Young boys in Malawi on a break from class pose for the camera at The United Nations Millennium Villages Project (photo on Flickr by whl.travel).

The Economist has started an interesting new blog, ‘Feast and famine: Demography and development’. On this blog, the magazine’s correspondents report on and analyse matters relating to demography and development, including food production, public health and other factors that determine the wealth and poverty of nations.

The current blog post argues that the jury is still out on whether the Millennium Villages Project has lifted half a million people in 14 villages out of poverty.

‘For something designed to improve lives in some of the poorest parts of the world, the Millennium Villages Project certainly stirs up a lot of bad blood. The project, the brain child of Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University in New York, takes 14 “villages” (mostly small areas) with around 500,000 people, and scales up aid to them in the hope of springing the poverty trap in which they are caught. Late in 2011, there was a flurry of accusation and rebuttal at the time of the first independent evaluation of one of the villages, Sauri in Kenya, which challenged some of the claims made on behalf of the villages. The Economist reviewed the dispute here and Mr Sachs criticised our account. Now debate has erupted again, producing yet another round of criticism online, as well as duelling editorials in two leading British scientific journals . . . .

‘This time, the Millennium Villages project, responding to criticism from people at the World Bank and elsewhere that there were no “control villages” with which to compare the 14 in the project, has published a detailed account of how nine millennium villages and nine comparisons sites have fared over the past three years, judged by 18 indicators, ranging from child mortality and maternal health to measles immunisation and the use of anti-malaria bednets. The study appears in the Lancet, a British journal. . . .

‘Gabriel Demombynes . . . argues that the Lancet study overstates the annual fall in child mortality by using what he thinks are misleading periods for calculation. He argues that the fall in child mortality should be calculated over a slightly longer period, so the annual fall works out at 5.9%, not 7.8%, as in the Lancet. And he uses figures from his own study for comparison. These show that the countries where the millennium villages are experienced average annual falls in child mortality of 6.5%. In other words, on his calculations, the fall in child mortality in the villages was slightly less than the average for the region as a whole, instead of much greater.

‘The Economist concluded its previous article by saying that the evidence does not yet support the claim that the millennium villages project is making a decisive impact. That still seems about right.’ (Read the whole article: Jeffrey Sachs and the millennium villages: Millennium bugs, 14 May 2012,

Here are excerpts from some previous posts:

‘For the past couple of years, nutrition has become the most important lens for looking at poverty reduction. This article examines some of the reasons for that. It argues that the focus of the 1960s and 1970s on growing more staple foods (with aid to offset shortfalls) came unstuck with the Ethiopian famine of 1984. Attention then switched to targeting economic growth and the income of the poorest, but this was found wanting when the commodity-price spikes of 2007-08 and 2010-11 came along. So nutrition came to be seen as a more rounded way of judging whether the lives of the poor are really getting better. A report by the IMF and World Bank casts new light on why nutrition matters. It points out that countries around the world have done a terrible job of improving nutrition. . . .’ Development: Why nutrition matters, 24 Apr 2012

Regarding ‘People and the Planet’, a new report from Britain’s Royal Society, the blog says, ‘. . . In general, the report is weak on the trade-offs between economic growth and pollution. It is extremely desirable that the poorest people in the world should become less poor. But it is practically unavoidable that as they do so, pollution will increase. The question is by how much. At the moment, the average African produces less than one tonne of CO2 equivalent each year; the average American produces more than ten times as much. A report by Britain’s finest scientific minds explaining how the poorest could rise towards American standards of living without also rising towards American standards of pollution would have been extremely valuable. Alas, this is not that report. Population and growth: But on the whole it stinks, 30 Apr 2012

Vietnamese farmers with cattle fodder. A report by CIAT says livestock systems that use improved forage crops reduce the effects of climate change (photo credit: ILRI/Werner Stür).

Last week, AlertNet published an opinion piece highlighting recent research by the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) on how forage-based systems, which dominate agriculture in the tropics, could be harnessed to reduce livestock’s contribution to climate change.

‘Livestock have particularly been ‘lambasted for their voluminous greenhouse gas emissions, implicated in massive land degradation, and denounced for driving deforestation, [and] are supposedly the bad kids on the block – the black sheep of sustainable agriculture. The polarisation of the livestock debate has brought about one of the greatest public image travesties of our time. It has seen small-scale livestock keepers, who raise a handful of animals for milk or meat in low-tech systems with a negligible environmental footprint, tarred with the same brush as large-scale industrial producers.’

The article cites recently published research by CIAT, which shows that ‘well-managed “LivestockPlus” systems involving improved forage crops – plants grazed by livestock – actually have impressive environmental credentials.’

The findings are based research that looked at the use of a forage known as brachiaria, a deep-rooted grass native to Africa that is now widely grown in South America and in Southeast Asia; which shows that ‘improved forage crops’ have multiple benefits for sustainable smallholder agriculture and could be powerful crops for mitigating climate change as well as helping restore degraded pastures.

‘With its big green leaves, brachiaria has very high carbon accumulation potential, acting as a powerful carbon sink within livestock systems. It can also help retain and even increase stocks of soil carbon, in part by recycling carbon through animal manure and aboveground litter, and also due to its high turnover of roots – each generation of roots adds to the carbon stock deep in the soil.

‘In fact, the CIAT study shows that high quality forages like brachiaria are second only to native forest in terms of their potential for storing soil carbon. In areas with high rainfall, they could even sequester more atmospheric CO₂ than forests. Forthcoming research will look more closely at this.

This latest research was published in CIAT’s new flagship publication Eco-Efficiency: From Vision to Reality, which details the science of sustainable smallholder agriculture.

‘Brachiaria has been shown to produce higher milk and meat yields in cattle – ten times more per unit land area than if the animals grazed on native savanna grass. And because it’s a high quality, easily digestible food, animals fed with brachiaria emit less methane per kilo of meat produced.’

‘With the right policy environment, higher productivity could also reduce the need for larger herds, in turn easing pressure on forests.’ The CIAT study recommends using brachiaria in “agro-silvo-pastoral systems”, or systems that incorporate an eco-efficient holy trinity of food crops, forages and trees.

According to article, ‘the solution [to the negative perception of livestock’s impact on the environment] could lie with the developing world’s 1 billion smallholder livestock keepers, who have much to gain from highly-productive LivestockPlus systems. Their involvement could be instrumental in helping to reversing livestock’s negative image, particularly if adoption of these systems means they become recognised as environmental guardians.’

Read the whole story on the AlertNet Blog: Climate Conversations: Livestock: Cure or curse?, 24 May 2012.

Related story on ILRI feeds and fodder blog

Fresh camel milk from Somali youths (photo on Flickr by G A Hussein).

