Graduate Programs in agriculture and allied disciplines in Ethiopia (henceforth the GPs) are expected to make concrete contributions towards achieving market-led and knowledge-based transformation of smallholder agriculture. To that end, strengthening capacities of the GPs and linking them to development deserve due policy attention. No panacea exists, however, as to how the programs can be better strengthened, linked, and become more responsive. Lessons from initiatives on the ground in the country and beyond are thus crucial to inform policy and the development of context specific innovative strategies. This paper aims to make a modest contribution to the discourse in Ethiopia and beyond on transforming GPs related to agriculture into ‘developmental institutions’. The paper highlights the imperatives for knowledge-based transformation of smallholder agriculture in Ethiopia and emerging roles of GPs; discusses key challenges of the GPs to realize their mandates and to meet ever changing expectations.

It also presents a case study of an initiative by +aimed at linking GPs through research by students to commodity value chain development and actors, and discusses qualitative and quantitative indicators of outcome in terms of enhanced research and learning experience. The paper draws out some lessons and identifies strategic and practical options, including from the review of good practices elsewhere, that may help to improve learning and research in the GPs. The analysis shows that the GPs are currently facing several challenges, which could not be solved by government or by the programs alone, but rather require multiple linkages and collaborations. The GPs, on the one hand, need to be more proactive in creating linkages and partnering with regional and federal governments, and with development/interventions, and, on the other, actors who are truly committed to sustainability should be more willing to integrate systematically into development programs, as a critical component, partnering with and strengthening capacity of key capacity building national institutions, such as the GPs. Revitalizing the programs calls for holistic approach from an innovation systems perspective, multipronged and multi-level strategies, and long-term commitments.

Download the working paper

However, the proximity of Ethiopia to large Middle Eastern markets demanding export quality sheep and goat carcasses and an increase in the domestic demand for small ruminant meat is leading to a change in the importance and scale of sheep and goat production.

No longer are sheep and goats subsistence livestock species only. Economic opportunities exist for small ruminant producers to supply animals to both the export and domestic markets.

This handbook – by the Ethiopia Sheep and Goat Productivity Improvement Program (ESGPIP) – is the first text devoted to small ruminant production written exclusively for Ethiopian conditions by Ethiopian scientists.

Its primary use will be as a training resource and reference handbook for Kebele Development Agents (KDAs) in their quest to transfer knowledge and skills to sheep and goat producers. Other stakeholders, such as non-governmental agencies and development workers will also find the book useful in their efforts to enhance sheep and goat productivity. The depth and coverage of information on all aspects of small ruminant production also renders the book usable in an academic environment as a resource or classroom text.

Topics covered in the handbook (available to download) are:

• Economic significance of sheep and goats
• Breeds of sheep and goats
• Sheep and goat production systems in Ethiopia
• Sheep and goat management
• Reproduction in sheep and goats
• Genetic improvement of sheep and goats
• Nutrition and feeding of sheep and goats
• Forage development for sheep and goats
• Sheep and goat flock health
• Sheep and goat products and by-products
• Sheep and goat economics of production and marketing
• Sheep and goat meat characteristics and quality
• Records and record keeping

The Ethiopia Sheep and Goat Productivity Improvement Program (ESGPIP) is a USAID-funded project operating with a goal to sustainably increase sheep and goat productivity in Ethiopia to consequently enhance economic and food securities.

Les productions animales au Sud se trouvent ainsi dans une situation paradoxale : elles doivent faire face à une évolution importante de la demande à moyen terme, dans un contexte nouveau, marqué notamment par les tensions sur les disponibilités et les coûts des intrants et par la prise en compte impérative tant des contributions que des effets liés au changement climatique.

C’est dans ce contexte particulier, et en prolongement de la réflexion menée en France par l’Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA) et le Centre de coopération internationale en recherche agronomique pour le développement (CIRAD) dans le cadre du chantier ‘Production animale en régions chaudes’ (PARC) rappelé dans la préface, que la Rédaction de la revue INRA Productions animales a décidé de consacrer un numéro complet (Numéro 1 2011) au thème de l’élevage en régions chaudes.

Ce numéro spécial comprend les articles (complets) suivants :

• Introduction générale
• Évolution des productions animales terrestres et aquacoles dans le monde : tendances globales et implications économiques, sociales et environnementales
• Ressources tropicales : disponibilité et valeur alimentaire.
• Adaptation des animaux d’élevage aux multiples contraintes des régions chaudes.
• Spécificités de la santé animale en régions chaudes : le cas des maladies infectieuses majeures en Afrique.
• Elevage et qualité des produits en régions chaudes.
• Impacts et services environnementaux de l’élevage en régions chaudes.
• Conception et évaluation de systèmes d’élevage durables en régions chaudes.
• Élevage, filières et territoires en régions chaudes.
• Élevages et sociétés : les rôles multiples de l’élevage dans les pays tropicaux.

