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…

 

Innovation, scaling out and market development: Fodder adoption project synthesis report

Under the title ‘Enhancing Livelihoods of Poor Livestock Keepers through Increased Use of Fodder’, the goal of this IFAD-funded Programme was to improve the livelihoods of poor livestock keepers in Ethiopia, Syria and Vietnam in a sustainable manner through increased access to and adoption of fodder interventions.

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

 

Fodder Adoption Project Ethiopia: Innovation Platforms from technology focus to actors focus

On September 28, I joined Andre Van Rooyen (ICRISAT) and Ranjitha Puskur (ILRI) in a session on innovation platforms in agricultural research for development at the Rome AgriKnowledge share fair. For my presentation, I used experiences of the ‘Fodder Adoption Project in Ethiopia to illustrate how using the innovation systems approach shifted the focus of the project from animal feeding ‘technologies’ to actors and their emerging needs over time.

More on the Ethiopia project

View the presentation:

 

Building local stakeholder networks for livestock development – a case study from Syria

We have been introducing a series of Technical Advisory Notes arising from the IFAD-funded Fodder Adoption Project on this blog. The last of these describes implementation of the project in Syria. Dr Asamoah Larbi (ex of the International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas; ICARDA) writes:

“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.

 

Building on local pockets of success: Some lessons on the process of up-scaling fodder and cattle development in Vietnam

Development projects can often point to local pockets of success: examples of where a project has had real impact on smallholder livelihoods through some successful interventions. However the real challenge comes in taking such success to scale – this involves somehow embedding the processes that led to success into the ways of working of local stakeholders who will remain after the project reports have been written.

In this Technical Advisory Note from the Fodder Adoption Project, Werner Stur draws some lessons on how to scale out local success using a case from Ea Kar District in Vietnam. The local success was described in a previous post – it involved using planted fodder as a catalyst to enable subsistence cattle keepers to make the transition into keeping cattle for cash income.

According to Werner Stur “The key to successful up-scaling” was to:

(i) have a convincing example that showed that it was possible for comparable smallholder farm families to produce high-quality cattle competitively

(ii) build local coalitions for development which facilitated the adoption and development process

(iii) strengthen the capacity of local stakeholders in facilitating the fodder and cattle development process, supporting farmers in technical issues, and developing market access, and

(iv) support stakeholders at new sites by linking them with experienced counterparts in a site where things are working as well as linking them with other project participants in an informal network of professionals.

Read the full account here:

and you can watch a video where Werner Stur talks about up-scaling local successes in a previous post.

 

Planted forage as an entry point to catalyse stakeholder action on broader livestock value chain issues – experiences from Ethiopia

Feed scarcity in smallholder systems is a key constraint to improved livestock production in developing countries. However, development efforts which have taken a narrow technology-focused approach to dealing with feed scarcity have had limited success. In the Fodder Adoption Project, we experimented with the use of local stakeholder forums in our sites in Ethiopia to bring local stakeholders together to deal with feed scarcity issues.

In this Technical Advisory Note we describe our experiences in combining stakeholder forums with introductions of improved forage varieties at farm level. The note shows how innovation approaches worked well in a site with good market potential for dairy and where diverse actors were present. In a food insecure site dominated by public sector actors things were more challenging.

We draw a number of lessons from our experiences:

• Local stakeholder forums required some practical action on the ground to stimulate interest and enhance credibility – in our case the “engine of change” was planted forage but other practical entry points could work equally well.
• Diversity of actors seems to be a key element of successful stakeholder forums.
• Enhancing productivity at farm level is a good first step but needs to be quickly accompanied by actions to deal with other value chain constraints such as input provision and marketing arrangements.
• In food insecure environments the use of local stakeholder forums for value chain development can be challenging. In such cases a different thematic focus such as food-security, capacity building or improving livelihoods might be more appropriate; this may also require a different set of actors including social welfare and health actors.
• Establishing a coherent livestock innovation system requires experimentation, learning from mistakes and careful adaptation. During the pilot phase some external resources may be required to cover the costs of workshops and meetings, training and other support and to underwrite new interventions that carry some risk until proven.

Read the full account here.

See previous posts on cattle fattening and novel arrangements for credit through traders in Vietnam for some parallel similar experiences.

 

How can farmers move from being ‘cattle keepers’ to ‘cattle producers’? A case from Vietnam

Across the developing world, millions of smallholders keep livestock as a means of storing capital and as an insurance against hard times. This is a vital function for livestock – but it is associated with poverty. As demand for livestock products increases and systems become more intensive there are opportunities for subsistence livestock keepers to make the transition from being “cattle keepers” to “cattle producers”. Deriving some cash income from livestock production helps farmers to transition out of poverty.

In this Technical Advisory Note from the Fodder Adoption Project, Werner Stür (formerly of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, CIAT) describes the way in which scientists from CIAT and Tay Nguyen University worked with local farmers and other stakeholders to bring about widespread change in cattle production in Ea Kar District in Vietnam.

