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.
Earlier this year, Beth Cullen was commissioned to train farmers in participatory video (PV) – as a tool for capturing community views and perceptions on their collaboration with the Fodder Adoption Project over the last 3 years. More information on her work is here. She recently submitted a short report on the assignment, describing the … Continue reading
This week, research teams on the CGIAR Systemwide Livestock Programme-supported project ‘Optimizing benefits from crop residues in smallholder crop-livestock systems in Africa and South Asia regional case studies’ are meeting in Addis Ababa to review progress and workplans. The two-year project is carrying out regional case studies in South Asia, Southern Africa, East Africa and … Continue reading
After a session of the the November 2010 Fodder Adoption Project (FAP) workshop in Laos, we recorded ‘notes’ of three world cafe hosts who collated cross-project lessons (from Ethiopia, Syria, and Vietnam) on three issues: Innovation approaches, feed assessment, and scaling out. In this video, Werner Stür, formerly with CIAT in Vietnam, reports back on … Continue reading
After a session of the the November 2010 Fodder Adoption Project (FAP) workshop in Laos, we recorded ‘notes’ of three world cafe hosts who collated cross-project lessons (from Ethiopia, Syria, and Vietnam) on three issues: Innovation approaches, feed assessment, and scaling out. In this video, Ranjitha Puskur of ILRI reports on the lessons on innovation … Continue reading
After a session of the the November 2010 Fodder Adoption Project (FAP) workshop in Laos, we recorded ‘notes’ of three world cafe hosts who collated cross-project lessons (from Ethiopia, Syria, and Vietnam) on three issues: Innovation approaches, feed assessment, and scaling out. In this video, Michael Blümmel of ILRI reports back on the discussions about … Continue reading
On 18 and 19 November 2010, the Fodder Adoption Project organized a mini-symposium on feed in smallholder systems as part of the week-long discussions. On the second day of the symposium, discussions focused on innovation systems principles and their application in livestock and feed research for development. The aim was to examine if such approaches … Continue reading
Last week in Laos, Werner Stur circulated copies of a new book by ACIAR and CIAT with stories of innovative farmers, both men and women, who transformed marginal farming into productive, profitable and market-oriented enterprises. The 11 case studies presented were collected from upland areas of Indonesia, Laos, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. They document … Continue reading
At last week’s end of project workshop, we asked project teams to identify ‘generic’ lessons that could inform the selection of research sites in a project like this one. Keith Sones reflects on the conversation on site selection, asking “what would be a ‘good’ FAP site?” An interesting dilemma arose during the discussion about site … Continue reading
Keith Sones writes… As part of my support to the FAP end-of-project meeting I was asked to synthesise the outputs of the one-day mini symposium on ‘feeds in smallholder systems‘, held on 18 November as part of the wider meeting. The process for the mini symposium was innovative and useful (and one I plan to … Continue reading
On 18 and 19 November 2010, the Fodder Adoption Project organised a mini-symposium on ‘feed in smallholder systems’ as part of week-long end-of-project review discussions. The session was opened by Alan Duncan with a brief presentation on Sustainable livestock intensification in smallholder systems – where does feed fit and how can current constraints be overcome?. … Continue reading
Feeding innovation 