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This was a first opportunity for the various participants to refine a detailed implementation plan for our Vietnam work in 2012.

Over the course of the two days, individual roles and responsibilities were assigned to team members. The main ‘deliverables’ in 2012 include ‘site selection’ for the research work, a ‘situation analysis’ that will scope out the main challenges and opportunities, reviews of approaches and lessons learned in the sector, and detailed plans for rapid value chain assessment using a toolkit under development by the Program.

While ILRI and CIAT have both worked before in Vietnam, the approach of the Program offers opportunity and challenges.  It builds on and connects different existing projects and much of the discussions looked at ways to align different activities to generate ‘value chain’ wide activities and interventions.

Thus, we already identified ongoing related work on animal feeding (led by CIAT, funded by IFAD), food safety (led by ILRI, funded by ACIAR) and animal genetic resources (led by ILRI, funded by GEF). The aim is to bring this together, identify additional inputs, and upgrade the smallholder pig value chain in Vietnam.

More information on our work in Vietnam

Basic information on the meeting

View Lucy Lapar’s presentation on Pig Value Chains in Vietnam:

Pigs in Uganda are mainly kept by women as backyard activity in smallholder households, with more than 1 million families raising pigs. Therefore, the majority of pigs are produced by a large informal subsector, with limited access to technology information and services, and the same applies to other actors of the value chain.

Several problems have been identified along the pig value chain in Uganda, such as lack of stability of feed supply and quality, frequent breakouts of diseases such as African Swine Fever and Foot and Mouth Diseases that produce significant losses of animals, poor housing infrastructure that affects animal welfare and creates conflicts with crop producers, as well as pollution; lack of sanitary control in slaughtering, processing and commercialization of pork meat, which result in food safety risks, etc. However, those problems are not unique to Uganda, and can be found in many other developing countries where informal pig production and marketing systems are present.

To address some of these challenges, in 2011 the International Fund for International Development (IFAD) approved a project ‘Catalyzing the emerging smallholder pig value chains in Uganda to increase rural incomes and assets.’

The project aims to improve livelihoods, incomes and assets of smallholder pig producers, particularly women, in a sustainable manner, through increased productivity, reduced risk, and improved market access in pig value chains.

Specific objectives are:

• To identify market opportunities for pork in Uganda, and the multiple factors preventing smallholder pig producers from exploiting those opportunities, with focus on constraints caused by animal disease threat, feed resources, and performance of markets and services.

•   To develop and pilot test a set of integrated packages for smallholder pig production and market access for specific production systems, resource profiles and market settings in Uganda.

• To document, communicate and promote appropriate evidence-based models for sustainable, pro-poor pig value chains.

The project is funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). More information is available from Danilo Pezo (D.Pezo@cgiar.org) at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).

This project is part of the CGIAR Research Program on Livestock and Fish.

Despite this, the economic performance of the sector is not well understood or documented.

This report from the WorldFish Center presents the outputs of a value-chain study of the sector. It provides quantitative and qualitative information about financial performance, employment creation, and the critical factors impacting on the performance of each sub-sector of the value-chain.

The results show that the industry is sustainable and generates considerable profits and employment, however the sector as a whole is under increasing financial pressure. Critical factors facing the sector and impacting on profitability, can be grouped into those related to inputs, those related to production, and those related to the marketing, transportation and sale of product.

Download the report

More on this value chain

The project is implemented by CIAT with support from ILRI. It focuses on improving the livelihoods of poor livestock farmers in the development triangle by way of improving the adoption of forage-based livestock feeding and management technologies.

With a particular focus on women and ethnic minorities in the region, the project which is officially titled – Improved forage-based feeding systems for smallholder livelihoods in the Cambodia-Laos-Vietnam development triangle - will also look to enhance awareness of demand, and increase market access for smallholders through the establishment of more effective, and efficient linkages between value-chain stakeholders.

The project is funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). More information is available from Adrian Bolliger and the CIAT Tropical Forages Program

This project is part of the CGIAR Research Program on Livestock and Fish.

The specific objectives are to:

• Determine the most appropriate dairy breed/cross-breed types for peri-urban dairy production systems in Mali, and disseminate this information;

• Characterise the dairy germplasm production chain, and related policies, and use this information to develop a strategy for strengthened dairy germplasm production and delivery systems;

• Enhance local human, institutional and organizational capacity on accessing and promoting different breeds/cross-breeds of livestock.