The report identifies four key approaches:

Focus on Problems. Achieving results will require serious focus. Focus on the most real and serious problems in African agriculture and attack them in a coordinated way in local settings. Ultimately it will be up to African partner countries to set, through consultation, their respective development and research agendas. Encouraging partners to formulate and articulate national research priorities will help guide U.S.-African partnerships and lead to greater coordination and synergies across multiple actors and institutions.

Prioritize Individual Capacities to Improve Institutions. The individual researcher is still the bedrock for strong scientific advancement and institutional capacity. Although improving individual capacity is not the only way to strengthen institutions, it is vital to building capacity for the long term.

Foster Collaboration within National Scientific Community. There are significant benefits of scientists working together—on a problem, in a laboratory, and in a way that encourages lasting communication.

Promote Institutional Coordination and Communication. It is vitally important for scientific research in Africa to be more coordinated—for goals and strategies to be set at the national level, and for all levels of research centers, universities, and partnerships to support these goals. It cannot be underestimated how crucial the role of good governance and leadership will be in promoting coordination, supporting innovation, and attracting essential private-sector investment

Watch a video on the report:

Download the report …

A map of land use in the Ewaso Ng’iro watershed, taken from Mapping and Valuing Ecosystem Services in the Ewaso Ng’iro Watershed, published in 2011 by ILRI.

From Ecosystem Marketplace comes this review of a new publication from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).

‘. . . As climate change increases the frequency and intensity of floods and droughts in [dryland pastoral] ecosystems, water catchment and management becomes a crucial tool in building ecosystems resilience. For practical water management, entire watersheds need to considered; from the water catchment in highland forests to the basins in the lowlands.

‘Understanding the dynamics of the watershed, conducting cost-benefit analysis of different land use practices, and determining the economic value of ecosystem services in particular water, forests and biodiversity plays a key role in advocating for conservation and sustainable development of landscapes, where linkages between ecosystem services and human well-being are well documented.

That’s why the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), a Nairobi-based NGO, published Mapping and Valuing Ecosystem Services in the Ewaso Ng’iro Watershed to inform the Government of Kenya on the latest developments on arid and semi-arid lands (ASAL’s) that cover approximately 80% of the country.

‘Typically, ASAL’s encompass a range between the savanna grasslands and desert areas. The extent of the Ewaso Ng’iro North watershed, the subject of the study, begins in the highlands of Mount Kenya where agriculture, logging and land grabbing have been documented, to the lower plains of Laikipia and Samburu which are famous for the wildlife and rich culture.

‘The step-by-step approach of mapping and valuing the ecosystem services of the watershed began with using spatial imagery to map the extent and characteristics of the watershed. This included water, biomass, livestock, wildlife and irrigated crops. These services were quantified and the demand for these services based on different land-use systems measured. An economic valuation of these services was then conducted.

‘The results of such a study are expected to inform the Government of Kenya on how to improve the standard of living in the region. This tool allows for a comparison of “alternative land and water uses between livestock, crop production, and wildlife-based tourism to enable future assessments of how and how much each use will improve the standard of living and whose standard of living.”

‘Determining the ecosystem services of the watershed takes into account more criteria than just water, but the categorization of water makes it possible to determine it’s unique value to human well-being.

The ILRI study priced the value of water based on what production systems water was a main contributor too, namely crop and livestock. It showed that value of water requirements for crops was much higher than livestock in the drylands, a cost that can now be used as a tool for various water pricing schemes and conservation incentives by policy makers.

‘The study also indirectly priced water’s contribution to tourism and biomass, values that can be used to compare different land use implications.

‘The use of such a study is not limited to policy implementation, but can inform a range of conservation and development initiatives on where to focus effort.

‘Considering different land use implications, energies can be directed towards opportunities that can deliver maximum benefit at least cost. This could be by developing conservation areas where agriculture may not be viable, or developing market mechanisms to boost livestock production. Payments for ecosystem services can also be developed for such watersheds to advocate for their conservation. . . .

[S]tudies such as the one conducted by ILRI take the first steps in informing us the how’s, why’s, what’s and how much ecosystems contribute to human well-being.

Read the whole article at Ecosystem Marketplace: Kenyan cattlemen map watershed services, 21 Dec 2011.

Read about the ILRI publication on the ILRI News Blog: Putting a price on water: From Mt Kenya forests to Laikipia savannas to Dadaab drylands, 19 Jan 2012.

Download the publication, Mapping and Valuing Ecosystem Services in the Ewaso Ng’iro Watershed, by Ericksen, PJ; Said, MY; Leeuw, J de; Silvestri, S; Zaibet, L; Kifugo, SC; Sijmons, K; Kinoti, J; Ng’ang’a, L; Landsberg, F and Stickler, M. 2011. Nairobi, Kenya: ILRI.

A human settlement in northern Kenya, from the air (photo on Flickr by Neil Palmer [CIAT]).

