Fourth Ethiopia fodder roundtable focused on delivery of livestock services

On 22 june 2010, ILRI hosted the fourth in a series of Ethiopia fodder roundtables that bring different actors together to share knowledge on developments in the sector. We caught up on video with some of the participants: Amanuel Assefa from Agri Service Ethiopia explains how this NGO is supporting the development of community-based dairy … Continue reading →

Delivering AI services to Ethiopia’s livestock sector

The delivery of veterinary and artificial insemination (AI) services was a major focus of the ‘Fourth Ethiopian Fodder Roundtable’ held at ILRI on 22 June 2010 (the presentation by Kebebe Ergano explains how a project on animal feed and fodder came to be involved in the delivery of these types of services). Alemaheyu Lemma of … Continue reading →

How multi-stakeholder platforms help extend fodder options for livestock in Ethiopia

Speaking at the ‘Fourth Ethiopian Fodder Roundtable’ hosted by ILRI on 22 June, Kebebe Ergano of ILRI introduced the IFAD-Funded ‘Fodder Adoption Project’ (FAP) and how it uses multi-stakeholder platforms to bring together people working with livestock and fodder in Ethiopia. The project starting point is the recognition that feed/fodder scarcity is a major constraint … Continue reading →

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 →

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 →

Forage seed training in Alamata

Forage seed supply is often raised as a key constraint to introduction of high quality forage in the smallholder systems we work in in Ethiopia. There is limited tradition of growing planted fodder and knowledge around the area of seed production and storage is rather limited. We recently organized and ran a short course on … 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 →

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 →