Prioritizing animal feeding interventions – TechFit tool takes shape

From 23-24 May this year, a group of feed specialists from ILRI, CIAT, ICARDA and partner institutes got together in Addis Ababa to further elaborate the TechFit tool. This followed from a March 2013 meeting that took stock of progress since the original November 2011 workshop in India. The meeting especially drew on experiences in … Continue reading →

Tools for livestock feed assessment – lessons from ELF and QuickFeed projects

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 →

Successful feed interventions are all about context: Ethiopian Livestock Feeds (ELF) project synthesis workshop reflection

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 →

Ethiopia Livestock Feed project trains partners, tests tools for further fieldwork

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 →

Simple but effective: Ethiopian Livestock Feed project inception meeting

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 →

ILRI and partners develop and test ‘easy-to-use’ feed assessment tools for Ethiopia

On 21-22 February 2012, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) held a two-day inception workshop for scientists, partners and other stakeholders involved in the Ethiopia Livestock Feed (ELF) project. Among other things, the project will further develop and test three  tools for use in assessing feed in livestock value chains. Two of the tools – … Continue reading →