A fact-filled, thought-provoking and myth-busting book, which many researchers will have reason to hope will become widely influential, challenges the African ‘drylands myths’ that, despite decades of research that should have overturned them by now, remain entrenched in many general publics and policymaking circles.

The book, Dryland Opportunities, was written by Michael Mortimore and published in 2009 by IUCN.

Drylands, such as those in the drought-afflicted Horn of Africa, where famine continues to claim lives and livelihoods, cover 41 per cent of the earth’s terrestrial surface. Scientists are predicting that life in many of the world’s drylands may become even harsher in future due to more extreme and unpredictable climates. This book aims to apply the new scientific insights on complex dryland systems to practical options for development. A new dryland paradigm is built on the resources and capacities of dryland peoples, on new and emergent economic opportunities, on inward investment, and on the best support that dryland science can offer.

Primary author Michael Mortimore, now 74 and a consultant for aid agencies, is a British geographer and researcher on Africa’s drylands who spent over 25 years in Nigerian universities and is best known for his field-based studies of adaptation to drought and for an anti-Malthusian account of population-environment relationships, More People, Less Erosion, which is a revisionist account of livelihoods in Machakos, Kenya, written with Mary Tiffen and Francis Gichuki (1994). He and Tiffen now run a policy consultancy called Dryland Research.

Mortimore has conducted extensive studies of farming systems, environmental change and human adaptation to drought in the drylands of northern Nigeria, Kenya, Niger and Senegal and assessed local and regional human adaptations to harsh and complex environments.

Among his long-held views on African drylands are that even the most disadvantaged African smallholders ‘adapt’ more or less successfully to climatic change and severe drought, rather than submitting to it. He has been a long-term critic of the argument that the Sahara is ‘spreading’ as a result of poor land management, or that farmers and herders tend towards destroying their natural capital. He challenged the well-funded international desertification apparatus to listen to farmers who, with the right support, were improving biodiversity and halting land degradation without expensive and inappropriate interventions.

From 1991, in the Machakos Hills of Kenya, less than an hour’s drive from Nairobi, Mortimer, Tiffen and Gichuki discovered not the land degradation and human impoverishment widely believed at the time to have occurred there under high population pressure, but rather improved landscapes and resource management practices achieved through adoption of farming methods such as multicropping, mixed crop-livestock production and land terracing, as well as through strong community organizations. This much-cited finding, published in 1993, ‘controverted’ Malthusian thinking and has echoed through revisionist thinking about African degradation myths and agrarian policy ever since.

A PDF of the book is available on the IUCN website: Dryland Opportunities.

Source: This profile of Michael Mortimore is taken and condensed from Wikipedia.

Northern Kenya from the air (photo on Flickr by Neil Palmer [CIAT]).

‘The chairman of [Kenya's] National Cohesion and Integration Commission, Dr Mzalendo Kibunjia, has singled out divisive politicians as the main cause of recent ethnic violence among some pastoral communities. He warned that stern action will be taken against such people.

‘Dr Kibunjia’s observation adds to a growing pile of evidence as to the causes of increasing violence among pastoral communities.

‘An analysis of climate reports by the Kenya Meteorological Department since the 1997–98 El Niño phenomenon have generally shown decreasing natural resources, especially in arid areas. . . .

A much more recent study by the International Livestock Research Institute has confirmed the hypothesis that the shrinking of grazing lands and increasing population are the main causes of recurrent hunger and conflict in the region.

In September, an international meeting was held in Nairobi over the hunger situation in Northern Kenya and the larger Horn of Africa region where these issues were discussed and a plan of action to mitigate future famines suggested.

Read the whole editorial in the Daily Nation newspaper (Kenya): Stop leaders inciting pastoral communities, 15 Jan 2012.

Read more about international meetings on the food crisis in the Horn of Africa held at ILRI’s Nairobi campus on 30 Aug and 1 Sep 2011, and about ILRI’s livestock-research-based recommendations for how to help livestock herders cope better with drought in Kenya and the greater Horn of Africa:

From the ILRI News Blog

Experts produce joint statement on long-term development needs of the drylands of the Horn, 13 Sep 2011.

‘Africa’s drylands are productive, and potentially very productive’–ILRI’s Bruce Scott, 5 Sep 2011.

CGIAR briefing on the food crisis in the Horn of Africa: 1 September at ILRI Nairobi, 30 Aug 2011.

Investments in pastoralism offer best hope for combating droughts in East Africa’s drylands–Study, 24 Aug 2011.

Ongoing drought in Horn may trigger first-ever insurance payments to remote African livestock herders, 16 Aug 2011.

What happens to pastoral children when the last goat dies: Ann’s story, 12 Aug 2011.

Best ways to manage responses to recurring drought in Kenya’s drylands, 7 Aug 2011.

From the ILRI Clippings Blog

Follow the tag: droughtinhorn2011

‘The food crisis in the Horn is essentially a livestock crisis’–Lloyd Le Page, CEO of the CGIAR, 2 Sep 2011.

