The International Dairy Federation (IDF) with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the International Farm Comparison Network (IFCN) established a Task Force on Animal Feeding to develop a technical monograph on animal feeding in the dairy sector.

The report will be published in early 2012.

It will provide a “world map of animal feeding systems in the dairy sector as precisely as possible, and according to geographical zones and/or farm size.”

More information …

• The Gates Foundation-funded East Africa Dairy Development Project extending its activities into Ethiopia

• The CIDA-funded LIVES programme

• The multi-donor Agricultural Growth Programme for Ethiopia

• CGIAR Research Programme 3.7:More Milk, Meat and Fish, for and by the Poor has identified small ruminants in Ethiopia as one of a series of global livestock value chains for intensive research for development.

These are all large initiatives and livestock feeding, a chronic problem for smallholder livestock production in Ethiopia, will be important in all cases. Partly to support the development of these initiatives, the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research have recently commissioned a small scoping study on feed issues in livestock value chains in Ethiopia. ILRI with national research and development partners (Ethiopian Institute for Agricultural Research; Amhara Regional Agricultural Research Institute) will be implementing this work in the coming few months.

The purpose of the project is to develop a preliminary understanding of how feed components of intensifying livestock production systems in Ethiopia are changing as systems intensify and how this is reflected in the feed-related elements of focal value chains.

Project objectives are:

• Develop value chain maps for feed-related elements of prominent dairy, beef and sheep value chains in Ethiopia and to gather indicative data on flows, volumes, prices of feeds and fodder associated with those value chains.

• Assess demand for and the price – quality relationships for feeds and fodder at different stages along the intensification continuum within study sites. Also to determine if / how feed quality messages are passing along the focal chains and if they are, what are the perceived and actual characteristics of better quality feeds that command premium prices?

• If there are feed quality price premiums, what are the impacts of the higher quality feeds on smallholder farmers in terms of livestock productivity and profits?

• Use the above information to allow future trends to be predicted and to support interventions to enhance smallholder-based feed supply and trade leading to more value, more employment and reduced margins and costs.

• Test and refine emerging tools for feed resource and demand assessment, value chain analysis, rapid market appraisal and feed technology prioritization for subsequent application in wider CGIAR Research Programme (and other) contexts.

A first step is to meet with partners and other stakeholders to plan activities and we plan to do this on Feb 21-22 on ILRI campus in Addis Ababa. Please get in touch if interested.

Contact Alan Duncan – a.duncan AT cgiar.org

More information on the project

We will again be experimenting with innovation and value chain approaches to feed development. The project will be embedded within the new CGIAR Research Programme 3.7: More milk, meat and fish, for and by the poor.

The overall goal of the project will be to contribute to improved dairy-derived livelihoods in India and Tanzania via intensification of smallholder production focusing on enhancement of feeds and feeding using innovation and value chain approaches.

The objectives of the project are three-fold:

1.     Institutional strengthening: To strengthen use of value chain and innovation approaches among dairy stakeholders to improve feeding strategies for dairy cows.

2.       Productivity enhancement: To develop options for improved feeding strategies leading to yield enhancement with potential income benefits.

3.       Knowledge sharing: To strengthen knowledge sharing mechanisms on feed development strategies at local, regional and international levels

Activities on this project will start in earnest in early 2012 but already a number of preparatory steps have been taken to ensure rapid project start up. These have mainly related to scoping missions to the two study countries with a view to identifying project sites and partners. The main activities are summarized below:

Scoping visits:

Tanzania: A project team including Alan Duncan (Project Co-ordinator) and Brigitte Maass (Tanzania Country Co-ordinator) along with Ben Lukuyu and Amos Omore of ILRI visited Tanzania in August and conducted a 5 day tour of potential sites and partners. The visit began in Arusha and went by way of Tanga and Morogoro to Dar-es-Salaam. Meetings were arranged with a wide range of potential partners and stakeholders. The process was useful in raising awareness among potential partners about the incoming project. The visit also provided some pointers to potential project sites and these will be firmed up in a pre-inception meeting in Jan 2012.

