During the lifetime of the Fodder Adoption Project ILRI established local innovation platforms at various field sites around Ethiopia. The idea behind these was to provide a forum for key livestock feed stakeholders to get together and jointly plan actions to improve the livestock feed situation for smallholder farmers. One such innovation platform was established … Continue reading
Earlier this year, ILRI joined national and international partners in two ‘feed assessment’ projects in Ethiopia. The Ethiopian Livestock Feeds project (funded by ACIAR) and the ‘QuickFeed‘ early win project of the Africa RISING program both set out to test a suite of rapid diagnosis tools to identify promising feed and fodder interventions. At the … Continue reading
Three reports from the six-month ‘Fodder and feed in livestock value chains in Ethiopia – trends and prospects’ project were recently produced by ILRI. The project was led by ILRI and involved the Ethiopian Institute for Agricultural Research, the Amhara Regional Agricultural Research Institute and the International Center for Research in the Dry Areas. The … Continue reading
On 1 June, members of the MilkIT project advisory council held their first meeting in Dehradun. Nils Teufel of the International Livestock Research Institute introduced the project and its intended activities. View the presentation: The subsequent question and answer session generated lively exchanges; the main questions – with answers – included: 1. What is … Continue reading
On 28-29 May we wrapped up the Ethiopian Livestock Feeds Project with a synthesis workshop in Addis Ababa. This brought together the whole project team, the core of which were colleagues from Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research and Amhara Regional Agricultural Research Institute. We have been working together on refining various tools including FEAST, Techfit and … Continue reading
On 24-25 April scientists from India and Tanzania gathered in Tanga, Tanzania for the inception meeting of the IFAD-funded MilkIT project. The project is implemented by ILRI and CIAT are a major partner. This was the first opportunity for the whole project team to get together, familiarize themselves with the project and begin to develop … Continue reading
At last week’s Africa-RISING ‘quick feed‘ project inception meeting, Werner Stür shared some of the reasons why improved animal feeding strategies seem not to be taken up, and some ways to address this. He started by arguing that current future livestock productivity challenges would benefit significantly from “a little more feed per animal.” He outlined … Continue reading
Seife Ayele, formerly of the International Livestock Research Institute, conducted a synthesis study of “fodder innovation approaches” across the three countries where the Fodder Adoption Project based its activities. The work has now been published in Science and Public Policy and can be accessed here. The study concludes: … fodder innovation can be successfully triggered … Continue reading
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
Feeding innovation 