‘It’s not drought, but vulnerability to drought, that’s eroding food security in the Horn’–USAID’s Jeff Hill, 2 Sep 2011.

East Africa can–and should–help livestock herders cope better with drought, 3 Sep 2011.

Problems in the Horn of Africa ‘ought not to be’–KARI’s David Mwangi, 4 Sep 2011.

Research for resilience: Helping the Horn’s food producers better absorb climate shocks, 4 Sep 2011.

Drought-tolerant crops and crop and livestock insurance can help farmers fight effects of drought in the Horn, 6 Sep 2011.

Horn of Africa drought: Short-term ‘Band-Aid’ thinking not enough–CGIAR, 8 Sep 2011.

CNN reports that drought in Horn is increasing conflicts between people and wildlife, 12 Sep 2011.

Prospects for greater agricultural investments in the Horn?, 4 Oct 2011.

Drought responses–New briefing paper on lessons still to learn, 24 Oct 2011.

Sake Dabasso Halake stands proudly in front of Equity Bank’s Marsabit branch. She smiles, clutching an envelope filled with 16,000 Kenyan shillings that she just received. It was her insurance payout for the 10 cows she lost during the drought. Photo on Flickr by Jeff Haskins.

Jeff Haskins, director of the Nairobi office of Burness Communications, which works regularly with the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and other centres of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), and Neil Palmer, public awareness officer with ILRI’s sister center in Cali, Colombia, the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, published an article yesterday in AllAfrica.com about an innovative livestock insurance project being implemented by ILRI and partners in a remote pastoral area of northern Kenya.

‘Marsabit District—The first thing that hits a visitor to Ginda village in northern Kenya is the smell.

‘Farmer Haro Sora’s land is littered with the carcasses of cattle and donkeys that have collapsed following an intense, prolonged drought. A skull here; half a ribcage there. In some places there are whole animals slumped on the roadside.

‘Ginda, in Marsabit District, has been hit by the Horn of Africa drought. It triggered a food crisis affecting around 13 million people in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia, by the time the rains finally returned to Ginda after more than a year.

‘The fact that the food crisis in the Horn was the result of a livestock crisis has been well documented. The area is a major pastoralist zone. When vegetation for grazing began to dry-up and livestock started to die, the knock-on effects on farmer livelihoods became strikingly clear.

‘Some observers balk at the idea of a financial institution selling insurance to already cash-strapped smallholder farmers to protect them against the risk of drought. The 650 livestock keepers in Marsabit, who are delighted to be receiving their first payouts, might give critics pause. . . .

‘The Index-Based Livestock Insurance scheme is run by a consortium . . . is an example of a market-based, climate-smart innovation that could gain much wider currency in Africa and beyond. It has completed its second year. . . .

‘In a district where food aid makes up 15 percent of the economy, ILRI estimates that the trade in livestock is responsible for about 65 percent of the money coming into households. While the new insurance product won’t be able to cover the total loss, it does offer participating farmers and herders an opportunity to recoup some of their losses. . . .

‘The project highlights the increasingly important role of Kenyan scientists and private institutions in developing effective initiatives for Kenya and its people. Civil society organizations, including a people-to-people effort called Kenyans4Kenya that sprung up to collect food and money in response to the famine.

Kenyans are stepping up for Kenya, not just in response to the region’s humanitarian emergency like the Kenyans4Kenya campaign, but also in developing long-term solutions that manage risk and reduce vulnerability,” said Jimmy Smith, director general of ILRI.

‘Global research and innovation partnerships with Cornell University, the University of California-Davis, Syracuse University and other partners also played an important role. . . .

Read the whole article at AllAfrica.com: Livestock insurance—A chance to outsmart drought?, and accompanying photoessay, Livestock insurance to combat food crisis, November 2011, posted 9 Jan 2012.

The Index-Based Livestock Insurance scheme is run by the Nairobi-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in collaboration with several technical partners, the government of Kenya and commercial implementing partners UAP Insurance and Equity Bank. The project is funded by UKaid/Department for International Development, the United States Agency for International Development and the World Bank among others.

To find other articles on ILRI’s IBLI project, just search for ‘IBLI’ on this ILRI Clippings blog and on its sister blog, the ILRI News Blog. Here are two examples:

Herders in drought-stricken northern Kenya get first livestock insurance payments, ILRI news release of 21 Oct 2011.

Livestock director and partners launch first-ever index-based livestock insurance payments in Africa, ILRI photoessay of 25 Oct 2011.

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.

———

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).

Authored by WrenMedia, this series of Information Notes from the Natural Resources Institute outlines the major challenges to development of and for pastoralists.

1. Opportunities for Development
2. Challenges to Pastoral Development
3. Rights, Governance and Voice
4. Risk Reduction and Linking Relief with Development
5. Climate Change
6. Education
7. Facilitating Access to World Markets
8. Livelihood Diversification

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 …

Visit the Kenya campus in Nairobi with Kim Kariuki:

Visit the Ethiopia campus in Addis Ababa with Tsehay Gashaw:

Practical information on the Addis campus …

Visit the ILRI ‘crowd’ for more information on ILRI people and their work

ILRI scientist Joerg Jores (right) tells German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who visited the ILRI-BecA labs in July 2011, about his livestock disease research (photo credit: ILRI/Njoroge).

