High quality feed for livestock in Ethiopia – Some constraints

On 22 June 2010, ILRI hosted the ‘Fourth Ethiopian Fodder Roundtable’ on the effective delivery of input services to livestock development in the country. ILRI’s Alan Duncan kicked off the discussions with a reflection on the constraints facing the supply of high quality feed for livestock in Ethiopia. Among the constraints he identified: The overall … Continue reading →

Vietnam cattle marketing study shows benefits of embedding forage development within a larger market context

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 →

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 … Continue reading →

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 … Continue reading →

Summary of Fodder Roundtable meeting on Oct 15 09

Last October we held the 3rd in our series of Fodder Roundtable Meetings in Ethiopia. I put together this summary of the day, focusing especially on the synthesis discussion. Comments welcome. Here is a link to the summary: http://mahider.ilri.org/handle/10568/544 Continue reading →

Film: Stakeholder platforms enhance innovation in Ethiopian dairy system

In October we held a field day with local stakeholders at our Ada’a site. We invited both farmers from surrounding districts as well as other members of our local stakeholder group. In the morning we walked through fields and talked with farmers about their experiences of planting fodder and how this fitted into their dairy … Continue reading →

Third Project Co-ordination Meeting – Vietnam 17-19 Nov 2009

I recently returned from Vietnam where we held our 3rd co-ordination meeting for the project. As we are now entering the final year of the project one of the emphases was on developing our strategy for communicating findings to relevant audiences. We also thought quite a bit about “scaling out” of successful innovation and the … Continue reading →

Promising technologies not enough on their own to bring about widespread change in smallholder systems

In this short video, ILRI’s Alan Duncan introduces the IFAD-funded ‘Fodder Adoption Project’ based at ILRI. He outlines the approach followed in the project – trying to strike a balance between the technological and institutional angles. The project helps groups of stakeholders – farmers, private sector, dairy coops, the government – get together in ‘innovation … Continue reading →

Capturing and Communicating our outputs

Welcome to the Fodder Adoption Project blog. I hope this will be a more dynamic way of communicating what is happening within the project. As we come into the last year of the project I hope to use this blog to post various outputs emerging from the project. These will include working papers, meeting reports, … Continue reading →