ILRI vacancy: Post Doctoral Scientist – Livestock Feeds, West Africa (closing 27 April 2013)

Reblogged from ILRI jobs:

Vacancy Number: PDSLF/WA/HT/01/2013
Humidtropics
Location: Ibadan, Nigeria or Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso
Duration: 2 years with the possibility of renewal

Base salary dependent on skills and experience – from USD 35,000 per annum with an attractive international benefits package (tax free*).

 The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) works to enhance the roles livestock play in pathways out of poverty in developing countries.

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ILRI vacancy: Post Doctoral Scientist – Livestock Feeds, Ethiopia (closing 27 April 2013)

Reblogged from ILRI jobs:

Vacancy Number: LFPDS/ADD/HT/01/2013
Humidtropics
Location: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Duration: 2 years with the possibility of renewal

Base salary dependent on skills and experience – from USD 35,000 per annum with an attractive international benefits package (tax free*).

 The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) works to enhance the roles livestock play in pathways out of poverty in developing countries. ILRI is a member of the CGIAR Consortium, a global research partnership of 15 centres working with many partners for a food-secure future.

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Refining livestock feed assessment tools – ILRI's work in 2012

Reblogged from ILRI Clippings:

Feed is often cited as the first limiting constraint to livestock intensification in smallholder mixed-crop farming systems in developing countries.

However attempts to deal with the feed constraint tend to focus on promotion of a fairly standard set of feed technologies with often disappointing results. Our experience is that feed intervention failures can be traced to three main issues:

• Failure to place feed in broader livelihood context;

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Investment opportunities for ruminant livestock feeding in developing countries

Feed for cattle in vietnam

The World Bank just released a new report that “assesses where the demand for feed [for ruminants in developing countries] is likely to change the most, and where investments in feed are most likely to increase animal productivity and improve the livelihoods of those who raise livestock. It covers policy, institutions, knowledge and innovation as well as technical issues – all in the context of rapidly changing demand for livestock products in developing countries.”

Based on growth and market opportunities, number of poor and pro-poor potential and supply constraints the study identifies first Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia as priority areas, and then, within these areas, it identifies three commodity value chains in five regions of particularly great potential to benefit poor producers and consumers. They are:

• Dairy in East Africa and South Asia;
• Beef in West Africa;
• Small ruminant meat in West Africa and Southern Africa.

In terms of feed types and sources, general trends analyzed in the report show a reduction in the use of crop residue such as straws and stovers; an increase in the use of crop-by-products (such as oil cakes and by-products of the milling industry) and concentrates; an increase in the area planted for forages, in particular in dairy systems; and a sharp increase in feed procurement from the market instead of supply from the own farm.

In terms of opportunities for feed-related investments with major positive impacts on the poor, more specific areas of improvement that warrant priority in targeting investments are:

• Technological feed improving solutions including: more attention to research and development for feed/food crops; better ration formulation; and forage seed production.
• Institutional issues include access to land and water for all smallholders, as a primary concern and as the main incentive to improve crop-residues. Effective governance on feed quality is also a common institutional issue raised. Similarly, reduction on transaction costs (both to access the feeds and to participate in product markets) is another key area for institutional investment support. The report strongly advocates support to Business Development Services – interpreted in the broadest sense as a key to facilitating access to feeds, markets and for reducing transaction costs.
• While for many households increasing animal numbers is perceived as attractive, there are severe environmental limitations of the extent this is possible. Policies and investment that increase per animal productivity, such as adequate ration formulation and emphasis on mineral supplementation in the feed and nutrition domain, as well as genetic and health improvement related investment will be important. However, in some areas, increased efficiency (producing the same with fewer animals, or more with the same number of animals) can also be achieved through incentive systems such as payment for environmental services.

Download the report

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The report was prepared under the guidance of Jimmy Smith and Francois le Gall of the World Bank by a team consisting of William Thorpe, Derek Baker, Shirley Tarawali of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILR), and assisted by Rainer Asse, Augustine Ayantunde, Michael Blummel, Oumar Diall, Alan Duncan, Abdou Fall, Bruno Gerard, Elaine Grings, Mario Herrero, Chedly Kayouli, Ben Lukuyu, Siboniso Moyo, An Notenbaert, Tom Randolph, Steve Staal, Nils Teufel, Francis Wanyoike and Iain Wright. Further inputs were provided by Cees de Haan and Gunnar Larson from the World Bank. Peer reviewers are Brian Bedard (World Bank), Stephane Foreman (World Bank) and Joyce Turk (USAID).

 

Fodder seed field day in Ethiopia is an encouraging sign of sustained innovation

During the lifetime of the Fodder Adoption Project ILRI established local innovation platforms at various field sites around Ethiopia. The idea behind these was to provide a forum for key livestock feed stakeholders to get together and jointly plan actions to improve the livestock feed situation for smallholder farmers. One such innovation platform was established in our Ada’a site and a key stakeholder was the Ethiopian Meat and Dairy Technology Institute. In all our sites and at our national Fodder Roundtable another key actor was Eden Field Seeds, a local private seed supplier.

