The Worldwatch Institute recently published their annual State of the World: ‘Innovations That Nourish the Planet’. This year’s synthesis is the result of an 18-month exercise to catalogue innovations to enhance food security in Africa. I met Danielle Nierenberg, who spearheaded the work, during her year-long sojourn in Africa. She visited the Ethiopian campus of … Continue reading
Three years ago when we set up stakeholder groups to work together on fodder/livestock issues in Ethiopia, we were worried about the sustainability question. Who would facilitate such groups after our Fodder Adoption Project and the Improving Productivity and Market Success projects phased out? With this in mind, this year we devolved facilitation of the … Continue reading
This week, research teams on the CGIAR Systemwide Livestock Programme-supported project ‘Optimizing benefits from crop residues in smallholder crop-livestock systems in Africa and South Asia regional case studies’ are meeting in Addis Ababa to review progress and workplans. The two-year project is carrying out regional case studies in South Asia, Southern Africa, East Africa and … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
The Fodder Adoption Project is drawing to a close at the end of 2010. Next week (15-19 Nov, 2010) we will hold our final co-ordination meeting in Laos PDR to review research findings and draw out some lessons. Some 30 participants from around the world will participate. As well as reviewing FAP we have also … Continue reading
Today I was chairing a session on livestock feeds at the All Africa Conference on Animal Agriculture. Feed is a key input to livestock systems particularly as systems intensify and the demand for high quality feeds increases. The session began with a plenary presentation from Michael Blummel of the International Livestock Research Institute (Download his … Continue reading
Kebebe Ergano recently presented a paper reporting work from the Fodder Adoption Project of ILRI titled “Multi-Stakeholder Platforms Strengthening Selection and Use of Fodder Technologies in Ethiopia: Some Lessons.’’ Here he reflects on his experiences at the international meeting he attended in Montpellier. The Innovation and Sustainable Development in Agriculture and Food symposium (Montpellier, 2010) … Continue reading
Although feed is a major constraint in smallholder systems, upgrading of feed resources is often driven by enhanced market access for livestock products. In one of our sites in Vietnam, intensive grass production for stall feeding to cattle has taken off in a big way. In part, this has been driven by enhanced access to … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
I’m just back from Hyderabad where I attended the final conference of the Fodder Innovation Project, a sister project to FAP which has been funded by DFID for work in India and Nigeria. This project takes as its premise that fodder scarcity is an “innovation capacity” problem rather than a technical problem. They have been … Continue reading
Feeding innovation 