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

 

Fodder favourites …

This week, we were brainstorming – over dinner – with a group of livestock/feed enthusiasts attending the final meeting of the Fodder Adoption Project.

How might we mobilize the scattered expertise and enthusiasms of forage and fodder (and related crop and livestock)  people in the CGIAR and worldwide to focus attention on livestock feeding as a strategy to enhance livelihoods,  address future food security and mitigate climate change?

This all started when our CIAT colleague and local host Tassilo Tiemann mentioned that his ‘favourite’ fodder plant is ‘Leucaena leucocephela’, why – because he likes multipurpose trees.

This stimulated some debate with ILRI’s Alan Duncan expressing a preference for turnip,  the focus of his PhD research; Shirley Tarawali chose cowpea, perhaps because of her previous work at IITA;  Bruno Gerard of the CGIAR Systemwide Livestock Program chose a fodder ‘system’ comprising Faidherbia albida, Andropogon and cowpea; Ranjitha Puskur opted for Stylosanthes, because of its importance in dry areas in India; Lucy Lapar from ILRI Vietnam also selected ‘Stylo’; while Antonio Rota of IFAD chose sugarcane.  Michael Blummel was still contemplating his choice at the end of the evening, despite the helpful suggestions of colleagues – groundnut or sorghum!

We collectively mused on what the fodder favourites would be for other absent colleagues, recalling that the ILRI forage genebank has 18000 plus accessions and a ‘best bets’ list of 60 plants compiled by Jean Hanson.

What does this tell us?

First, there’s a lot of fodder diversity out there – biological, but also in terms of preferred options of fodder and livestock specialists.

Second, judging by the discussion spurred by the choices – and the reasons and stories behind them – there could be much that we could gain by documenting and extending this lighthearted exercise into something more structured where we ask people to briefly explain their favorite fodder/forage plants in terms of their potential to improve future food security and improve livelihoods for small holder livestock keepers.

A form of ‘crowd sourcing’, we could map opinions and preferences worldwide, stimulate discussion, learning and debate, and perhaps identify promising opportunities as well as as gaps to further work on.

As the current Fodder Adoption Project ends, this is perhaps an opportunity to try out a completely different exercise, with the same acronym: The ‘Fodder Appreciation Program’ – better sugestions welcome!

Share your favourite fodder option, and why you like it using the comment option on this blog post.

 

Innovation, feed assessment and scaling out – the keys to fodder development?

Today we had a session to try and distil some cross-cutting findings from FAP, thinking specifically about Innovation, Feed Assessment and Scaling out issues. Here I highlight one key point I took from each session

Ranjitha Puskur led the session on innovation: we spoke about the challenges of embedding innovation approaches within national systems. Taking Ethiopia as a case, before long we were talking about “mandates”, “pushing the concept”, “assigning roles and responsibilities”…. It struck me that such terminology is at odds with the whole innovation approach – what we have been aiming for in FAP is loose, responsive networks that form to deal with specific issues and are driven by the personal interests of those involved – trying to institutionalize this informality within a national system would surely kill the informality which makes these things work.

Michael Blummel led the Feed Assessment session: We began by talking about methods of assessing feed gaps. Something we have learned through application of the FEAST (Feed Assessment Tool) we have been developing within FAP is that feed assessment can be too narrow – usually better to start with a more general enquiry among farmers about key constraints within the livestock system. In some cases this will point to issues other than feed, for example problems with marketing livestock products, problems with sourcing decent genetic stock etc. Even when feed is identified as a primary constraint, a wider assessment can identify other issues that will soon become key constraints once better quality feed is available.

Werner Stur led a session on scaling out: we asked the question “what are we scaling out”? Very often scaling out refers only to the scaling out of successful technologies. However, the success of such technologies is usually dependent on a whole suite of accompanying factors: local market demand for livestock products, availability of credit, the labour situation, local expertise etc. Simply scaling out the technology without scaling out the processes that led to the technology becoming successful in a particular locality tends not to work. We need to find ways of scaling out innovation processes that lead to successful technologies in given circumstances rather than a narrow focus on the technologies themselves.

 

Fodder fact sheets for Ethiopia

In our sites in Ethiopia we find a knowledge gap when it comes to growing high quality fodder. Livestock in Ethiopia are largely kept for subsistence purposes and there is limited tradition of using high quality feeds to enhance productivity. As systems intensify, this is changing but there is a need for provision of simple information on how to establish, manage and utilize planted fodder.

With this in mind, local forage agronomist, Abate Tedla has taken existing information from ILRI’s Forage Diversity Project and added material on forage feeding aspects to yield a brand new set of 10 fact sheets for major fodder planted options for Ethiopia.

These are available in English, Oromiffa and Amharic and they are being distributed among farmers and experts we have been working with in our learning sites. Please contact us if you want copies.

Download the fact sheets here.

The Forage Diversity Unit at ILRI also has paper copies of various other fact sheets.

There are also fact sheets on the tropical forages database – a joint product from ILRI, CIAT and CSIRO completed around 2004.

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Moving from “project mode” to sustained change in practice among local actors – some challenges

We hear a lot these days about “project-led approaches”. Projects come in and deliver various interventions but these tend to leave no lasting impression beyond the life of the project. Such approaches tend to focus on technical interventions. One response has been to think more about innovation systems: dealing with the range of players already operating within the sector and devoting efforts to facilitating innovation among that group – this could be by exploring technical options but also by thinking about organizational or policy changes. However, this is a lot more challenging than delivering a few technical interventions to a handful of farmers as we are discovering.

In one of our learning sites there is a degree of market orientation among farmers. We started in reasonably conventional style with some planted fodder options but used this to stimulate interest among a range of local players including the local extension office and the local research system. Very soon wider issues came onto the agenda: milk marketing, supply of cross-bred animals, veterinary services etc. We developed joint actions on various of these issues along with local stakeholders. There is quite a lot of interest and we see lots of enthusiasm for scaling out the use of stakeholder platforms to facilitate improvements in feed supply and deal with other constraints. As we come into our final project year, we want to avoid becoming one of those projects which leaves no lasting impression so we have been trying to devolve facilitation of stakeholder platforms to the local government livestock agency. This will involve jointly developing a plan of activities for the stakeholder platform for the coming year and then passing them some funds for implementation. Early signs are that this is going to work.

In another site which is food insecure and has had drought problems for the last couple of years the challenges are greater. We floated the idea of devolving funds and responsibilities to the local pastoral development office but were met with major skepticism. According to our partners, funds put into the system would never become available for the activities for which they were intended. Local bureaucrats would find ways of delaying access to funds which would make the whole process impossible. So we are now faced with a dilemma: we continue in project mode and see some action in the coming year or we invest in the system and risk seeing nothing happening on the ground.

There are important generic issues here:

- facilitating stakeholder platforms is quite demanding of time and resources in itself. Is the use of stakeholder platforms just another project-led approach? Who will take responsibility for facilitating these platforms when we are gone?
- Is our focus on planted fodder and improving feed supply for production of livestock commodities untenable in a food insecure area?

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