Uttarakhand, India: a similar scoping visit was made to Uttarakhand by Alan Duncan and Nils Teufel (India Country Co-ordinator) in December 2012. The visit centred around two main locations, Dehra Dun and Almora. Stakeholder mini-workshops were held in each location introducing the project and gathering information on ongoing dairy activities and key current issues around dairy value chain development.

Meetings with IFAD country staff

During the scoping visit to Tanzania, a meeting was held with Dr Mwatima Juma,  Country Officer for IFAD Tanzania on 26 Aug, 2011. We discussed IFAD country priorities and introduced the MilkIT project to the country office. A similar meeting was held in the IFAD India country office on 23 Sept 2011.  Again the MilkIT project was introduced and its integration with the forthcoming Integrated Livelihood Support Programme in Uttarakhand was discussed.

Planning for implementation

Dates and agenda have been set for a pre-inception planning meeting in Nairobi on Jan 24/25, 2012. The meeting will develop site selection criteria, work on details of initial project activities, agree on partners and explore links with a sister project on dairy in Tanzania funded by Irish Aid.

We will continue to post updates about this project on this blog.

With activities in Ethiopia, Syria and Vietnam and linking with a project implemented in Nigeria and India, the project aimed to better understand the factors and processes that determine the success of fodder interventions in developing countries. This understanding was used to strengthen the capacity of poor farmers and service providers to better meet their needs for fodder.

The project completion report has just be published, providing information on four project output areas:

• Mechanisms for strengthening and/or establishing multi-stakeholder alliances that can enable scaling up and out of fodder technologies.
• Options for effective delivery systems including innovative communication strategies and on farm interventions to improve fodder supply.
• Enhanced capacity of project partners to experiment with and use fodder innovations through effective communication, technical information and training in diverse aspects placing fodder interventions in the context of systems of innovation.
• Generic lessons with wide applicability on innovation processes and systems, communication strategies and partnerships that provide an enabling environment to enhance scaling up and out of fodder innovations.

In addition, outcomes and lessons are drawn together around three major strands: Innovation, Scaling Out and Market Development

Innovation

The assimilation of innovation systems thinking into project activities was an emerging theme of the project and played out in different ways in the three project countries. In Ethiopia, the project pro-actively established and facilitated local innovation platforms at study sites and used these as the central mechanism for bringing about change in farming practice. Innovation platforms were combined with introduction of planted fodder early in the project. This combination of technology introduction and a focus on enhancing stakeholder networking was a hallmark of activities in Ethiopia. The result was modest adoption of forage technologies at farm level accompanied by significant change in stakeholder attitudes and behaviour which we anticipate will lead to more substantial long-term change at farm level.

In Syria the approach was similar although perhaps with greater emphasis on introducing new technologies to farmers. In Syria there was a more challenging external environment with a strong extension service, heavy government intervention in pricing of agricultural commodities and few NGO or private sector actors. This scarcity of non-government actors limited the diversity actors involved in innovation platforms. Within these constraints we noted strong farmer adoption of technologies introduced by the project and a greater connectedness of key actors including the Ministry of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform and the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme.

In Vietnam we saw widespread system change in farming practice from subsistence based cattle system to a market-oriented system in which breeding and feeding practices were substantially changed with strong benefits for farmer livelihoods. This change was facilitated by the Fodder Adoption Project and, in the case of the more advanced learning site Ea Kar, predecessor projects led by CIAT. In Vietnam a coalition of local key stakeholders was formed at each learning site and these took responsibility for driving and facilitating cattle development. While national project partners were initially instrumental in facilitating local coalitions, this responsibility quickly evolved to local partners, the district extension of agriculture offices. Also, the composition of local coalitions changed as the project progressed. These stakeholder changes were described in detail in a paper by Khanh et al (2009). “Actor-oriented” approaches were a strong element of project activities.