Visit the project web site.

The project ‘improved food and nutritional security from better utilisation of dairy cattle breed or cross-breed types in Mali’ is funded by the the Finnish Government’s FoodAfrica Programme. It is led by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), in partnership with the University of Bamako, the University of Helsinki and Agrifood Research Finland.

More information is available from Dr. Karen Marshall (k.marshall AT cgiar.org) or on the project web site.

Selling milk by the road in Tanzania

Dairying offers opportunities for rural livelihoods and nutritional security, particularly in societies already having a tradition of cattle-keeping. Perhaps uniquely amongst agricultural pathways out of poverty, it offers many pro-poor benefits from small-scale production and marketing. These include opportunities for intensification and enhanced productivity and incomes, employment in services and marketing, and nutrition both for the smallholder household and the poor in towns and cities served by informal markets.

On 9 March 2012. the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and Sokoine University of Agriculture researchers together with partners including Irish Aid and the International Fund of Agricultural Development (IFAD) will hold a consultative meeting on the current status of the smallholder dairy value chains in Tanzania and the opportunities for research and development to support its growth for effective poverty reduction.

The meeting will share information about current efforts to promote smallholder dairy value chains in Tanzania, what is working and the challenges faced, and chart a way forward for joint actions.

The meeting serves as a springboard for several Tanzanian projects and partners involved in the new CGIAR Research Program on Livestock and Fish to come together. These include the ‘MilkIT’ project in Tanzania and India supported by IFAD as well as the ‘More milk in Tanzania’ project supported by Irish Aid.

More information:

• MilkIT project – download brochure – news item

• More milk in Tanzania project – download brochure

• Wiki page about the workshop

CIAT scientists are researching Brachiaria humidicola

The German Government recently approved a new project part of the ‘Livestock and Fish’ research program of the CGIAR. Led by the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), the three-year project aims to improve the agricultural productivity and mitigation of climate change through more efficient nutrient use and reduced greenhouse gas emissions from smallholder crop-livestock systems.

Improving agricultural productivity is vital to confront global challenges of reducing poverty, improving food security, and improving human nutrition and health. However, increased productivity must be achieved while reducing agriculture’s environmental impact. Climate-friendly and climate-resilient (climate-smart) agricultural systems are essential if we, and especially the poor and hungry, are to adapt to changes in temperature and rainfall.

Fully three quarters of agricultural land in Central America and nearly half in South America is more or less degraded. A major challenge facing agricultural research is to develop knowledge and technologies to reverse land degradation and reduce poverty in the face of climate change. This project looks at ways to counter land, and especially pasture degradation.

Current pasture-based systems in the humid zones of Latin America and the Caribbean often trigger deforestation and land degradation, with a strong negative environmental impact. Pasture degradation is caused by inadequate management and a lack of forage grass options. More efficient land management and major biological innovations in agriculture have the potential to increase productivity while decreasing environmental impacts.

With a particular focus on Colombia and Nicaragua, through the project, small-scale farmers and research and development institutions will apply the innovative approach of Biological Nitrification Inhibition (BNI) by Brachiaria humidicola forage grass hybrids to realize benefits in economic and environmental sustainability from integrated crop-livestock production systems

The project will test new concepts, develop new research tools and methodologies to detect BNI function to minimize N (nitrogen) losses from crop-livestock systems and to develop new forage germplasm with the early and active participation of farmers. Farmer involvement together with strategic use of inputs such as N and phosphorus (P) fertilizer will be critical to steer the broader adoption of new forage hybrid technologies and ensure that the new products are successfully integrated into existing crop-livestock systems, already stressed in the face of climate change.

We envision intensive production systems where both annual crops and grazed pastures occupy the same land area –in temporal rotation– to the mutual benefit of both activities. Pastures will benefit from residual fertility from fertilizer applied to a preceding crop. Annual crop production will benefit from the conservation of N owing to BNI as well as the more general benefits of well managed grazed pastures on nutrient cycling, build-up of soil organic matter, and improvement in soil structure from deep-rooting pasture grasses.