The Feinstein International Center, at Tufts University (USA), has published a report of a study on the impact of dry-season livestock support on milk supply and child nutrition in Somali Region, Ethiopia.

Ethiopia’s Somali Region is the easternmost of Ethiopia’s 9 ethnically based administrative divisions and most of the people there are Somali. The region is remote with a mobile nomadic population and little infrastructure. It is mostly desert with high average temperatures and low bi-modal rainfall. Its economy is weak and reliant predominantly on traditional animal husbandry and marginal farming practices. The predominantly livestock-based economy has, for centuries, relied up on herding a primary stock of camels, flocks of sheep and goats, as well as the raising of cattle in settled agricultural areas where conditions are favourable. Export of live animals to the Gulf countries to the north is the main source of cash in the local economy.

The Feinstein Center provides the following synopsis.

‘Children in the pastoral areas of Somali Region Ethiopia are increasingly among the most nutritionally vulnerable populations in the world. In response to more frequent droughts and recurrent nutritional emergencies in the Region, the international community has tended to prioritize the provision of food aid and therapeutic treatment of severe acute malnutrition; Little has been done to understand the potential role of milk, a well-established pillar of the pastoral diet and one of the world’s most nutritionally complete foods, in maintaining child nutritional status.

‘This report presents the findings of two cohort studies assessing the impact of small-scale livestock interventions, designed to sustain access to and availability of animal milk at the household level over the dry season, on the nutritional status of children under 5 years of age. The studies were conducted for one calendar year, July 2010 to July 2011, in two pastoral Zones of the Somali Region.

‘The results reveal that, in sites exposed to the intervention, animal milk off-take improved dramatically, child consumption of animal milk increased, and child nutritional status stabilized compared to that of children in the control sites. Moreover, the direct costs of the livestock interventions were found to be 45 to 75 percent less than those incurred through therapeutic feeding programs, and the benefits were found to extend beyond nutrition to include developmental, health, and livelihoods aspects.

‘The study represents the culmination of four years of investigative research into the role of milk in pastoral child nutrition and a call for new, holistic, and preventative approaches to addressing child malnutrition in pastoral regions.’

Read the whole report: The Impact of Dry Season Livestock Support on Milk Supply and Child Nutrition in Somali Region, Ethiopia, By Kate Sadler, Emily Mitchard, Abdulahi Abdi, Yoseph Shiferaw, Gezu Bekele, and Andrew Catley, Feinstein International Center, at Tufts University, May 2012.

Last week, the Committee on Agriculture of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) discussed options for “stakeholder dialogue in support of sustainable livestock sector development” as a contribution to the so-called “Global Agenda of Action in Support of Sustainable Livestock Sector Development.

The Global Agenda of Action focuses on the improvement of resource-use efficiency in the livestock sector to support livelihoods, long-term food security and economic growth while safeguarding other environmental and public health outcomes.

Download the Committee document

Read a statement on the proposals by the League for Pastoral Peoples and Endogenous Livestock Development

Arid soils in Mauritania, where crops have failed because of a severe drought and the Sahel region faces a major food crisis: Over 700,000 people are affected in Mauritania and 12 million across West Africa (picture credit: Pablo Tosco/Oxfam International).

Senegalese singer Baaba Maal has visited Mauritanian communities at the center of the current food crisis in the Sahel. Low rainfall, poor harvests, a lack of pasture and rising food prices are among the key factors driving this crisis, which now affects one in four people across the country.

Andrew Wander, media manager for humanitarian emergencies for Save the Children, writes in the Guardian‘s Poverty Matters Blog that ‘forewarned is not forearmed’ when it comes to dealing with slow-onset food crises.

‘After the hunger crisis that engulfed east Africa last summer, there was plenty for the world to think about. After all, we’d been warned it was coming—the first alerts of a potential crisis came the previous year. But not enough was done to avert it, and we now know that failure cost tens of thousands of lives and millions of dollars in aid money. . . .’

The good news, Wander  says, is that ‘despite the bleak forecasts from both east and west Africa, progress has been made. Governments, UN agencies and NGOs are acutely aware of the need for change and are actively seeking improvements in how we respond to hunger. We’re on the ground earlier, more funding has been made available by donors, and journalists have been covering the story of the growing crisis in west Africa since January. In comparison, previous seasonal hunger crises in the Sahel have never attracted attention before the summer—there’s no doubt that more is happening earlier this time round.

‘But it is not enough. . . .

‘In east Africa, we are in danger of seeing the improvements from last year wiped out by poor rains, failed crops and ongoing conflict. Parts of Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya are always vulnerable to hunger. After last year’s horrors, millions of people are especially vulnerable and, like last year, the money for preventive work is not there. Without funding, those people could find themselves facing a second summer of extreme hunger.

‘So why can’t we fix this broken system in time to stop crisis in the Sahel and east Africa? . . .

The hard truth is that pictures of starving children give donors an instant justification to release significant amounts of money. Predictions of starvation, however accurate, do not. . . .

‘The truth is that for many people, giving to crisis appeals is an emotional response, not a logical decision. . . .

‘But change is a process. It will take time, and there’s a long way to go. The lives of thousands of children depend on us completing the journey, and building a system that works.’

Read the whole article at the Guardian‘s Poverty Matters Blog: Extreme hunger in East Africa and the Sahel: forewarned but not forearmed, 9 May 2012

CGIAR centres and initiatives signing a 7-point ‘CGIAR Call to Action’ at the June 2012 Rio+20 UN sustainable development summit.

Mark Kinver at the BBC reports today on a global group calling for decision-makers at the June Rio+20 sustainable development summit to take a concerted approach to agricultural policy, based on science. The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) is part of the group of research institutions making this ‘call to action’.

‘The biggest environmental summit for a decade must make meaningful progress on global food security and sustainable agriculture, say researchers.

‘CGIAR, the world’s largest publicly funded research body, has published a seven-point “call to action” plan.

‘Ahead of the Rio gathering, scientists are calling for an improved commitment to deliver nutrition security and lessen the need to aid.

‘Agriculture is estimated to provide jobs for 40% of the world’s population. . . .

‘”One reason why it is necessary to push attention on to agriculture in Rio is because negotiations are going really slowly,” explained CGIAR spokesman Bruce Campbell.

‘”We thought it was really important to put the focus on agriculture in Rio, and the 15 research organisations have come together in order to form a consortium and speak with one voice for the first time.”

‘Dr Campbell added that the agencies were calling on the negotiators to reaffirm the role of science and technology. . . .

‘The Rio+20 Conference, formally known as the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD), will take place in Brazil on 20-22 June 2012.

‘The summit marks the 20th anniversary of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), which was also held in Rio de Janeiro, and the 10th anniversary of the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg, South Africa. . . .

