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 … Continue reading →

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 … Continue reading →

Is there a formula to work out which feed technologies will work in different contexts?

At the “Techfit” workshop in Dehra Dun this week a group of scientist and development workers were in deep conversation about how to prioritize livestock feed technologies for different situations. Our task was to come up with a framework or tool that could be used by development agencies such as local NGO’s or extension offices. … Continue reading →

Feed and fodder uptake decisions shape technology options available to researchers

In mid-September 2011, ILRI and partners organized a ‘TechFit ‘workshop to ‘develop and test an analytical framework that can be used to collect, structure, screen and prioritise possible feed technologies and interventions from multiple angles – technical, institutional, social and economic’. To better understand concrete feed technology ‘use cases’ and demands, the first day of … Continue reading →

No ‘ivory tower’ feed technology tools needed

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 →

Workshop to Develop a Tool for Feed Technology Screening and Prioritisation 19-22 September 2011, Dehradun, India

Most would agree that feed is a key constraint to improving livestock productivity in smallholder systems. So the development community often attempts to deal with the feed issue through introduction of new ways of feeding animals (technologies). These may include improved forages and dual purpose crops, methods for processing crop residues, or introducing high quality … Continue reading →

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 … Continue reading →

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 … Continue reading →

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 … Continue reading →

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 … Continue reading →