Farmers as co-researchers will be involved early in the product development process through participatory evaluation of N efficient forage hybrids and crops on productivity. National program scientists have already expressed great interest in exploiting the concept of BNI for agriculture and the environment and were actively involved in the preparation of this proposal and will participate in the planning phase of project development.

Brachiaria species are the most widely planted tropical forage grasses in the world. The socio-economic impacts of new hybrids of Brachiaria that can suppress nitrification would be immense in terms of increased feed resources in the tropics, more efficient use of purchased inputs, more efficient use of land resources, increased integration of crops and livestock in agricultural systems, and mitigation of climate change through reduced atmospheric buildup of GHGs. The effects will be strongly felt throughout Latin America where Brachiaria pastures are the main feed resource to livestock production. Significant spillover to Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa can also be expected as these regions are dominated by low fertility soils where crop-livestock systems including Brachiaria have a niche.

The project ‘climate-smart crop-livestock systems for smallholders in the tropics: Integration of new forage hybrids to intensify agriculture and to mitigate climate change through regulation of nitrification in soil’ is funded by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and the Bundesministerium für Wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung (BMZ). It is implmented by the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) in collaboration with the University of Hohenheim, Corporación Colombiana de Investigación Agropecuaria (CORPOICA), Universidad de los Llanos (Colombia), Universidad Nacional Agraria (Nicaragua), Consorcio para Manejo Integrado de Suelos (Nicaragua), and the Programa Manejo Sostenible de Recursos Naturales y Fomento de Competencia Empresariales (Nicaragua).

More information is available from Dr. Michael Peters (m.peters AT cgiar.org) and the CIAT Tropical Forages Program

Related readings on Brachiaria humidicola:

• Brachiaria – grass roots answer to nitrification
• Brachiaria – tropical forages tool
• Livestock, Climate Change, and Brachiaria

PRA exercise with farmers: testing the tools

The Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research recently commissioned a small scoping study on feed issues in livestock value chains in Ethiopia. The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) with national research and development partners (Ethiopian Institute for Agricultural Research; Amhara Regional Agricultural Research Institute) will be implementing this work in the coming few months.

The purpose of the project is to develop a preliminary understanding of how feed components of intensifying livestock production systems in Ethiopia are changing as systems intensify and how this is reflected in the feed-related elements of focal value chains.

The project runs from January – June 2012

Basic project information

News on the project

Outputs from the project

Project wiki

This project is part of the CGIAR Research Program on Livestock and Fish.

This week Tom Randolph, Director of the CGIAR ‘Livestock-Fish’ Research Program announced that the Program “officially started on January 1st 2012, so we are off and running.”

He drew attention to some recent developments:

Phuket stakeholder consultation: We held a final consultation with stakeholders at the FAO Agenda of Action for a Sustainable Livestock Sector Development meeting in Phuket, Thailand on 2 December 2011. The purpose of the consultation was to share our evolving implementation plan, especially how we plan to address the environmental issues. The feedback was very positive and constructive.

Funding: The overall CRP3.7 budget for 2012 is $29.7 million, of which $10.3 million is expected to come from the CGIAR Fund and the remainder from our traditional restricted funded projects.

Planning: Our primary challenge right now is to complete the planning process that we started in September. This should give us a sense of what activities and outputs can be achieved. It will also: (1) define deliverables to be agreed by each Center; (2) allow the Component teams to begin implementing their work plans; and (3) allow the value chain coordinators to step up their engagement with partners in each country and help organize the activities across the Components happening in their value chains.

Management: The interim Program Planning and Management Committee (PPMC) met before and after initial planning meeting of CRP3.7 research leaders in September 2011; the minutes from those meetings will be in the Program repository. The PPMC will be meeting face-to-face 3 times a year, with the first meeting planned for 22 March 2012, just before the ILRI Board of Trustees meet. Terms of reference for the PPMC as well as the Program’s Science and Partnership Advisory Committee (SPAC).

Project updates (most current Program activities build upon existing projects in the partner Centers)

• The WorldFish Center has approval for an SDC (Switzerland) project to support its aquaculture value chain work in Egypt.

• The leader of the Program’s Gender and Equity Component, Jemimah Njuki, has begun working closely with Jacqueline Ashby, Gender and Research Advisor to the Consortium Office, to develop our CRP Gender Strategy.