According to Werner Stür “The key to success was the combination of a convincing technology – farm-grown fodder – and an innovation process that was participatory, actor-oriented, and both production and market focused. The immediate benefits of easy access to fodder stimulated stakeholders’ interest and provided an entry point for innovation. As cattle production improved and stakeholders realised that they could produce high-quality animals, market opportunities became the key driver for change”.

Read the full account here

 

Scaling out project outcomes requires a ‘special chemistry’

After a session of the the November 2010 Fodder Adoption Project (FAP) workshop in Laos, we recorded ‘notes’ of three world cafe hosts who collated cross-project lessons (from Ethiopia, Syria, and Vietnam) on three issues: Innovation approaches, feed assessment, and scaling out.

In this video, Werner Stür, formerly with CIAT in Vietnam, reports back on the discussions about scaling out in the project.

The group talked a lot about the ‘starting point’ of scaling out – everybody agreed that a ‘success story’ is needed – a technology, perhaps a process, that at a particular site has provided a benefit for farmers and people see a potential for many others to take advantage of the success…He raises the issue of where scaling out should be done, who decides this and who is responsible for the scaling out. It seems there is no fixed methodology, but some guiding principles could be identified:

• Many more stakeholders and actors need to be involved. We are not talking just of a technology, it is a process that needs other actors like traders, private sector, credit, etc

• Political support is needed, from government, also excitement from the NGO sector and others

• Many specialized capacities are needed, eg for targeting, facilitating, bringing together the actors

• There is a big role for media and communications to get get the story out and help build consensus among all the actors

Finally, he drew attention to some ‘special skill’ and motivations that are necessary to bring the stakeholders together: “The chemistry of the key stakeholder has to fit; if that’s not working it becomes very very difficult.”

More project information: http://fodder-adoption-project.wikispaces.com

 

Innovation approaches – Collective learning from the Fodder Adoption Project

After a session of the the November 2010 Fodder Adoption Project (FAP) workshop in Laos, we recorded ‘notes’ of three world cafe hosts who collated cross-project lessons (from Ethiopia, Syria, and Vietnam) on three issues: Innovation approaches, feed assessment, and scaling out.

In this video, Ranjitha Puskur of ILRI reports on the lessons on innovation approaches that have been tried in the project.

The collective learning by the group revealed that the countries practiced diverse approaches and processes; however these approaches seem to work well when there is a good balance between technologies and the process, there are good market opportunities, and the approach is ‘hybridized’ with the value chains approach.

She points out that these approaches are quite complex and facilitation intensive, who brokers this facilitation is a key factor that influences the outcomes.

For stakeholder platforms of the kind supported in the project to be effective, it is clear that the actors who need to be involved need to clearly see their role, the incentives, and benefits they will get and so develop commitment to the process.

Two missing aspects are: 1) how to reach out to policymakers at various levels that would enable scaling up and out of the project outputs, and 2) how to target communities and households so the benefits of these processes are captured locally, and not by the elite.

She raised one other significant issue: monitoring and evaluation. We talk of ‘innovation capacity building’ as something we do in such projects, but what do we mean by this, and how do we capture the unintended benefits of projects that employ such innovation approaches? Do we really know enough about such approaches overall? There seems to be a big agenda here for further research and learning

More project information: http://fodder-adoption-project.wikispaces.com

 

Feed a key issue to manage livestock systems in transition

After a session of the the November 2010 Fodder Adoption Project (FAP) workshop in Laos, we recorded ‘notes’ of three world cafe hosts who collated cross-project lessons (from Ethiopia, Syria, and Vietnam) on three issues: Innovation approaches, feed assessment, and scaling out.

In this video, Michael Blümmel of ILRI reports back on the discussions about feed assessment in the project. He emphasized that feed is a key issue in determining livestock productivity and the overall economics of livestock system; it also concerns how much we are affecting the environment through, for example, greenhouse gas emissions.

So feed is very much at the interface of the positive and negative effects of livestock. A

key message from the workshop discussions is that we need to look at feed resources in a much wider context, in relation to systems, in relation to markets and in relation to improving value chains. He considers this a promising outcome as previously people focused on more limited technical entry points.

Some other key issues:

• The need to better understand feed gaps and demand. Are we looking to satisfy current needs, subsistence needs, or are we looking forward to the so called livestock revolution where farmers have to produce more, with fewer animals, for fast growing markets for animal products

• Better defining what we mean by a feed gap? Is it defined in terms of how a farmer can produce more, or at a country level?

• Are we focusing too much on the positive side of feeds … and neglecting trade-off effects… land, water. We need to do much more in terms of balancing positive and negative effects.

In conclusion, the group seems to agree that we should focus on livestock systems in ‘transition’ – trying to move people out of poverty (by increasing their productivity, increasing their production for markets) and believing that once they move out of agriculture, we are essentially looking at new livestock systems in the future.

More project information: http://fodder-adoption-project.wikispaces.com