As in Ethiopia, there was an early emphasis on introduction of promising forage technologies using participatory approaches. “Village learning activities” were used to great effect to develop farmer capacity to experiment with new feeding and breeding practices. Following early pockets of success in introducing new technologies there was strong emphasis on working with local government extension workers to bring about sustained change, link farmers with markets and upscale adoption. As the project progressed the range of actors reached by the project widened; actors from across the value chain became involved, notably traders and buyers of cattle from distant markets. The link between promising technologies and linking farmers to markets through facilitation of stakeholder linkages was a key element of success in Vietnam and in many ways, the example of Vietnam provided the project with a flagship model for livestock development, elements of which were tried in the other countries.

In summary, across all three project countries our approach was to combine the introduction of promising technologies with a pro-active emphasis on bringing key actors together at important points in the development process. In Ethiopia and Syria this was done through innovation platforms while in Vietnam the same end was achieved through facilitation of ad hoc interactions among important stakeholders. In Vietnam a tipping point was reached and we saw widespread system change following continuous engagement by CIAT and local partners in project sites for a number of years. In Ethiopia and Syria the tipping point has yet to be reached but we see promising signs of change in actor behaviour which will need to be followed to assess whether they are sustained and lead to widespread change in farmer practice.

Scaling Out

Scaling out activities were somewhat different in the three project countries partly because project activities were at a different point in the development trajectory in each country.

The most advanced scaling out activities were in Vietnam where a strong strategy for scaling out early successes was developed. The general approach was to focus at village level to begin with through introduction of new practices through Village Learning Activities. Some of this had happened before FAP began. Having established early pockets of success local extension workers were brought on board through site visits and interactions with farmers. The project then provided technical support for scaling out of successful technologies but the scaling out was led by the local extension department. Such scaling out approaches were still relatively local involving the local district extension workers. An important activity of FAP was to extend project activities to a completely new site, Ha Tinh. This was achieved through exchange visits early in the project. A key element success was allowing government officials to hear first hand from their counterparts in the advanced learning site about how things had progressed in their site. This led to rapid adoption of new feeding practices in the new learning site over project life.

In Ethiopia, scaling out of technologies did not progress beyond district level (woreda) during the lifetime of FAP. However, the project did have some impact in terms of scaling out of innovation systems approaches to actors beyond project sites. This was achieved through regular meetings of a national Ethiopian Fodder Roundtable at which innovation approaches were presented. At district level we found considerable enthusiasm for scaling out of planted fodder by local extension offices. The scaling out was achieved through conventional government mechanisms rather than through spontaneous adoption and it remains to be seen how sustainable such efforts are and whether they continue beyond the project lifetime. One issue we encountered was the question of what was being scaled out: technologies or innovation approaches. We tended to find that government extension officers were keener on the former and it is too early to say whether we see sustained use of innovation approaches in study districts and beyond.

In Syria, again we saw scaling out of successful technologies at district level but as in Ethiopia it is as yet unclear whether the use of local stakeholder platforms has been taken on by local stakeholders and will persist beyond project life.

Market development

Market development activities varied by country partly because of the different stages of maturity of project efforts in the three locations.

In Ethiopia, the project started by introducing planted forages at district level. Early successes were used to build stakeholder engagement. Towards the end of the project we saw local stakeholders turning attention to marketing issues in at least one of our sites. Thus in Ada’a, by the end of the project local stakeholders were negotiating arrangements for procurement of milk rather than focusing on fodder production issues. In all three countries a similar pattern was observed: using fodder as an entry point but maintaining a strong focus on stakeholder processes led naturally to dealing with bottlenecks further along the value chain.

In Vietnam, this process had reached maturity so that much of the project effort was focused on developing market arrangements with traders, re-orienting production to meet market demands, dealing with credit provision and so on.

