Animal Feeding / East Africa / Ethiopia / Feeds / Fodder / Forages / Markets

Forage seed supply in Ethiopia – some thoughts on current status and how it might evolve

Forage seed supply continues to be an important constraint to improving feed resources for livestock in Ethiopia. Last week the Ethiopian Institute for Agricultural Research organized a National Forage Seed Workshop (May 12-14, 2011). There were a number of interesting presentations: what was clear from many of these is that forage development for livestock has … Continue reading

Africa / Animal Feeding / Asia / Ethiopia / Feeds / Fodder / Innovation Systems / Livestock / Markets / Middle East / Southeast Asia / Syria / Vietnam

Final meeting of the Fodder Adoption Project in November 2010

The Fodder Adoption Project is drawing to a close at the end of 2010. Next week (15-19 Nov, 2010) we will hold our final co-ordination meeting in Laos PDR to review research findings and draw out some lessons. Some 30 participants from around the world will participate. As well as reviewing FAP we have also … Continue reading

Animal Feeding / Asia / Feeds / Fodder / Forages / Livestock / Markets / Southeast Asia / Vietnam

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

Asia / Fodder / Innovation Systems / Livestock / Markets

Final meeting of Fodder Innovation Project – some reflections

I’m just back from Hyderabad where I attended the final conference of the Fodder Innovation Project, a sister project to FAP which has been funded by DFID for work in India and Nigeria. This project takes as its premise that fodder scarcity is an “innovation capacity” problem rather than a technical problem. They have been … Continue reading