‘Heads of states from more than 100 nations are expected to attend the summit.’

Read the whole article at BBC News: Nations need food security goals, 23 May 2012.

See CGIAR Calls to Action at Rio+20, 23 May 2012.

See CGIAR ar Rio+20 landing page on the CGIAR Consortium website.

Pork infected with pig tapeworm cysts (photo credit: ILRI/Fahrion).

An article in this month’s Discover Magazine reports on infection with pig tapeworm, or cysticercosis, a target disease of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) that is rare in the industrialized world but unfortunately not at all rare in poor countries.

‘. . . Before they become adults, tapeworms spend time as larvae in large cysts. And those cysts can end up in people’s brains, causing a disease known as neurocysticercosis.

‘“Nobody knows exactly how many people there are with it in the United States,” says Nash, who is the chief of the Gastrointestinal Parasites Section at NIH. His best estimate is 1,500 to 2,000. Worldwide, the numbers are vastly higher, though estimates on a global scale are even harder to make because neurocysticercosis is most common in poor places that lack good public-health systems. “Minimally there are 5 million cases of epilepsy from neurocysticercosis,” Nash says. . . .

‘The closer scientists look at the epidemiology of the disease, the worse it becomes. . . . Earlier this spring, Nash and colleagues published a review of the scientific literature and concluded that somewhere between 11 million and 29 million people have neurocysticercosis in Latin America alone. Tapeworms are also common in other regions of the world, such as Africa and Asia. “Neurocysticercosis is a very important disease worldwide,” Nash says.

‘The alarming illness occurs when tapeworm larvae lose their way. Normally, Taenia solium has a life cycle that takes it from pigs to humans and back to pigs again. . . . But sometimes tapeworms take a wrong turn. Instead of going into a pig, the eggs end up in a human. This can occur if someone shedding tapeworm eggs contaminates food that other people then eat. When the egg hatches, the confused larva does not develop into an adult in the human’s intestines. Instead, it acts as it would inside a pig. It burrows into the person’s bloodstream and gets swept through the body. Often those parasites end up in the brain, where they form cysts. . . .

‘Although finding a better cure is important, Nash is more interested in preventing tapeworms from getting into human brains in the first place by breaking their life cycle. A favored strategy is identifying people who have adult tapeworms in their bodies and giving them drugs to kill the parasites. It is also possible to vaccinate pigs so that they destroy tapeworm eggs as soon as they ingest them.

‘None of this is rocket science—which makes Nash all the more frustrated that so little is being done. “I see this as a disease that can be treated and prevented,” he says. But there are precious few resources available for treatment and little recognition of the problem. “All of this seems to be very feasible, but nobody wants to do anything about it.”’

Read the whole article at Discover Magazine: Hidden epidemic: Tapeworms living inside people’s brains, 15 May 2012 (June 2012 issue).

Read about an ILRI Sep 2011 workshop on cysticercosis: Market incentives–not top-down regulation–needed to help poor farmers take advantage of East Africa’s burgeoning pig industry, 17 Jan 2012.

Read more about a People, Animals and their Zoonoses (PAZ) project of the University of Edinburgh and ILRI, which is taking a close look at the health of people and livestock in a densely populated region of western Kenya. One of the health issues project members are investigating is the role played by pigs in transmitting zoonotic diseases and the risk factors for human infection in western Kenya. PAZ is funded by the Wellcome Trust and led by Eric Fevre.
ILRI Clippings Blog: Forestalling the next plague: Building a first picture of all diseases afflicting people and animals in Africa, 11 Apr 2011.

See also ILRI photofilm: The connection between animal disease and human health, Jan 2012, duration: 01:55. This brief film describes the work and expected impact of the ILRI-Welcome Trust ‘People Animals and Their Zoonoses Project’ that is investigating the impact of disease pathogens in people and animals in Busia District, in western Kenya.

And the ILRI photofilm: Dying for meat, Feb 2012, duration: 2:56. This short film features small-scale butchers and consumers from Nairobi, Kenya, and a commentary by Delia Grace, an ILRI veterinary epidemiologist who is leading multi-institutional research on agriculture-associated diseases, on issues that connect animal and human health.

Last week at the 2012 G8 Summit in the USA, Oxfam International asked world leaders to join smallholder farmers and developing countries to fight hunger by delivering on their previous pledges and recommitting for the future by joining its Grow Campaign (image credit: Oxfam International).

Last week, on 18 May and the eve of the 2012 G8 meeting that he led, US President Obama said and announced some stirring stuff, including a New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition. The occasion was the 3rd annual Symposium on Global Agriculture and Food Security, organized by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and held in Washington, DC.

Perhaps decision-makers at this June’s United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio +20), which Obama along with many other heads of state is being urged to attend, could take a leaf from the US president’s focused commitment to (long-neglected) global food security and farm productivity.

The following are (long) excerpts (I didn’t find much I wanted to cut) of Obama’s speech last week.

‘. . . Now, this weekend at the G8, we’ll be represented by many of the world’s largest economies. . . . [T]omorrow at the G8, . . . we’re launching a major new partnership to reduce hunger and lift tens of millions of people from poverty. And we’ll be joined by leaders from across Africa . . . .

‘Now, this partnership is possible because so many leaders in Africa and around the world have made food security a priority. And that’s why, shortly after I took office, I called for the international community to do its part. And at the G8 meeting three years ago in L’Aquila, in Italy, that’s exactly what we did—mobilizing more than $22 billion for a global food security initiative.

After decades in which agriculture and nutrition didn’t always get the attention they deserved, we put the fight against global hunger where it should be, which is at the forefront of global development. . . . It’s rooted in our conviction that true development involves not only delivering aid, but also promoting economic growth—broad-based, inclusive growth that actually helps nations develop and lifts people out of poverty. The whole purpose of development is to create the conditions where assistance is no longer needed, where people have the dignity and the pride of being self-sufficient.

‘You see our new approach in our . . . food security initiative, Feed the Future. Instead of simply handing out food, we’ve partnered with countries in pursuit of ambitious goals: better nutrition to prevent the stunting and the death of millions of children, and raising the incomes of millions of people, most of them farmers. . . .

As President, I consider this a moral imperative. As the wealthiest nation on Earth, I believe the United States has a moral obligation to lead the fight against hunger and malnutrition, and to partner with others.

‘So we take pride in the fact that, because of smart investments in nutrition and agriculture and safety nets, millions of people in Kenya and Ethiopia did not need emergency aid in the recent drought.

‘But when tens of thousands of children die from the agony of starvation, as in Somalia, that sends us a message we’ve still got a lot of work to do. It’s unacceptable. It’s an outrage. It’s an affront to who we are.

‘So food security is a moral imperative, but it’s also an economic imperative. History teaches us that one of the most effective ways to pull people and entire nations out of poverty is to invest in their agriculture. . . .

