Livestock feeds in the developing world come from a range of sources including crop residues, planted forages, agro-industrial by-products, grazing and others. Improved feeding comes from producing more feed, improving feed quality, or smoothing seasonal imbalances in feed supply.
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
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
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
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
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
Lack of cash to purchase inputs is a major barrier to poor livestock keepers escaping poverty. Short-term credit is a potential solution but often local micro-finance institutions are unwilling to offer credit to the poorest due to lack of collateral. This was the situation faced by the poorest livestock keepers in Ea Kar District in … Continue reading
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
The Ethiopian Fodder Roundtable has been a useful forum for sharing ideas around feed development for livestock in Ethiopia. In late January we met to discuss a study commissioned by SNV Ethiopia which identified some promising feeding practices and technologies for dairy production in Ethiopia. Solomon Mogus set the scene with a presentation giving highlights … Continue reading
The Worldwatch Institute recently published their annual State of the World: ‘Innovations That Nourish the Planet’. This year’s synthesis is the result of an 18-month exercise to catalogue innovations to enhance food security in Africa. I met Danielle Nierenberg, who spearheaded the work, during her year-long sojourn in Africa. She visited the Ethiopian campus of … Continue reading
Three years ago when we set up stakeholder groups to work together on fodder/livestock issues in Ethiopia, we were worried about the sustainability question. Who would facilitate such groups after our Fodder Adoption Project and the Improving Productivity and Market Success projects phased out? With this in mind, this year we devolved facilitation of the … Continue reading
Feeding innovation 