•  Component 2.2/2.3 on value chain assessment and innovation plans to meet the week of March 5th in Nairobi. It will take advantage of the need to develop a suite of rapid assessment tools for a major development-oriented project in Ethiopia (LIVES) to jump-start its tool development activities.

•  IFAD approved an IFAD-EC-funded project on smallholder pig value chains in Uganda in December 2011.

• In December 2011, Irish Aid approved a major project designed explicitly to implement CRP3.7 activities in the Tanzania dairy value chain; and IFAD approved a smaller project on dairy feed systems in Tanzania and India (MilkIT). We will be integrating the activities under both projects as much as possible.

• With IFAD, we are developing a concept note to start up CRP3.7 activities on small ruminant value chains in Mali and Ethiopia.

• ACIAR has approved a small 6-month project on feed and fodder value chains in Ethiopia.

• BMZ approved a second phase of the ILRI-led ‘Safe Food, Fair Food’ project. The project is under CRP4.3, but is explicitly focused on improving food safety in several CRP3.7 target value chains—not only for livestock in several countries, but also for fish in Uganda; we hope that this will serve as a model for how synergies can be created across our Centers and across CRPs.

So our grand adventure has begun. I look forward to working with everyone as we try to meet the expectations we have raised! – Tom Randolph

The overall goal of the project is to contribute to improved dairy-derived livelihoods in India and Tanzania via intensification of smallholder production focusing on enhancement of feeds and feeding using innovation and value chain approaches.

The project started in January 2012 and runs for three years

Basic project information

Project brochure

News on the project

Outputs from this project

Project wiki

This project is part of the CGIAR Research Program on Livestock and Fish.

The seminar provided an opportunity for 50 key-stakeholders who had helped to shape the program to be updated on the progress of planning, with Tom Randolph’s presentation focusing on the core concept of CRP3.7, in addition to the draft work plan and the strategies for addressing environmental concerns amongst other things.

Participants were also provided a chance to voice any questions or concerns in a feedback session facilitated by Keith Sones, with additional support during the session in regards to aquaculture dimensions and links to CRP4 (Agriculture for enhanced nutrition and health) provided by Nguyen Nguyen of the WorldFish Center and Delia Grace of ILRI respectively.

The presentation was well received and generated a number of thoughtful and constructive questions and comments. The consensus was quite positive and generally endorsed the CRP3.7 approach.

Addressing environmental concerns

• Caution was advised in oversimplifying the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) approach – the value of the detail in the LCA could be lost and could miss key issues;
• CRP3.7 aligns well with the Agenda of Action, particularly in terms of promoting improved efficiency of resource use and better waste management.

The general CRP3.7 approach

• Ensuring keeping to the pro-poor agenda may be difficult when dealing with livestock and fish products;
• There may also be a potential contradiction in promoting higher income for poor producers versus affordability for poor consumers;
• What mechanisms will the approach use for enhancing uptake by the poor?
• Should poultry be considered as a target value chain?
• The importance of learning from past and existing successes and failures – no need to re-invent the wheel;
• Pragmatic approach advised that recognizes role of entrepreneurial middlemen as engine of development, with view of system as complex mix of governance, structure, etc.;
• Recognizing that pro-poor value chains may not be competitive or effective in providing affordable animal-source foods in all contexts. Similarly, value chains are incredibly dynamic, so one-size-fits-all solutions will not work and emphasis will be needed on developing innovation capacities;
• Need to ensure that research using the value chain approach is not vulnerable to being supply driven, while still recognizing and building appropriately on the strengths of past research efforts.

We extend our thanks to FAO for allowing the program to consult with it’s key stakeholders during its Global Agenda of Action Meeting.

Learn more about the FAO Global Agenda of Action.

View Tom Randolph’s presentation:

Dr Tom Randolph has been named Director of the CGIAR Research Program on Livestock and Fish. The Director General of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Dr Jimmy Smith, made the announcement on Thursday 13 October 2011.

ILRI leads this CGIAR research program – which will be collaboratively undertaken with the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), the International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) and the WorldFish Center as the core CGIAR partners. Various other strategic and value chain partners will play key roles in the implementation of the program.

Dr Randolph was instrumental in the collaborative process to develop the proposal. He previously headed ILRI’s research team on smallholder competitiveness in changing markets under the Market Opportunities Theme.