‘It’s a moral imperative, it’s an economic imperative, and it is a security imperative. For we’ve seen how spikes in food prices can plunge millions into poverty, which, in turn, can spark riots that cost lives, and can lead to instability. And this danger will only grow if a surging global population isn’t matched by surging food production. . . .

‘And perhaps nowhere do we see this link more vividly than in Africa. On the one hand, we see Africa as an emerging market. African economies are some of the fastest growing in the world. We see a surge in foreign investment. We see a growing middle class; hundreds of millions of people connected by mobile phones; more young Africans online than ever before. There’s hope and some optimism. And all of this has yielded impressive progress—for the first time ever, a decline in extreme poverty in Africa; an increase in crop yields; a dramatic drop in child deaths. That’s the good news . . . .

‘On the other hand, we see an Africa that still faces huge hurdles: stark inequalities; most Africans still living on less than $2 a day; climate change that increases the risk of drought and famine. All of which perpetuates stubborn barriers in agriculture, in the agricultural sector—from bottlenecks in infrastructure that prevent food from getting to market, to the lack of credit, especially for small farmers, most of whom are women. . . .

There is no reason why Africa should not be feeding itself and exporting food again. There is no reason for that.

‘So that’s why we’re here. In Africa and around the world, progress isn’t coming fast enough. And economic growth can’t just be for the lucky few at the top, it’s got to be broad-based, for everybody, and a good place to start is in the agricultural sector. So even as the world responds with food aid in a crisis—as we’ve done in the Horn of Africa—communities can’t go back just to the way things were, vulnerable as before, waiting for the next crisis to happen. Development has to be sustainable, and as an international community, we have to do better.

So here at the G8, we’re going to build on the progress we’ve made so far. Today, I can announce a new global effort we’re calling a New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition. And to get the job done we’re bringing together all the key players around a shared commitment. Let me describe it.

‘Governments, like those in Africa, that are committed to agricultural development and food security, they agree to take the lead—building on their own plans by making tough reforms and attracting investment. Donor countries—including G8 members and international organizations—agree to more closely align our assistance with these country plans. And the private sector—from large multinationals to small African cooperatives, your NGOs and civil society groups—agree to make concrete and continuing commitments as well, so that there is an alignment between all these sectors.

‘Now, I know some have asked, in a time of austerity, whether this New Alliance is just a way for governments to shift the burden onto somebody else. I want to be clear: The answer is no. As President, I can assure you that the United States will continue to meet our responsibilities, so that even in these tough fiscal times, we will continue to make historic investments in development. . . .

‘We’ll continue to be the leader in times of crisis, as we’ve done as the single largest donor of aid in the Horn of Africa, and as we focus on the drought in the Sahel. That’s why I’ve proposed to continue increasing funds for food security. So I want to be clear: The United States will remain a global leader in development in partnership with you. And we will continue to make available food—or emergency aid. That will not change. But what we do want to partner with you on is a strategy so that emergency aid becomes less and less relevant as a consequence of greater and greater sustainability within these own countries.

‘That’s how development is supposed to work. That’s what I mean by a new approach that challenges more nations, more organizations, more companies, more NGOs, challenges individuals—some of the young people who are here—to step up and play a role—because government cannot and should not do this alone. This has to be all hands on deck.

‘And that’s the essence of this New Alliance. So G8 nations will pledge to honor the commitments we made in L’Aquila. We must do what we say; no empty promises. And at the same time, we’ll deliver the assistance to launch this new effort. . . .

‘Next, we’re going to mobilize more private capital. Today, I can announce that 45 companies—from major international corporations to African companies and cooperatives—have pledged to invest more than $3 billion to kick off this effort. And we’re also going to fast-track new agricultural projects so they reach those in need even quicker.

‘Third, we’re going to speed up the development and delivery of innovation—better seeds, better storage—that unleash huge leaps in food production. And we’re going to tap that mobile phone revolution in Africa so that more data on agriculture—whether it’s satellite imagery or weather forecasts or market prices—are put in the hands of farmers so they know where to plant and when to plant and when to sell.

‘Fourth, we’re joining with the World Bank and other partners to better understand and manage the risks that come with changing food prices and a changing climate—because a change in prices or a single bad season should not plunge a family, a community or a region into crisis.

‘And finally, we’re going to keep focusing on nutrition, especially for young children, because we know the effects of poor nutrition can last a lifetime—it’s harder to learn, it’s harder to earn a living. When there is good nutrition, especially in those thousand days during pregnancy up to the child’s second birthday, it means healthier lives for that child and that mother. And it’s the smart thing to do because better nutrition means lower health care costs and it means less need for assistance later on.

‘That’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to sustain the commitments we made three years ago, and we’re going to speed things up. And we’re starting with these three countries—Tanzania, Ghana and Ethiopia—precisely because of their record in improving agriculture and food security.

‘But this is just the beginning. In the coming months, we’ll expand to six countries. We’ll welcome other countries that are committed to making tough reforms. We’ll welcome more companies that are willing to invest. We’re going to hold ourselves accountable; we’ll measure results. And we’ll stay focused on clear goals: boosting farmers’ incomes, and over the next decade, helping 50 million men, women and children lift themselves out of poverty.

‘And I know there are going to be skeptics—there always are. We see heartbreaking images—fields turned to dust, babies with distended bellies—and we say it’s hopeless, and some places are condemned to perpetual poverty and hunger. But the people in this room disagree. I think most of the American people disagree. Anyone who claims great change is impossible, I say look at the extraordinary successes in development.

‘Look at the Green Revolution, which pulled hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. Look at microfinance, which has empowered so many rural poor—something my mother was involved with. Look at the huge expansion of education, especially for girls. Look at the progress we’ve made with vaccines—from smallpox to measles to pneumonia to diarrhea—which have saved the lives of hundreds of millions. And of course, look at the global fight against HIV/AIDS, which has brought us to the point where we can imagine what was once unthinkable—and that is the real possibility of an AIDS-free generation.

‘Moreover, we are already making progress in this area right now. In Rwanda, farmers are selling more coffee and lifting their families out of poverty. In Haiti, some farmers have more than doubled their yields. In Bangladesh, in the poorest region, they’ve had their first-ever surplus of rice. There are millions of farmers and families whose lives are being transformed right now because of some of the strategies that we’re talking about. And that includes a farmer in Ethiopia who got a new loan, increased production, hired more workers. And he said, “This salary changed my life. My kids can now go to school.”

‘And we start getting the wheel turning in the direction of progress.

We can do this. We’re already doing it. We just need to bring it all together. We can unleash the change that reduces hunger and malnutrition. We can spark the kind of economic growth that lifts people and nations out of poverty. This is the new commitment that we’re making. And I pledge to you today that this will remain a priority as long as I am United States President. . . .