In Syria, there was limited work on market development perhaps because livestock production systems are already relatively mature and market linkages for farmers are already well established.

Download the report

More on the Ethiopia project

View the presentation:

We made great progress. At the start of the workshop, many of us wondered if such a tool could be developed. Would it be possible to reduce the complexity of the problem to something simple that could be used by non-specialists? As the week went on, the key components of the framework began to emerge.

First, we agreed that we needed an inventory of possible feed technologies including a score sheet for a range of technology attributes. These attributes would include aspects such as requirements for land and water, labour requirements, need for various inputs, reliance on community organisation, need for credit, complexity of the technology and so on. These attributes would be inherent to the technology and hence would form part of the final tool.

Discussing feed technologies with farmers in Sorna village, Uttarakhand, India as part of Techfit workshop. 21 Nov 2011

Second, we came to a consensus that we also needed to characterize the context in which technologies would be applied. Some of the same attributes would be suitable – things like land and water availability, degree of community cohesion, availability of credit etc. But scores for these attributes would be specific to particular contexts be it the Highlands of Ethiopia or the hill country of Uttarakhand. A key element of the tool will be to find a simple way to gather this information using checklists and quick questionnaires that can be used with farmers and other key actors.

The core of tool will be a way of combining technology and context attributes to arrive at an overall score for how a technology is likely to fit a particular context. The final score will not produce a magic bullet technology but it will help to narrow down the wide range of possible options into a few strong contenders. These can then form the basis for further discussion with farmers and development workers to decide on how they should be tested and tried in practice.

We see Techfit (or whatever we decide to call it) as one element of a wider set of tools that will help to capture some of the expertise of feed and forage specialists and make it available in usable form by development people. These other tools include FEAST (Feed Assessment Tool), SOFT and approaches for participatory technology development.

We will keep posting on Techfit as it develops.

To better understand concrete feed technology ‘use cases’ and demands, the first day of the workshop included a question and answer session with five workshop participants. What types of technology questions or demands do they encounter? How do they screen and prioritise technology options? Who decides on technological choices, what criteria are used to rank them, and what is ultimately provided to farm communities?

Panelists Nils Teufel (ILRI India), Ben Lukuyu (ILRI Kenya), Aichi Kitalyi (Tanzania), Yashpal Bisht (Himmothan Foundation), and D. P. Tiwari (Pantnagar University) shared their experiences with Ranjitha Puskur.

Yashpal Bisht set the scene arguing that “farmers don’t ask for a technology … they ask for a solution.” So any tool, approach or framework to improve technology screening and selection must draw heavily on the immediate farmer context. In the areas where Bisht works (Uttarakhand and Himachal in India), for example, the communities will decide themselves on the technologies and interventions they will implement. For a specific technology, they are often quite clear what they want and don’t want – decisions by farmers on uptake are critical steps in the decision matrix being developed.

A lot of the subsequent conversations were about ways that researchers and farmers interact around animal feeding issues. On-farm trials and demonstration plots were repeatedly mentioned as mechanisms to identify, test, validate, and target appropriate technologies with farmers. Still however, Ben Lukuyu emphasized that these approaches help ‘bring’ technologies to farmers … but do we really know how they ‘pick’ the technologies and the criteria they use to select them? Aichi Kitalyi illustrated how technologies can have very unanticipated consequences – a forage plant used for thatching for example.

Nils Teufel added that we can work with farmers, identifying problems needing solutions (through participatory rural assessment, use of a feed assessment tool, etc), and ‘testing’ technologies, but there is still a big question on the criteria and processes used to pre-select and screen likely technologies before the deeper engagement with farmers.

Who decides, and how do we ensure that the results of their decisions are the best possible? Often technology selection choices are informed by past research or other assessment and decisions are taken nationally as part of research priority setting exercises; sometimes individuals or institutions recommend what they have ‘on the shelf.’ The TechFit tool or framework should make these pre-selection technology screening and matching choices more structured, more robust and more relevant.

