Australia funds scoping study on feed in livestock value chains in Ethiopia

There is a lot happening in the area of feeds for livestock value chains in Ethiopia at the moment. A number of new livestock research for development initiatives are on the horizon including: The Gates Foundation-funded East Africa Dairy Development Project extending its activities into Ethiopia The CIDA-funded LIVES programme The multi-donor Agricultural Growth Programme … Continue reading →

Inception of a new project on livestock feed development for dairy value chains in India and Tanzania

Following completion of the IFAD-funded Fodder Adoption Project, IFAD recently agreed to fund a further project on feed enhancement for dairy value chains in India and Tanzania. The project will be implemented by ILRI with CIAT as a major partner. We are calling the project MilkIT (Milk in India and Tanzania) and the grant agreement … Continue reading →

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 →

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 →