Read the whole speech at the White House website: Remarks by the President at Symposium on Global Agriculture and Food Security, 18 May 2012.

Read related article on this blog: Move our global food systems into a ‘safe space’–Memo to G8 from CGIAR’s Bruce Campbell, 20 May 2012.

Participants of an African swine fever workshop held in July 2011 at ILRI’s Nairobi headquarters: (From left) Raymond Rowland (Kansas State University), David Odongo (ILRI), Richard Bishop (ILRI), Maria-Jesus Munoz (Centro de Investigación en Sanidad Animal-Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Agrarias) and Jose-Manuel Vizcaino (head of the World Animal Health Organisation’s African Swine Fever World Reference Centre, in Madrid) on a visit to the new laboratories at ILRI and Biosciences eastern and central Africa (photo credit: ILRI/Edward Okoth).

‘Scientists from around the world came to Kansas State University’s Biosecurity Research Institute (BRI) May 15–17 to take a global look at the highly contagious viral disease, African swine fever (ASF). The researchers assembled to give updates on research and in some cases, the status of ASF in their countries.

‘ASF has not been found in the United States, but is a serious problem in Africa and outbreaks have occurred in other countries, including Spain, Italy, Russia and the Dominican Republic. There is no vaccine or treatment. Changes in production practices and increasing globalization have increased the risk of introducing ASF into North America and other parts of the world, according to the Center for Food Security and Public Health at Iowa State University. . . .

‘Humans are not susceptible to the African swine fever virus (ASFV), but when an outbreak occurs in any region or country, the financial and physical implications can be devastating to the swine industry and those related to it. During outbreaks in Malta and the Dominican Republic, for example, the swine herds of the entire countries were completely depopulated. . . .

Richard Bishop, senior molecular biologist with the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi, Kenya spoke of the importance of the swine herd in Africa, adding that even one pig can make a significant difference in a family’s income. He said that the pig population in Africa increased 284% from 1980 to 1999 and that pork consumption during the period almost doubled. . . .’

Read the whole article at National Hog Farmer (USA): African swine fever represents growing global threat, 18 May 2012.

Watch this elegant 6-minute film: How to fed the world by 2050: Actions in a changing climate.

Film summary: To achieve food security in a changing climate, the global community must operate within three limits: the quantity of food that can be produced under a given climate; the quantity needed by a growing and changing population; and the effect of food production on the climate. At present the planet operates outside that safe space, as witnessed by the enormous number of people who are undernourished. If current trends in population growth, diets, crop yields and climate change continue, the world will still be outside this ‘safe operating space’ in 2050. Humanity must urgently work to enlarge the safe space and also move the planet into the safe space (film credit: Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change, an initiative of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change Agriculture and Food Security, in collaboration with University of Minnesota Global Landscapes Initiative).

The Huffington Post has run a series of blogs by leading non-governmental organizations to call attention to a range of issues that should be raised at the G8 summit at Camp David, which just took place in rural Maryland, 18–19 May 2012. One of these opinion pieces is by Bruce Campbell, who leads the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security, of which the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) is a part.

In his opinion piece, Campbell warns that ‘Our window of opportunity to avert a humanitarian, environmental and climate crisis is rapidly closing. Currently, the global food system contributes 19–29 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions and is seen as one of the main drivers of global climate change. There are currently 1 billion people hungry and in only 15 years’ time, there will be 1 billion more mouths to feed. Ironically, there are also 1.5 billion overweight people in the world. Consumer food waste in the developed world can be considerable (30 percent in the UK, for instance) while in the developing world, an equal percentage (or more) can be lost during and after harvests due to poor pest control, inadequate storage facilities as well as lack of access to markets for selling crops.

These simple facts tell us that not only that we must redouble our efforts to increase our overall food production, but that we must do this with a smaller impact on the climate while promoting sustainable diets and uncovering new methods for efficient distribution and waste prevention.

‘Fixing our food system is indeed a colossal task, but there are huge opportunities for transformation, should global leaders take heed. Agriculture accounts for almost 40 percent of employment around the world, as well as 70 percent of water use, and covers more land that any other human enterprise. In addition, 95 percent of the world’s farmers live in the developing world and produce the majority of the world’s food. They are also among the most vulnerable to climate change shocks such as floods or drought.

As such a vital part of the economy and of society, how can agriculture not be a top priority on the global political agenda? . . .’

Read the whole opinion piece by Bruce Campbell in the Huffington Post: Food security: A ripe opportunity for the G8, 18 May 2012.

About CCAFS: The CGIAR Research Program, Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), is a strategic partnership of the Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centers (CGIAR) and the Earth System Science Partnership (ESSP). The Program’s lead center is the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT). The program is funded by bilateral and multilateral donor agencies, and is staffed by people based at leading research institutions worldwide.

About Bruce Campbell: Director of CCAFS since 2009 and chair of Agriculture and Rural Development Day, a gathering on 18 June 2012 of the world’s leading agricultural scientists and food system thinkers at the Rio+20 sustainable development summit, Bruce Campbell is an ecologist who champions new approaches to applied research in managing natural resources. Campbell spent two decades working on social-ecological systems in southern Africa, covering small to large forestry, livestock, dryland and irrigated cropping production systems. For ten years, he directed a team of 50 scientists in a forests and livelihoods program at the Centre for International Forestry Research, based in Indonesia, and he spent time in northern Australia, working on natural resource management by Aboriginal communities.

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Milk, the ‘white gold’ of Kenya (photo on Flickr by eadairy, East African Dairy Development project).

A booming market in milk in Kenya is enhancing the livelihoods of many poor people—from dairy farmers to milk processors to milk hawkers to the country’s tens of millions of daily consumers of fresh milk.

‘In recent months, milk prices have been going up in Kenya, providing an opportunity for those ready to make quick bucks out of an unfortunate situation.

‘Beatrice Wanjiku is one such Kenyan. She buys a litre of milk from farmers at 15 shillings and sells the same to New Kenya Co-operative Creameries (KCC) at 20.80 shillings.

‘“While hawked milk takes care of my expenses, the earnings from milk sold to KCC add up in my bank account boosting my savings. It is a win-win situation,” notes Wanjiku, a Murang’a based milk hawker who buys the commodity from farmers and retails it in the populated residential estates in Nairobi like Dandora and Kayole. . . .

‘An increasing number of milk hawkers have become marketing agents and brokers, earning a handsome income in the process.

Recent findings from an assessment of the impact of the Kenya dairy policy change show that changes in the sector, which incorporated small-scale milk producers and traders into the milk value chain and liberalized informal milk markets, have led to an increase in the amount of milk marketed and increased licensing of milk vendors. . . .