At one of our Fodder Roundtable meetings we focused on difficulties with forage seed supply and one of the recommendations was to encourage local agribusinesses to expand and begin to take on the seed supply function from the national research system. As the Fodder Adoption Project wound up we wondered whether some of the linkages established through the local innovation platforms would last beyond the project.

I was encouraged therefore when ILRI was approached by EMDTI recently to co-sponsor a forage seed field day involving Eden Field Seeds. The field day was held at one of the company’s outgrower schemes associated with Ataye Prison Farm in North Shewa. The day brought together a range of stakeholders and the subsequent discussion showed that there was good engagement.

You can read the field day report here.

ILRI staff member Aberra Adie was a key facilitator of the Ada’a platform. He writes:

The FAP platform at Ada’a woreda brought together a number of  stakeholders including private sector players like Eden Fields who continued the efforts to build a sustainable forage seed source for the increasing demand for improved livestock feeding systems in the country. It is  most rewarding that Eden Field Seeds, being the only certified private forage seed supplier in the country is now active in bringing together stakeholders around forage seed supply.

We look forward to seeing this initiative develop; dealing with forage seed supply in Ethiopia is a key constraint to improved livestock feeding and encouraging growth of small agribusinesses to deal with this issue seems a good way forward. I look forward to comments on this…

 

Tools for livestock feed assessment – lessons from ELF and QuickFeed projects

Earlier this year, ILRI joined national and international partners in two ‘feed assessment’ projects in Ethiopia. The Ethiopian Livestock Feeds project (funded by ACIAR) and the ‘QuickFeed‘ early win project of the Africa RISING program both set out to  test a suite of rapid diagnosis tools to identify promising feed and fodder interventions.

At the recent QuickFeed synthesis meeting, we interviewed Jane Wamatu, Adugna Tolera and Getachew Legesse about their experiences with the FEAST, TechFit and value chain assessment (VCA) tools used in both projects.

Jane and Adugna explained that the first time they used the FEAST and TechFit tools was during the ELF project. By the time of the QuickFeed project they were more experienced and better able to provide training and support to the research teams, and this was one of the reasons why the fieldwork of QuickFeed proceeded more smoothly. Another reason, Getachew felt, was that the research team members were younger and highly motivated, partly because the QuickFeed project was part of the larger Africa RISING project and so researchers were hopeful that their research could be continued under Africa RISING project. Another reason was the improvements resource people made to the tools following ELF. In FEAST, the number of respondents for individual data collection was increased to 9 farmers. In TechFit, the list of technologies was revised and the methodology of VCA was simplified considerably and tailored to fit seamlessly with FEAST and TechFIt.

Jane, Adugna and Getachew agreed that FEAST was very well developed with a clear template, results, analysis and structure for reporting. TechFit, on the other hand, still needed considerable improvements. Adugna felt that the pre-filter worked well but that there is a need to complete and review the list of technologies and their attribute scores. Also, the cost-benefit analysis of potential technologies was very difficult to calculate and required a lot of assumptions. He also felt that there is a need to write fact sheets for each of the technologies. A clear description of potential benefits and cost would also be useful. Finally, there was a need for clear guidelines – a manual – for using the TechFit tool. Having said all this, everyone agreed that there was great potential and need for TechFit.

The VCA tool in QuickFeed was focused on dairy and sheep value chains. This was easier and more useful than the VCA in ELF which focused on feed in general. Getachew felt that VCA now worked well but still required some ‘expert’ guidance during implementation. The reason was that each VCA had different objectives and pathways, and the methodology needed to be adapted to fit the objectives.

Everyone agreed that the participatory nature of FEAST and VCA created a direct, deeper kind of interaction and communication with farmers and other actors along the value chain and that this was extremely useful. In fact, the process of implementing these tools in itself had been very beneficial for creating greater understanding and interaction between researchers , farmers, traders and other stakeholders.

Story by Werner Stur

More on the ELF project – Part of the CGIAR Research Program on Livestock and Fish

More on the QuickFeed project – Part of the Africa RISING program

 

Fodder and feed in livestock value chains in Ethiopia – reports available

Three reports from the six-month ‘Fodder and feed in livestock value chains in Ethiopia – trends and prospects’ project were recently produced by ILRI.

The project was led by ILRI and involved the Ethiopian Institute for Agricultural Research, the Amhara Regional Agricultural Research Institute and the International Center for Research in the Dry Areas.

The project aimed 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. The project outputs included three synthesis reports along with a series of field reports that can be accessed via links in the synthesis reports.

Download:

• Fodder and feed in livestock value chains in Ethiopia: Final report of the Ethiopian Livestock Feeds project
• Report of the Ethiopian livestock feeds project synthesis workshop, Addis Ababa, 28–29 May 2012
• Small ruminant feeding strategies in smallholder systems: A synthesis of global experiences and recommendations for Ethiopia

This project was funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR); it is part of the CGIAR Research Program on Livestock and Fish.