He holds a PhD in Agricultural Economics from Cornell University. His research interests at ILRI included animal and human health issues and impact assessment. Before joining ILRI in 1998, he conducted policy research at the Africa Rice Centre in West Africa.

At the 5th CGIAR Fund Council Meeting held on 6-8 July 2011 in Washington, DC, the Fund Council approved the CGIAR Research Program (CRP) proposal, More meat, milk and fish by and for the poor (CRP 3.7).

The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) is the lead centre for this research program. The research program will be implemented in collaboration with three CGIAR centres — the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), the International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) and the WorldFish Center – and various national, regional and international partners.

Following the approval of the proposal, the various research teams are preparing to implement the proposal by translating it into a performance matrix of detailed operational arrangements, budgets and work plans for 2012-14.

Download the full proposal

Download the flyer

The ISPC provided its feedback and comments in mid-May, and comments were also subsequently received from individual Fund Council members (Australia, FAO, World Bank).

The four CGIAR Centers involved in CRP3.7 (ILRI, WorldFish, CIAT, ICARDA) drafted a response to the various sets of comments which was submitted by ILRI Director General Carlos Seré on their behalf to the CGIAR Fund Council this week. This response will be shared with the CGIAR Fund Council members as they prepare to make a decision to approve funding for CRP3.7 at their upcoming meeting July 6-7 in Washington, DC.

Together with representatives from the European Commission (EC) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), a joint team from the two Centers recently continued its scoping activities there by visiting a number of people involved in the smallholder pig value chain, including seeing the impressive work to promote smallholder pig production by VEDCO in Kamuli and the Kamuzinda Farm in Masaka.

CRP3.7 then convened a stakeholder meeting in Kampala on June 14th to provide an opportunity for sharing information about ongoing R&D activities related to the smallholder pig value chain and to assess how research might best support further development. A meeting report summarizes the discussions.

The EC Food Security program, through IFAD, is considering support to an initial research activity proposed by CRP3.7 to pilot and evaluate best-bet improved smallholder pig production systems. This research will generate evidence of the effectiveness and benefits of the farm-level component as one part of an overall value chain upgrading strategy. It will also help us better understand where more in-depth research could relieve over time the more fundamental constraints to improving production.

View his presentation:

More information on the 4th CGIAR Fund meeting

For many developing country communities, especially those living close to coastal and inland waters, fish are the dominant animal source food. Accounting for more than 50% of the animal protein in the diet for 400 million poor people in Africa and South Asia, fish provide both quality animal protein and critical micronutrients. This nutrition is especially important for vulnerable groups, such as infants, children, pregnant and nursing women and those living with HIV/AIDS.

As a member of the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), The WorldFish Center will partner with several other CGIAR Centers in the CGIAR Research Program 3.7 “More Meat Milk and Fish by and for the Poor”.

Under this program we will work to help achieve large scale, environmentally sustainable increases in supply of fi sh to poor consumers in developing countries.

We will do this by focusing our research to develop new seed and feed technologies, understand how to improve the institutional environment, and by testing an integrated value-chain approach to these issues in a limited number of countries. In doing so, we also recognize the importance of aquaculture as an engine for rural development and will seek to achieve these increases by strengthening aquaculture-based value chains in which the poor are able to capture a significant share of the benefits.

Download a brochure on fish in this research program

This responded to comments and feedback provided on the initial proposal of September 2010.

We expect that the revised proposal will be submitted to the CGIAR Fund Council for consideration at its next meeting.

We particularly acknowledge the help of those people who provided feedback on the three questions we had posed – these did indeed strengthen the quality of our response and revisions!

View or download the proposal

We just received feedback and guidance from the CB as well as comments from 4 external reviewers. Overall, the Consortium Board “appreciates the innovations in this proposal, and its overall quality. The Board considers that, with a few additional improvements, the proposal will be ready to be submitted to the Fund Council.”

The Board and the reviewers also raise some important questions about our proposal – which means we have much work to do if we are to submit a revised proposal before March 5, 2011.

We need your help to respond to some of the critical questions raised by the reviewers:

Question 1: Can we really expect livestock and fish production ‘by the poor’ to contribute meaningfully to nutrition ‘for the poor’?

Question 2: How best to partner with the private sector in pro-poor livestock and fish value chain development?

Question 3: Should poultry be a priority value chain for the CGIAR Livestock and Fish research program?