‘With the expanding dairy sector, the East Africa Dairy Development (EADD) Project has launched a feeding manual for dairy farmers and extension officers.

‘High demand for fresh milk as population grows and the need for value-added milk products for an expanding urban middle class has prompted farmers to acquired new skills in dairy management to be able to supply milk.

‘The manual covers information on the basic nutrients a dairy cow requires, the available feed resources that provide these nutrients and practical aspects of feeding the animals. . . .

‘The EADD is a regional program led by the Heifer International in partnership with the International Livestock Research institute, Techno Serve, the World Agroforestry Centre and the African Breeder Service Total Cattle Management. It is implemented in Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda.

‘While farmers have benefited directly from milk sales, service providers in the dairy industry, banks and transport companies have equally raked in on the growing industry.’

Read the whole article at Xinhua/Coastweek: Milk hawker steals thunder from dairy farmers, 11–17 May 2012.

Berhanu Gebremedhin, IPMS briefs BBC reporters

The Ethiopian economy is currently witnessing strong growth; however agricultural productivity in the smallholder sector, in dairying for example, is not as high as it could be.

The BBC reports on developments in the country, including from a dairy development project of the Dutch development organization SNV.

As part of the report, Berhanu Gebremedhin of the Improving Productivity and Market Success (IPMS) of Ethiopian Farmers project briefed BBC reporters on trends in Ethiopia’s agricultural development and reasons for increased attention in the sector. He calls for increased focus on market-oriented extension services – an area where IPMS has been working over the past 5 years.

Listen in! to the full interview (BBC – World Business Report) Berhanu talks from minute 7 of the interview.

Aurochs were the ancestors of domestic cattle (photo on Flickr by Marcus Sümnick).

Lucas Brouwers, in a blog on Scientific American, has picked up on an interesting genetics study conducted at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), in Nairobi, Kenya, which targets a cattle disease known as contagious bovine pleuropneumonia (or CBPP for short). The study provides evidence of the primeval origins of the arms race between pathogens and their animal hosts.

The study, conducted by ILRI researchers and partners at the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (also in Nairobi), and in Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and the USA, was published last month in the Public Library of Science (PLoS, 27 Apr 2012).

The study shows that some ten thousand years ago, as humans first began to domesticate species of wild ruminants (in Africa as well as the Near East), they unwittingly also began to domesticate a wild bacterium—Mycoplasma mycoides.

‘. . . This bacterium has left a long and bloody trail through livestock history. Virulent strains of Mycoplasma raged around the world in the 19th century, killing millions of goats and cows. But the roots of Mycoplasma mycoides run deeper. In their paper, Anne Fischer and her colleagues show that the entire Mycoplasma mycoides cluster arose 10,000 years ago.

Mycoplasma mycoides is as old as the livestock it kills.

‘A severe Mycoplasma infection begins with a cough, followed by a groan, a grunt and more coughing. Breathing becomes difficult and painful. Eventually, the cow or goat becomes listless and, in the terminal stage of disease, stops moving altogether. . . . Untreated, the most deadly of Mycoplasma strains can slaughter herds within days. . . .

‘The nineteenth century . . . was a golden age, as far as Mycoplasma mycoides was concerned. The livestock trade became global, while vaccination programmes were still in their infancy. Entire countries could be infected by a single animal. . . . [A] handful of cows in . . . [South Africa] became infected by a Friesian bull, imported from the Netherlands. The disease soon swept through South Africa, killing 100.000 cows and oxen along the way.

‘To be fair, not every strain of Mycoplasma mycoides is a killer, and not every infection ends in death. The Mycoplasma family is large and most strains are not as lethal as Mycoplasma mycoides mycoides (for cows) and Mycoplasma capricolum capripneumoniae (for goats), the two strains that cause the contagious pneumonia described above.

‘Over the past few years, scientists have realized that the Mycoplasma mycoides family extends beyond its two most infamous members, but have so far failed to chart all the relationships between the different strains. To figure out who is related to whom, Anne Fischer and her colleagues collected 118 different strains from all over the world, and sequenced 7 of their genes. Fischer’s collection features bacteria from all times and places, including strains isolated from African cattle in 1931, Rocky Mountain goats and Mouflons from Qatar.

‘Using the genetic differences between strains as a measure for their kinship, Fischer’s team reconstructed the entire Mycoplasma mycoides family tree. From this tree, the team concludes that the founding father of all Mycoplasma mycoides lived 10,000 years ago—around the same time pastoralists domesticated cattle, goats and sheep in the Near East. . . .

The family tree of the Mycoplasma mycoides cluster, published in the 2012 paper by Fischer et al. Horizontal axis represents time, in years before present. The entire cluster is 10,000 years old, but the two most virulent strains (M caprcicolum subsp capripneumoniae and M mycoides subsp mycoides) are much younger.

‘While Mycoplasma mycoides as a family might be as ancient as livestock itself, the two most contagious and deadly strains are much younger. The common ancestors of the strains that cause contagious pneumonia in cows and goats lived between 91 and 414 and between 56 and 490 years ago, respectively. . . . [W]hat could have favoured the origin and survival of these hypervirulent bugs in recent centuries. Herding made Mycoplasma mycoides—but what turned it into a killer?’

Read the whole post by Lucas Brouwers on Scientific American‘s Thoughtomics Blog: Livestock bacteria are as old as the livestock they kill, 14 May  2012.

Read the science paper: The origin of the Mycoplasma mycoides cluster coincides with domestication of ruminants, by Anne Fischer (ICIPE and ILRI), Beth Shapiro (Pennsylvania State University), Cecilia Muriuki (ILRI), Martin Heller (Friedrich-Loeffler-Institute), Christiane Schnee (Friedrich-Loeffler-Institute), Erik Bongcam-Rudloff (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences), Joachim Frey (University of Berne) and Joerg Jores (ILRI), 2012, PLoS ONE 7(4): e36150.

Pigs at the Drestry Farm Industry commercial pig farm, in India’s northeast state of Assam (Sonapur, Karchia Village; photo credit: ILRI/Stevie Mann).

In view of the pig production potential in . . . [India's] Northeast and eastern states, a mission on pig production with focus on strengthening large pig-breeding farms and other infrastructure, incentives for producing feed input materials, improved package of practices, vaccines and diagnostics, pork processing plants and linking of pig producers to markets should be initiated,” says a working group on animal husbandry set up by a government planning commission.

‘The country has 13.84 million pigs and the Northeast has 26 per cent of the population. . . .

Rameshwar Deka, scientist (livestock and livelihood) International Livestock Research Institute, Guwahati, said it would be ideal to establish medium to large pig-breeding farms in the region for their multiplication under the private sector with support from the government.