Beyond the farmers themselves, panelists talked about other strategies they employ to get feed technologies into use. Partners – research, government, developmental – are a key to this and their capabilities, and their interests in, and understanding of, the intended technologies are important determinants of uptake.

They also pointed out that technologies are frequently introduced as part of wider interventions, hence the inter-relations among all of these are an important part of technology ‘choice.’

Technology choices therefore need to match farmers’ contexts, they need to complement other interventions, and they need to be compatible with their partner aspirations and capacities. . .

Moreover, in a subsequent presentation, ILRI’s Steve Staal emphasized that the attributes of the technologies themselves (their land or labor requirements for example) have a bearing on their uptake, while factors in the rural situation – policies, availability of markets and credit, livestock keeping ‘mindset’, and many others – are also critical determinants.

The panelists and the discussions illustrated and extended the justification for the TechFit framework and tool – they also added multiple layers of complexity for the working groups to address today.

View Steve Staal’s presentation:

The 4-day Techfit workshop aims to ‘develop and test an analytical framework that can be used to collect, structure, screen and prioritise possible feed technologies and interventions from multiple angles technical, institutional, social and economic’. http://techfit.wikispaces.com

Animal husbandry plays a pivotal role in this hilly and heavily forested state’s rural economy and Mr Gupta promised that the state government would be interested in using the tool when it was developed.

The process to start developing that tool today involved the 20 or participants engaging in an intensive programme which combined plenary discussions, a few presentations, sharing of examples of practical experiences in Africa and Asia, and some group work sessions. This provided both food for thought and some roughly-hewn building blocks which will be further refined and used to build the tool tomorrow.
 

 

By the end of day one, the group had:

Recognised that within the group there was a good mix of natural and social scientists and that between them had a wide range of experience of feed technologies and approaches to introducing them to farmers.

Clarified that although the overall objective was to develop a generic tool that could be used globally for all livestock species. Initially, however, it might be simpler to focus on ruminants only. And that the tool’s intended audience was development workers and researchers – not farmers or policy makers, although clearly they will be interested in the tool’s outputs.

Generated and tested a matrix which enabled feed technology options to be categorised with the ‘what’ (targeting quantity, quality or seasonality of feed) in one dimension and the ‘how’ (introduction of new feeds options on farm, e.g. dual purpose crops; making better use of existing feeds on farm, e.g. pulverising straw; or importing feeds onto the farm, e.g. buying-in concentrates or fodder) in another.

Produced a set of categories and some examples of factors that could impact on uptake of technologies:

• Natural resource and land use: land tenure and size; common property management; agro-climatic and farm system setting and variability;
• Complementary technologies: cropping intensity, type and mechanisation; animal breed and health; irrigation and water conservation
• Cost/benefit (economics): labour seasonality; labour cost and availability; economic return to technology; trade-offs and opportunity costs
• Tradition and culture: gender roles and distribution of benefits; risk mitigation options; user risk aversion; livestock keeping mindset and objectives
• Market linkages and demand: product prices; market performance and concentration
• Institutions and policies: public investment choices; regulations on quality etc; enabling environment for private actors
• Capacity: knowledge and capacity of service and extension actors; collective action and organisation; user knowledge and skills
• Infrastructure: credit; seed systems; other input supply and repair
• ‘Density and clustering’ of livestock activities

Identified some factors associated with successful uptake of feed technologies that emerged from practical experiences of some participants:

• focus was often on modifying existing approaches rather than introducing entirely new technologies
• linking training to technology promotion improved uptake
• technologies for which the impact was rapidly apparent were more attractive to farmers (one participant suggested that a technology needed to generate at least a 25% increase in income or productivity to be worth considering)
• solving farmers cash flow problems, e.g. through functional milk hubs, enables them to invest in technologies
• uptake was higher when farmers were more business oriented
• providing farmers with information so they could make informed choice was critical – and fora existed to facilitate engagement with farmers
• the level to which farmers had been exposed to new technologies and options varied considerably and had implications for targeting
• it was hard to involve poor small-scale farmers in participatory research: more resource-rich famers could, however, act as ‘test beds’ to demonstrate technologies to their poorer neighbours

From the examples shared, it was apparent that ad hoc approaches to technology selection dominated, which included top-down decision making, promotion of pet technologies and building on what farmers already did. To the relief of the workshop organisers this reinforced the need for a more systematic approach – a need the workshop aims to address.

So, by the end of day one a good foundation has been laid on which the tool can be built. But clearly day 2 will require some creative thinking and hard work to cope with the complexities and issues that had emerged during day one and to meet the brief for a practical tool.

The 4-day Techfit workshop aims to ‘develop and test an analytical framework that can be used to collect, structure, screen and prioritise possible feed technologies and interventions from multiple angles technical, institutional, social and economic’. http://techfit.wikispaces.com

Contributed by Keith Sones

But how do we decide which feed technologies will work and be beneficial to smallholder livestock keepers in specific situations? The decision making process surrounding technologies seems to often be ad hoc and rather narrow. Aspects such as labour availability,  cost-benefit, availability of inputs, aspects of risk, and the  level of knowledge required for successful implementation are often not systematically considered. This has led to increasing distrust and repeated failures.

With all this in mind, next week a group of scientists, development practitioners and representatives of the private sector will meet in Dehra Dun to begin to develop a methodology to help people screen and prioritize feed technologies for different situations.

Why this workshop?

The objective is to develop and field test an analytical framework tool that can be used to: (i) collect (ii) structure (iii) screen and (iv) prioritise possible feed technologies and interventions using a set of general approaches, generic classifications and critical parameters from multiple angles (technical, institutional, policy, social and economic) in various contexts…

The results of the workshop and the field testing will be condensed into a booklet suitable for wider distribution and application. It will contain the justification, the approaches/methodology and some application examples of how the technology prioritisation tool can be used.

The aim is to move beyond a mere concept but rather develop a prototype tool, which can then be tested and further improved in the various upcoming research activities.

You can read more about the rationale for the workshop and the process we intend to use here:

http://techfit.wikispaces.com/

The workshop is hosted by the “Enhancing livelihoods through livestock knowledge systems (ELKS)” project.

“Feed scarcity prevents small-scale sheep and goat keepers in Syria from taking advantage of the growing market for livestock products to improve their livelihoods, build assets and escape poverty. This is due to poor access to information, credit, appropriate technologies; lack of enabling policies and institutions; and a weak extension system, input delivery services and fodder innovation capacity. The Syrian component of the IFAD-funded Fodder Adoption Project was implemented from 2007 to 2011 by ICARDA, community-based organizations (CBOs), and public and private sector partners to address the constraints. The overall objective of the project was to enhance livelihoods of poor livestock keepers through increased use of fodder.

Activities were implemented at three learning sites – El-Bab, (Aleppo province), Salamieh (Hama province) and Tal-Amri (Homs province). A network of partners led by ICARDA, including the Extension Directorate (ED) and Animal Wealth Resource Administration (AWRA) of the Syrian Ministry of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform (MAAR), Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (AKF), and farmers’ groups ran the activities at each site.

In terms of impacts, innovation capacity of the networks was strengthened through training, and joint learning by cross-site visits and field days. Informal seed systems were promoted to increase quality forage seed supply and farmer-to-farmer seed exchange. Farmers, research and development partners were trained in fodder and forage seed production and management of small ruminants. Appropriate fodder/forage seed production and feeding packages for small-scale lamb fattening and milk production were disseminated to more than 500 households, resulting in increased household forage production, and outputs of milk and meat and incomes.”

Read the full account here.