‘Owning large livestock is like money in the bank for African farmers, but major diseases significantly threaten their future.

‘Among these are [peste des petits ruminants], a viral disease affecting sheep and goats, and [contagious bovine pleuropneumonia], adversely impacting on cattle, which are spreading rapidly in the developing world.

‘With three years of funding from AusAID and with science support from Australia’s CSIRO, research scientists at the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi, Kenya, are working on improved diagnostics and more effective vaccines for their control.

‘Jeffrey Mariner heads the development of a thermo-stable vaccine for PPR (known as small ruminant plague). The disease causes diarrhoea in sheep and goats and up to 50 per cent mortality in affected flocks.

‘He said a vaccine was in production which offered lifelong immunity but required refrigeration, giving it limited use in remote Africa.

‘Developing a vaccine effective at room temperature would significantly reduce the cost of vaccination and make it more accessible to pastoral areas of Africa, where many sheep and goats were run. . . .

‘A team of researchers is also investigating more effective control methods for [CBPP] which is estimated to cost 44 million Euros a year in the 12 African countries which represent the vast majority of outbreaks.

‘The flu-like disease was eradicated from most Western countries, including Australia, in the early 1970s, but it is still a large killer of cattle across central Africa and south into Tanzania and Zambia.

‘A live vaccine is available for [CBPP] but delivers only short time immunity with annual revaccinations required. It also needs refrigeration during transport and storage.

‘Project leaders Jan Naessens and  [Joerg] Jores said other continents had eradicated [CBPP] through test and slaughter programs, but Africa could not afford to take this approach due to food security issues. . . .’

Read the whole article in Stock Journal: Oz research tackles disease spread, 26 Dec 2011.

ILRI’s PPR and CBPP research projects both come under an Australian Government African Food Security initiative supported by the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) through  the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia’s national science agency, and in partnership with BecA, Biosciences eastern and central Africa Hub (BecA), an initiative hosted and managed by ILRI in Nairobi, Kenya.

The first payouts for livestock insurance being made in Marsabit District, in northern Kenya (photo on Flickr by Jeff Haskins).

From Reuters AlertNet comes this update on how the livestock herders of Kenya’s Marsabit District are faring. Some bought an innovative livestock insurance product this year that is being piloted by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and Equity Bank and other partners. Others relied solely on traditional pastoral coping mechanisms, such as moving stock to find new pasture, to try to keep their cattle, goats and other animals alive in the great drought that affected Marsabit and other drylands of the Horn of Africa this year.

‘The rains have finally arrived in northern Kenya’s Marsabit district, and Huka Dabaso plans to buy 10 cattle to replace the animals he lost during this year’s severe drought. He can afford to restock his herd thanks to the first payout from a pioneering insurance scheme that uses satellite imagery to estimate livestock deaths in the region.

‘“This programme will assist me and others in restocking, and starting pastoralism afresh at this time when we are receiving rains and hoping the situation will change,” says the herder from Gadamojii village. . . .

‘In late October, 650 herders received compensation for the loss of thousands of cows, camels, goats and sheep due to the drought. The payout from the index-based insurance scheme being piloted in Marsabit by the Nairobi-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), together with commercial, research and government partners, has elicited mixed reactions from herders. But most say it will help them recover from this crisis better than in the past.

‘Up to a third of livestock in Marsabit district are estimated to have died during this year’s drought, which has affected over 13 million people across the Horn of Africa.

‘The insurance scheme uses NASA satellite images of vegetation to determine losses of livestock forage, which are fed into a statistical model that projects livestock deaths. The aim is to make it easier for communities of migratory herders, known as pastoralists, to cope with and recover from extreme weather.

‘Herders in high-risk drought areas pay a premium of 5.5 percent of the value of their herds, while those from lower-risk areas pay 3.25 percent. Clients are compensated when indicators show their animals are at risk of death. The insurers do not assess actual livestock losses on an individual basis, which would be impossible as pastoralists and their animals move over vast tracts of arid land in search of pasture and water.

‘Most pastoralists who took out insurance cover are optimistic that their payouts will help them restock their hard-hit herds. But others say they have lost many animals and the compensation is not enough to replace them, as livestock are scarce in local markets and their prices have soared. . . .

‘Local NGOs are hopeful that the ILRI-backed insurance scheme will reduce the cattle-rustling that has plagued the region after recent droughts, as many herders resort to stealing animals in armed attacks. . . .

‘Under the policy terms, insured pastoralists are compensated for herd losses of above 15 percent. Most people in Marsabit District are herders, together owning some 86,000 cattle and two million goats and sheep.