‘“The private sector will have to step into the pig sector in the region and there will have to be support from the government,” he said.

‘Deka said capacity building of all those who are involved in pig rearing and marketing is the need of the hour.

‘The group said protection of pigs from classical swine fever in particular is a must. . . .

‘The mortality rate in pigs because of classical swine fever varies from 60-80 per cent.

‘Nearly 80 per cent of the population in the Northeast are indigenous people and pig-keeping is an integral part of their life.

‘Swine fever, also known as hog cholera, is a highly contagious viral disease and is said to be the most serious threat to the pig population in the Northeast. . . .’

Read the whole article in The Telegraph (Calcutta): Panel stresses pig rearing: Working group stresses setting up of large breeding farms, 9 May 2012

This image, from an article on the Explain That Stuff website about geoengineering, is a derivative work based on NASA’s 1972 (public domain) photo Full Earth, courtesy of NASA Johnson Space Center.

An article in the New Yorker this month explores our (risky) options for ‘geoengineering’ our ways out of climate change. Will such novel approaches be endorsed by the upcoming (June 2012) United Nations Rio+20 sustainable development conference? Will they even be discussed? In light of our glacial speed in agreeing on ways to reduce greenhouse gases, should they be considered a necessary fall-back option?

‘. . . “I know this is all unpleasant,’’ [Hugh Hunt, of Cambridge] said. “Nobody wants it, but nobody wants to put high doses of poisonous chemicals into their body, either. That is what chemotherapy is, though, and for people suffering from cancer those poisons are often their only hope. Every day, tens of thousands of people take them willingly—because they are very sick or dying. This is how I prefer to look at the possibility of engineering the climate. It isn’t a cure for anything. But it could very well turn out to be the least bad option we are going to have.’’. . .

‘“Geoengineering” actually refers to two distinct ideas about how to cool the planet. The first, solar-radiation management, focusses on reducing the impact of the sun. Whether by seeding clouds, spreading giant mirrors in the desert, or injecting sulfates into the stratosphere, most such plans seek to replicate the effects of eruptions like Mt. Pinatubo’s. The other approach is less risky, and involves removing carbon directly from the atmosphere and burying it in vast ocean storage beds or deep inside the earth. But without a significant technological advance such projects will be expensive and may take many years to have any significant effect. . . .

‘The best solution, nearly all scientists agree, would be the simplest: stop burning fossil fuels, which would reduce the amount of carbon we dump into the atmosphere. That fact has been emphasized in virtually every study that addresses the potential effect of climate change on the earth—and there have been many—but none have had a discernible impact on human behavior or government policy. . . .

‘Although the I.P.C.C., along with scores of other scientific bodies, has declared that the warming of the earth is unequivocal, few countries have demonstrated the political will required to act—perhaps least of all the United States, which consumes more energy than any nation other than China, and, last year, more than it ever had before. . . .

‘The planet is getting richer as well as more crowded, and the pressure to produce more energy will become acute long before the end of the century. . . .

‘Recently, Caldeira and colleagues at Carnegie and Stanford set out to examine whether the techniques of solar-radiation management would disrupt the sensitive agricultural balance on which the earth depends. . . .Again, the results were unexpected.

‘Farm productivity, on average, went up. The models suggested that precipitation would increase in the northern and middle latitudes, and crop yields would grow. In the tropics, though, the results were significantly different. There heat stress would increase, and yields would decline.

Climate change is not so much a reduction in productivity as a redistribution,’’ Caldeira said. “And it is one in which the poorest people on earth get hit the hardest and the rich world benefits”—a phenomenon, he added, that is not new. . . .

‘Solar-radiation management, which most reports have agreed is technologically feasible, would provide, at best, a temporary solution to rapid warming—a treatment but not a cure. There are only two ways to genuinely solve the problem: by drastically reducing emissions or by removing the CO2 from the atmosphere. . . .

‘Over the past three years, a series of increasingly urgent reports—from the Royal Society, in the U.K., the Washington-based Bipartisan Policy Center, and the Government Accountability Office, among other places—have practically begged decision-makers to begin planning for a world in which geoengineering might be their only recourse. As one recent study from the Wilson International Center for Scholars concluded, “At the very least, we need to learn what approaches to avoid even if desperate.”. . .

‘Unfortunately, the least risky approach politically is also the most dangerous: do nothing until the world is faced with a cataclysm and then slip into a frenzied crisis mode. The political implications of any such action would be impossible to overstate. What would happen, for example, if one country decided to embark on such a program without the agreement of other countries? Or if industrialized nations agreed to inject sulfur particles into the stratosphere and accidentally set off a climate emergency that caused drought in China, India, or Africa? . . . . What happens then? Where do we go to discuss that? We have no mechanism to settle that dispute.”. . .’

Read the whole article in the New Yorker: The climate fixers, 14 May 2012.

A Gloucestershire Old Spots pig rescued from a ‘pastured pork’ operation that kills runty piglets (photo on Flickr by Marji Beach).

‘Human development and biodiversity will not be the only focus of the Rio+20 Earth Summit in June, for which representatives of hundreds of states and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) will gather to discuss sustainable development.

‘The delegates will also deal with the wellbeing of farm animals and sustainable farming, thanks to the efforts of the London-based NGO World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA), the governments of the G-77 countries, Switzerland and New Zealand.

‘Together, they have helped to draft a part of the Rio+20 outcome text, to be negotiated in June, to “call upon all States to prioritise sustainable intensification of food production through increased investment in local food production”, especially in regard to women, smallholders, youth and indigenous farmers.

‘The draft text further demands an increase in “the use of appropriate technologies for sustainable agriculture”.

‘The WSPA, which sees itself not only as an animal advocacy group but also as one that supports sustainable agriculture, defines sustainable livestock production as part of a food and agriculture system that is ecologically sound, equitable for farmers and rural communities and other sectors of society, and humane in its use and treatment of livestock.

‘The livestock sector provides livelihoods to about 1.3 billion people worldwide—more than one-sixth of the global population—according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

‘A significantly higher proportion—about 70 percent—of the world’s rural poor, however, relies on livestock production for their livelihoods.

Industrial farming, which threatens the livelihoods of these people, especially smallholders, while simultaneously damaging socio-economic systems and the environment, came about during the second half of the twentieth century. . . .

The Rio+20 conference is about poverty reduction. If you really want to achieve that, there is no way to leave out such an important sector as the agricultural or the livestock sector,” Stephen Chacha of WSPA’s Tanzania branch told IPS.

‘”Governments really need to put more emphasis on this,” he added.

‘In order to convince the governments represented at the Earth Summit to take livestock farming into account, the NGO has collected more than 100,000 signatures in more than 165 countries in a petition addressing John W. Ashe and Sook Kim, the chairs of the Earth Summit. . . .

