD), a specialized agency of the United Nations that works to eradicate poverty and hunger in developing countries, has published a new edition, on the topic of livestock. IFAD projects supporting poultry mini-hatcheries in Bangladesh, biogas in China, native poultry breeds in India, microfinance in Mongolia, dairy cows in Pakistan, mohair production in Tajikistan, and cattle value chains in Viet Nam are described.

Livestock contribute 40 per cent of the global value of agricultural output, and support the livelihoods and food security of almost a billion people according to the 2009 report of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)—The State of Food and Agriculture: Livestock in the Balance. It is one of the fastest growing sectors of the agricultural economy. The growth and transformation of the sector offer opportunities for agricultural development, poverty reduction and improved food security.

‘According to the IFAD Rural Poverty Report 2011, livestock are a valuable risk-mitigating and risk-management asset for poor families. They often serve as collateral for credit, a buffer against shocks and a safety net in times of crisis. Livestock can be sold when families need to cope with increased prices of food and other expenditures, and reduced incomes. Animal products, such as eggs and milk, can be produced, processed and sold throughout the year without seasonal restrictions.

‘In addition to being an important source of food energy and dietary protein, vitamins and micronutrients, livestock also play an important role in the environment. They consume waste products from crop and food production, help control insects and weeds, produce manure for fertilizing and conditioning fields, and provide draught power for ploughing and transport. Well managed livestock result in lower greenhouse gas emissions and impact on natural vegetative cover of grasslands, pastures and meadows. However, livestock are vulnerable to risks and shocks related to climate, environmental degradation, water scarcity and diseases.

‘Rural women play an important part in livestock management. However, both women and men face different livelihood opportunities and constraints in managing livestock. These constraints include: poor access to markets, goods, services and technical information; drought and disease; competing resource uses; policies that favour larger-scale producers or external markets; and weak institutions.

‘According to the IFAD Rural Poverty Report 2011, livestock production in developing countries has increased rapidly over the past 30 years. There has been substantial growth in the production of meat, eggs and milk. This has resulted from increased numbers of animals and increased yields, in Asia between 3 and 4 per cent per year. Today, production growth has been made possible by cheap inputs (including grains for feeds), technological change and gains in scale efficiency. This has resulted in lower prices for livestock products and stimulated rapidly growing demand among urban consumers.

To meet the growing demand for livestock products, the livestock sector requires appropriate institutions, research and technological innovations, development interventions and governance that reflect the diversity within the sector and the multiple demands placed upon it.

‘This newsletter provides a few interesting examples of how livestock is being managed in IFAD-supported projects and programmes in the Asia and the Pacific Region. . . .’

Read the whole article at Making a Difference in Asia and the Pacific, newsletter of the International Fund for Agricultural Research (IFAD), issue 38, Jul-Aug 2011.