‘ILRI Director General Jimmy Smith admits that some herders have stayed out of the scheme due to a lack of understanding about how they would be compensated. But he hopes the first payout and accompanying celebrations will encourage more pastoralists to join. . . .

‘The programme is still in its pilot phase, and is looking to address challenges that are arising before it is expanded to other pastoralist areas, the economist added.

‘The next step is to launch a similar insurance scheme in the Borana region of Ethiopia, which borders Marsabit, and the funding is now in place to design an insurance contract, Ikegami said.’

Read the whole article at AlertNet: Drought insurance falls short for some Kenyan herders, 15 Dec 2011. This story is part of a series supported by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network.

Ethiopian livestock-keeping family (photo credit: ILRI/Apollo Habtamu).

Dan Murphy, a food industry journalist, has published a commentary on a Pork Network website about a livestock chapter in the State of the World 2011: Innovations That Nourish the Planet, published by the Worldwatch Institute, in the USA. ‘The book aims to provide a blueprint for coping with the impact of population growth, resource limitations and climate change on world food production, nutrition and agriculture.’

What takes Murphy by surprise are the recommendations, set out by the chapter’s ILRI authors, with approval from the senior editors at Worldwatch, which is, he reminds us, a ‘Washington, D.C.-based think tank and eco-activist NGO’ famous for trumpeting the “eat less meat to forestall global warming” mantra.’

‘. . . The section I reviewed in detail was a chapter called “Improving Food Production from Livestock.” In it, Mario Herrero, a senior researcher at the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi, Kenya, and a group of senior Worldwatch scientists combined to pose a provocative question:

To meet the nutritional, economic, and environmental needs of the world’s approximately one billion people living in poverty, how can livestock producers globally find ways to increase milk, meat, and egg production—but without harming the environment?

‘. . . [U]nlike many activist screeds, which demonize producers and demand imposition of a vegan agenda to solve the world’s eco- and nutritional challenges, the Worldwatch team stated unequivocally that

Farm animals are an ancient, vital, renewable natural resource [upon which] a billion people throughout the developing world rely on for their livelihood. Livestock sustain most forms of agricultural intensification—from the Sahelian rangelands of West Africa to the mixed smallholdings in East Africa to highly intensified rice production in Asia.”

‘. . . Raising livestock is critical not only for animals’ ability to make even marginal grasslands productive—and for their undeniable nutritional value—but for its economic value to hundreds of millions of people who otherwise would possess few resources of value upon which to base their existence, the report explained.

‘Most importantly, the Worldwatch team acknowledged that livestock production is “agriculture’s most economically important subsector,” with demand for animal foods in developing countries projected to double over the next two decades. . . .

‘After reading this chapter, I have only one complaint: Why aren’t its contents the focus of the Institute’s positioning on the challenges of climate change, population growth and environmental protection the group so relentlessly preaches?

‘These insights ought to be in the headline, not buried in the middle of Chapter 14.’

Read the whole commentary by Dan Murphy in Pork Network: Worldwatch wisdom, 12 Dec 2011.

Related stories on the ILRI News Blog

Read more about this ILRI-authored livestock chapter in Worldwatch’s flagship publication: ‘State of the World 2011′: Sustainable livestock production is part of the solution for nourishing people and the planet, 28 Apr 2011.

Read about a recent disagreement between Worldwatch and ILRI authors regarding credible figures for levels of greenhouse gas emissions from livestock production: Livestock and climate change: Towards credible figures, 27 Jun 2011.

Borana girl (photo on Flickr by Gustavo Jeronimo).

Layne Coppock, of Utah State University, and Solomon Desta, Seyoum Tezera and Getachew Gebru, of Managing Risk for Improved Livelihoods, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, report in the journal Science this month on a project they conducted in southern pastoral Ethiopia that indicates that capacity building can, and should, ‘set the stage for the use of new information and technology’ in pastoral regions of Africa. The authors say the results of their study demonstrate that such capacity building has specifically helped pastoral women transform impoverished communities in southern Ethiopia.

Abstract
‘Poverty, drought, and hunger devastate people on Africa’s rangelands. We used an action-oriented approach from 2000 to 2004 to build capacity among thousands of pastoralists to diversify livelihoods, improve living standards, and enhance livestock marketing. The process included collective action, microfinance, and participatory education.

Poor women previously burdened by domestic chores became leaders and rapidly changed their communities.

Boran women’s group in southern Ethiopia, who worked with the Pastoral Risk Management Project (PARIMA), in which these and other Ethiopian women were originally inspired by innovative, dynamic women from northern Kenya (photo by Claudia Radel/UtahStateUniversity).

Drought occurred from 2005 to 2008. We assessed intervention effects on household drought resilience with a quasiexperimental format that incorporated survey-based comparisons of treatment groups with ex post controls. Interventions led to major improvements in trends for quality of life, wealth accumulation, hunger reduction, and risk management. . . .