Growing movements around the globe point to the importance of animal welfare both for the sake of the climate and environment as well as for the sake of people’s health. Numerous studies and groups have found links between animal welfare and food safety.

‘. . . Although a gradual cultural shift is evident, with consumers growing more conscious of their food choices, the movement has yet to overpower industrial farming, and progress in the fight to create a sustainable and ecologically sound agricultural system can be painfully slow. . . .’

Read the whole article at IPS: Farm animals join Rio+20 agenda, 28 Apr 2012.

Join the campaign of the World Society for the Protection of Animals PawPrint campaign.

The main road running north to Ethiopia from Samburu land, in northern Kenya (photo on Flickr by meaduva).

‘Livestock could turn Kenya’s drought-stricken northern lands into an engine of job creation, rather than a sinkhole for emergency aid, the minister for the region has said.

‘Almost 4 million Kenyans needed food aid in early 2012 following a devastating drought the previous year. Many communities were left destitute as their cattle, sheep and goats were wiped out.

The potential of livestock has not even been touched a little,” Mohamed Elmi, minister for Northern Kenya and other arid lands, told AlertNet in an interview.

‘“In North Eastern (Province) alone, if the Kenya market was made more efficient it would create 400,000 jobs.”

‘He was referring to the epicentre of last year’s crisis, which borders Somalia and Ethiopia, where people traditionally keep animals on drylands that cannot support arable farming.

Kenya is a meat‐deficit country. A 2008 paper by the International Livestock Research Institute suggested the 400,000 jobs could be created if half of that domestic deficit were to be met by increased livestock production from North Eastern Province.

‘. . . The government is now in the final stages of finalising a 10-year strategy paper aimed at transforming the arid and semi-arid lands that occupy over 80 percent of Kenya. Current plans include constructing abattoirs and improving infrastructure.

‘Livestock already contributes to almost half of Kenya’s agricultural gross domestic product (GDP).

‘With the right investment, Elmi believes, Kenya could export vast quantities of meat to regional markets. . . .’

Read the full article by Katy Migiro in Alertnet: Kenya’s north—from aid basket to meat exporter?, 8 May 2012.

Published on the American Society of Animal Science ‘Taking Stock’ blog, the five articles covered:

Part 1 – explored the coming food crisis from a livestock perspective
Part 2 – looked at how animal scientists use new nutrition research and technology to increase feed efficiency
Part 3 – looked at how new research and technology related to animal breeding can make animal production more efficient
Part 4 – looked at ways animal scientists can treat and prevent the diseases that threaten animal and human health
Part 5 – looked at the challenges of applying animal science research around the world.

All five parts can also be downloaded as a single PDF file

Holstein-Friesian cow, Biggle cow book, Philadelphia, W Atkinson Co., 1898 (photo on Flickr by Biodiversity Heritage Library).

Dairy scientists are the Gregor Mendels of the genomics age, developing new methods for understanding the link between genes and living things, all while quadrupling the average cow’s milk production since your parents were born.

‘While there are more than 8 million Holstein dairy cows in the United States, there is exactly one bull that has been scientifically calculated to be the very best in the land. He goes by the name of Badger-Bluff Fanny Freddie. . . .

‘Data-driven predictions are responsible for a massive transformation of America’s dairy cows. While other industries are just catching on to this whole “big data” thing, the animal sciences—and dairy breeding in particular—have been using large amounts of data since long before VanRaden was calculating the outsized genetic impact of the most sought-after bulls with a pencil and paper in the 1980s. . . .

‘One reason for the change in breeding emphasis is that our cows already produce tremendous amounts of milk relative to their forbears. In 1942, when my father was born, the average dairy cow produced less than 5,000 pounds of milk in its lifetime. Now, the average cow produces over 21,000 pounds of milk. At the same time, the number of dairy cows has decreased from a high of 25 million around the end of World War II to fewer than nine million today. This is an indisputable environmental win as fewer cows create less methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and require less land.

‘At the same time, it turns out that cow genomes are more complex than we thought: as milk production amps up, fertility drops. There’s an art to balancing all the traits that go into optimizing a herd.

‘While we may worry about the use of antibiotics to stimulate animal growth or the use of hormones to increase milk production by up to 25 percent, most of the increase in the pounds of milk an animal puts out over the pastoral days of yore come from the genetic changes that we’ve wrought within these animals. It doesn’t matter how the cow is raised—in an idyllic pasture or a feedlot—either way, the animal of 2012 is not the animal of 1940 or 1980 or even 2000. A group of USDA and University of Minnesota scientists calculated that 22 percent of the genome of Holstein cattle has been altered by human selection over the last 40 years.

‘In a sense that’s very real, information itself has transformed these animals. The information did not accomplish this feat on its own, of course. All of this technological and scientific change is occurring within the social context of American capitalism. Over the last few decades, the number of dairies has collapsed and the size of herds has increased. These larger operations are factory farms that are built to squeeze inefficiencies out of the system to generate profits. They benefit from economies of scale that allow them to bring in genomic specialists and use more expensive bull semen.

‘No matter how you apportion the praise or blame, the net effect is the same. Thousands of years of qualitative breeding on family-run farms begat cows producing a few thousand pounds of milk in their lifetimes; a mere 70 years of quantitative breeding optimized to suit corporate imperatives quadrupled what all previous civilization had accomplished. And the crazy thing is, we’re at the cusp of a new era in which genomic data starts to compress the cycle of trait improvement, accelerating our path towards the perfect milk-production machine, also known as the Holstein dairy cow. . . .

‘With that in mind, allow me to suggest, then, that the dairy farmers of America, and the geneticists who work with them, are the Mendels of the genomic age. That makes the dairy cow the pea plant of this exciting new time in biology. Last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science[s], two of the most successful bulls of all time had their genomes published.

This is a landmark in dairy herd genomics, but it’s most significant as a sign that while genomics remains mostly a curiosity for humans, it’s already coming of age when it comes to cattle. It’s telling that the cutting-edge genomics company Illumina has precisely one applied market: animal science. They make a chip that measures 50,000 markers on the cow genome for attributes that control the economically important functions of those animals.

‘. . . The unique dataset and success of dairy breeders now has other scientists sniffing around their findings. Leonid Kruglyak, a genomics professor at Princeton, told me that “a lot of the statistical techniques and methodology” that connect phenotype and genotype were developed by animal breeders. In a sense, they are like codebreakers. If you know the rules of encoding. it’s not difficult to put information in one end and have it pop out the other as a code. But if you’re starting with the code, that’s a brutally difficult problem. And it’s the one that diary geneticists have been working on. . . .’

Read the whole article at the Atlantic: The Perfect Milk Machine: How Big Data Transformed the Dairy Industry, 1 May 2012.