Feeding livestock year-round requires innovative approaches. This post reports on an innovation in India that helped to convert wasteland grass into enriched silage after value addition and densification. It is now being explored as a commercial opportunity. Continue reading
Originally posted on ILRI Clippings:
Researchers testing tools with farmers 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.…
Following the Ethiopian Livestock Feed (ELF) project inception meeting on 21-22 February 2012, the ELF team arranged a training workshop and field trip to test two tools in livestock value chains, FEAST and Techfit, before beginning research in their selected sites across Ethiopia. 25 participants gathered on 12-16 March 2012 at ILRI in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to discuss … Continue reading
A group of 30 International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) scientists, partners and other stakeholders met on 21-22 February 2012 on the ILRI campus in Addis Ababa for a two-day inception workshop on the new Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research-funded project, ‘Fodder and feed in livestock value chains in Ethiopia – trends and prospects’ (the … Continue reading
On 21-22 February 2012, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) held a two-day inception workshop for scientists, partners and other stakeholders involved in the Ethiopia Livestock Feed (ELF) project. Among other things, the project will further develop and test three tools for use in assessing feed in livestock value chains. Two of the tools – … Continue reading
Participants at the Techfit workshop , which started today in the northern India city of Dehra Dun, were given very clear guidance in the opening speech: “You should develop the tool from a very practical dimension and not an ivory tower tool that can gather dust” advised chief guest Mr. Rajiv Gupta. Mr. Gupta is … Continue reading
Livestock feeds in the developing world come from a range of sources including crop residues, planted forages, agro-industrial by-products, grazing and others. Improved feeding comes from producing more feed, improving feed quality, or smoothing seasonal imbalances in feed supply. Continue reading
At last week’s end of project workshop, we asked project teams to identify ‘generic’ lessons that could inform the selection of research sites in a project like this one. Keith Sones reflects on the conversation on site selection, asking “what would be a ‘good’ FAP site?” An interesting dilemma arose during the discussion about site … Continue reading
Feeding innovation 