Excerpts (with reference and figure numbers removed)
‘. . . Pastoralists today are often poverty stricken and beset by hunger. Efforts to “develop” pastoralism have had little success. Human population growth, overgrazing, annexation of key resources by outside entities, physical insecurity, and underinvestment in pastoral areas contribute to declining per capita food production, reduced vegetation cover, increased soil erosion, loss of herd mobility, and more marginalized people. Multiyear droughts pose grave threats to pastoralists because crop failures and massive death losses of animals escalate into crises for food availability, income generation, and asset preservation. Technical options to increase food production or lessen pressure on natural resources remain elusive, largely because of environmental and social constraints. . . .

‘Once considered a prime example of sustainable pastoralism in eastern Africa, the Borana pastoral system of semiarid southern Ethiopia exemplifies the changes noted above. The people have become poorer and more vulnerable . . . . The main objective of this research was to determine whether pastoral livelihoods on the Borana Plateau could indeed be diversified in a sustainable fashion to lessen or reverse the downward spiral at the household level.

Boran livestock herders in southern Ethiopia in 2007 with ILRI’s Seyoum Tezera (middle of back row) of the Pastoral Risk Management Project (PARIMA) (photo by Claudia Radel/UtahStateUniversity).

‘. . . Stepwise capacity-building interventions were undertaken . . . . By 2004, this process had resulted in the creation of 59 collective-action groups on the Borana Plateau with a total membership of 2300. Capacity building for individuals took 3 years on average. Women made up 76% of the founding members of collective-action groups, and they quickly assumed leadership positions. This was surprising given the subservient domestic roles that women traditionally occupy in this society . . . .

We interpret these findings, overall, as evidence that the capacity-building package helped people become more resilient and better manage risks associated with the 2005–2008 drought.

‘Careful capacity-building processes can provide durable, cost-effective, and low-risk options for improving the human condition in marginal lands. This echoes the view that filling gaps in human development is the key for progress in Africa’s pastoral areas. Inputs such as trading grants may add value to capacity building in some circumstances. The cost of our capacity-building process was about U.S. $1 per person per month over 3 years. The low cost is due to the reliance on participatory education and peer networking . . . .

The greatest future challenges include how to reliably deliver effective capacity-building modules more broadly to the pastoral population, as well as how to sustain commercial livestock sales given the vicissitudes of markets and the crippling effects of drought.

‘A continued focus on technical solutions to rangeland problems by national or international research bodies assumes that technology is the driver for progress. We argue, rather, that here human development is the driver and technology provides the tools. Human development provides the vision, desire, and opportunity to improve lives, and technology can then serve evolving aspirations. . . .

‘Development scholars can strive to broaden the academic agenda by including more societal engagement as part of project research design. This can generate reliable scientific knowledge, as well as build human capacity at multiple levels. Our experience confirms that careful strengthening of human, social, and financial capital can rapidly improve lives and help transform communities in remote, harsh environments where the technical options to boost productivity remain elusive.’

This study was part of a project called Improving Pastoral Risk Management Project on East African Rangelands (PARIMA), which is part of the Global Livestock Collaborative Research Support Program (GL-CRSP) funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

EDITOR’S CORRECTION (of 12 Dec 2011): One member of the study team and co-author, Seyoum Tezera, was a staff member of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). Two other members/co-authors, Solomon Desta and Getachew Gebru, were employees of Utah State University, based for most of this project at ILRI’s campuses in Nairobi, Kenya, and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, respectively.

Read the whole paper in Science: Capacity building helps pastoral women transform impoverished communities in Ethiopia, by Layne Coppock, Solomon Desta, Seyoum Tezera and Getachew Gebru, 9 December 2011, Vol. 334, no. 6061. pp. 1394–1398, DOI: 10.1126/science.1211232.

Topics addressed by Delia Grace include the topical and geographic focus of the new CRP, how gender will be addressed, the involvement of partners, monitoring and impact indicators, and the role on One Health. Bernard Bett explained how risks of emerging diseases will be addressed, and ILRI’s comparative advantages in this area. Vish Nene elaborated on the ‘biotechnology’ and diagnostics aspects of the new work; and Appolinaire Djikeng talks on ways the BecA hub can be used to link genomics and meta-genomics technologies with work on emerging infectious diseases. ILRI Director General Jimmy Smith concluded by arguing in favour of work on the prevention and surveillance side of such diseases.

See the video:

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 ‘chicken health for development‘ project in Ethiopia aims to develop a poultry breeding program to improve resistance to priority infectious diseases whilst enhancing productivity and production.

Project researcher Stacey Lynch recently published this video on the work of the project as it works with communities to sample local chickens for diseases and genetic resistance …

Read a related issue brief on chicken research for development by project scientist Tadelle Dessie …

A Dinka cattle camp at sunset in Abyei, Sudan (photo credit: UN photo/Tim McKulka).

Here’s an interesting essay on the nature of human-livestock relations. It starts with a story of Emong, a Turkana herder, and his obsession with a bull, and quickly moves on to the ravages of drought in pastoral regions, Western concepts of nature and animals, the Western angst and alienation those concepts engender, the twinned violation of animals and subjugated peoples, and the recent ‘apartheid’ practices of factory farming and mechanized killing of animals, pointing out along the way where (if not why) poverty intersects with those cultures that continue to blur the boundaries between animal and human, placing high value on the domesticated animal stock that sustains their emotional as well as physical lives.

‘. . . At first sight the dry expanses [of northern Kenya] might seem as remote, primordial and untouched as anywhere on earth. They are not. The vast semi-arid savannahs which herders like Turkana and their cattle traverse is in fact a landscape sculpted by the western ideas of “nature” and “the animal” contained in the development projects of recent history. Northern Kenya can easily be seen as a vast open-air museum of failed development schemes, cluttered with the rusting remains of long forgotten “infrastructure” projects propelled by the core ideas of “development”: irrigation agriculture, fishery and forestry.

‘These projects were designed to wean pastoralists off their reliance on livestock and their nomadic ways which, since early colonial times, have been seen as signs of poverty and primitivism. To become sedentary and agricultural, on the other hand, was a sign of “progress”. It is a bitter twist of fate that the flip-side of that pragmatic colonizing vision was the romantic dream of the pastoral nomad as the noble savage of a “wild, untamed” Africa. As real herders like Emong are now reduced to rural poverty, this romance now drives a world of game parks from which they are excluded.

‘Large swathes of Africa are being privatised and carved up into reserves for wildlife, an altogether more attractive and “natural” spectacle than herds of cattle. European settlers, having appropriated huge tracts of pastoralist land during the colonial era, have now turned their ranches into private conservancies that market themselves globally as friends of the earth, elephants and exotic peoples. The multi-million-dollar safari industry brings in vast tourist revenues, ring-fenced by hard-to-argue-with discourses of ecology and conservationism.

‘For the pastoralists of northern Kenya all this is a disaster. Turkana, Samburu and Borana are being shut out of their pasturelands and reduced to sellers of tourist trinkets. . . .’

Thanks to Luigi Guarino for linking to this essay in his Agricultural Biodiversity ‘ScoopIt’ magazine.

Read the whole essay at the On the Human Forum, an initiative of the National Humanities Center (USA): Animal in mind: People, cattle and shared nature on the African savannah, by Vigdis Broch-Due, professor of social anthropology and international poverty research at the University of Bergen, Norway, 3 Oct 2011.

Sake Dabasso Halake with her recent livestock insurance payout, which was made in northern Kenya’s Marsabit District following the great drought that afflicted the Horn of Africa in the latter half of 2011 (photo credit: Jeff Haskins/Burness Communications).

Laurie Goering, a reporter for AlertNet writing from the United Nations climate change meetings in Durban this week, says that pioneering insurance projects are giving remote pastoral livestock herders a way to reduce the risks they face from a changing climate that presents recurring, dramatically severe, droughts.

‘Equipping illiterate migratory herders with drought insurance in one of the driest regions of drought-prone East Africa might seem a big task, particularly in a region where claims adjustors, cell phone coverage and cash to pay for policies are nearly as rare as rain itself.

‘But a range of such pioneering insurance efforts – considered one of the few ways to help East Africa’s herders weather worsening droughts – are taking hold in Kenya and Ethiopia, and are now being replicated as far away as Peru and Guatemala.

‘“(Herders) are fantastic risk managers. All they lack is the tools to do it even better,” said Richard Choularton, a senior policy officer focusing on climate change and disaster risk reduction for the World Food Programme (WFP).

‘Equipping them with insurance “keeps households above the poverty line so they don’t enter this downward spiral” when bad times hit – a key way of helping them adapt to climate change, he said during an explanation of insurance programmes at the United Nations’ climate talks in Durban, South Africa.

‘In Kenya’s northern Marsabit district, near the border with Somalia and Ethiopia, the landscape is so dry that herding animals – camels and goats in the parched north, cattle in the slightly lusher south – is the only option for most people to make a living.

‘Long accustomed to dealing with drought, herders have traditional ways of coping, including moving animals to distant pastures, selling some for cash to reduce herds and build reserves when drought strikes, loaning animals to those who have lost their herds and, in some cases, raiding neighbours’ herds to restock.

‘But worsening droughts – believed to be linked to climate change – mean many of those traditional mechanisms are no longer effective, and growing numbers of families are slipping into hunger and worsening poverty. . . .’

Read the whole article at AlertNet: Insurance aims to help herders avoid ‘downward spiral’ from drought, 30 Nov 2011.

Read about the first payouts from this insurance on ILRI’s News Blog:

Herders in drought-stricken northern Kenya get first livestock insurance payments, 21 Oct 2011.

Livestock director and partners launch first-ever index-based livestock insurance payments in Africa, 25 Oct 2011.

Short films document first-ever index-based livestock insurance for African herders, 26 Oct 2011.