Derek Headey, a senior research fellow at the CGIAR’s International Food Policy Research Institute, yesterday published an opinion piece in The Telegraph on the importance of using milk, meat and eggs to fight malnutrition and stunting in the developing world. But, Headey warns, these ‘animal-sourced foods’, particularly fresh milk and eggs, are prohibitively expensive for poor households.

When poorly nourished children in developing countries fall behind in their physical growth and become stunted relative to their healthier peers, they tend to fall behind in a lot of other things too: their health, cognitive development, schooling, and eventually, their productivity and income as adults.

The high social and economic costs mean that there are high returns to preventing stunting, provided these actions happen early.

‘In poor countries most growth faltering takes place from six months of age until a child’s second birthday. . . .

‘When children are fed…

Smallholder dairying in Kenya (photo credit: Accelerated Value Chain Development/Sophie Mbugua).

‘Once again, the debate on sustainable diets and in particular on (not) eating animal-derived products is resurfacing in the media, as illustrated most recently by an article in The Guardian. The paper reported on a study by J. Poore and T. Nemecek entitled ‘Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers’, published in the latest edition of Science magazine. The article concludes that ‘avoiding meat and dairy products is the single biggest way to reduce your environmental impact on the planet’. Both the study and the article recognize the ‘large variability in environmental impact from different farms’ and the need to deal with the most harmful ones. Still, they seem to overlook the evidence from the 1.3 billion smallholder farmers and livestock keepers for whom livestock is an important source of income and food security.

Family goat keeping in…

A small-scale production line of the leghemoglobin for a plant-based hamburger is displayed during a media tour of Impossible Foods labs and processing plant in Redwood City, California, US 6 Oct 2016 (photo credit: /Beck Diefenbach—S1BEUGSRCGAA).

By Alison Van Eenennaam, University of California, Davis

A battle royal is brewing over what to call animal cells grown in cell culture for food. Should it be in-vitro meat, cellular meat, cultured meat or fermented meat? What about animal-free meat, slaughter-free meat, artificial meat, synthetic meat, zombie meat, lab-grown meat, non-meat or artificial muscle proteins?

Then there is the polarizing ‘fake’ versus ‘clean’ meat framing that boils this complex topic down to a simple good versus bad dichotomy. The opposite of fake is of course the ambiguous but desirous ‘natural’. And modeled after ‘clean’ energy, ‘clean’ meat is by inference superior to its alternative, which must logically be ‘dirty’ meat.

The narrative…

October 16 is World Food Day. It can be a day of action, dedicated to tackling hunger and ensuring food security and nutrient-dense diets for everyone. Food should nourish and nurture people, society, and the planet, but in so many ways, the food system is broken.

“Not only have habits changed, but also foods. When was the last time you consumed a potato with the flavor, color, and smell of potatoes? We are not just losing food, we are losing food quality,” says agricultural engineer Dr. Walter Pengue.

Across the world, decreasing soil quality is stripping food of its nutrients: 33 percent of the Earth’s land surface is moderately to highly affected by some type of soil degradation. Food has also become the main driver of human health costs—while almost one-third of all people are undernourished and 815 million people still go to bed hungry, close to 30 percent of all…

Some of the work going on at an end-of-project GLAD workshop held last week at ILRI, in Nairobi (photo credit: ILRI/Judy Kimani).

This article was written by Judy Kimani, communications and knowledge management specialist for ILRI’s Policies, Institutions and Livelihoods program.

Global Livestock Advocacy for Development (GLAD) has been a two-year project whose main objective has been to raise investor interest in livestock-related research-for-development issues. It has done this largely by distilling and presenting evidence and creative content about smallholder livestock systems and their critical roles in sustainable food systems and development. GLAD has also undertaken strategic engagement around sustainable livestock issues at targeted high-profile events and has strengthened capacity in livestock advocacy communications.

Members of the GLAD project, which is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, believe that underfunding of the livestock sector in developing countries is partly due to a global lack of awareness and understanding…

Cover of a new report,The influence of livestock-derived foods on nutrition during the first 1,000 days of life, by Delia Grace, Paula Dominguez-Salas, Silvia Alonso, Mats Lannerstad, Emmanuel Muunda and Nicholas Ngwili, all of ILRI, and Abbas Omar, Mishal Khan and Eloghene Otobo of Chatham House, 2018, ILRI Research Report 44. Nairobi, Kenya: ILRI.

There is great potential for

food produced from livestock

to contribute to better health

in low-income populations.

—Review by the International Livestock Research Institute
and the Chatham House Centre on Global Health Security

Global efforts to limit or reduce

the consumption of meat, milk and eggs

over environmental concerns

should exclude pregnant and breastfeeding women

and babies under the age of two,

especially in low-income settings

where other sources of protein and micronutrients

are not available or not customarily used.

An extensive review of research found demonstrable nutritional benefits of providing children, particularly in…

Common foods of Khulungira village, in central Malawi: Nsomba zophika (fish stew), chimanga chophika (boiled maize), nyemba zophika (mixed beans with salt and oil), bowa wofutsa (dried mushrooms with ground groundnuts), nkhwani wophatikiza ndi maungu anthete ndi kachewere wophika (pumpkin leaves, pumpkin blossoms and potatoes) and mazira ophika ndi phwetekere, anyezi, mafuta ndi mchere (boiled eggs with tomato, onions, oil and salt) (photo credit: CGIAR/Mann).

A unique dataset covering land use and production data by more than 13,000 smallholder farm households in 93 sites in 17 countries across sub-Saharan Africa is described in a paper recently published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).Mark van Wijk, a scientist at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), led the study with other colleagues from ILRI and partner institutions. Excerpts from the paper, and its key messages, follow.

‘We calculated a simple indicator of food…

The latest Brussels Development Briefing no. 50 on “Growing food in the cities: Successes and new opportunities” took place on 10 April 2018 from 09h00 to 13h00, ACP Secretariat, Brussels 451 Avenue Georges Henri, 1200 Brussels. This Briefing was organised by the ACP-EU Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), in collaboration with the European Commission / DEVCO, the ACP Secretariat, and CONCORD.

TWITTER:Follow @brubriefings  and use hashtag #BBUrbanAg

This Briefing discussed the development of urban agriculture in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific, looking at successful urban agribusinesses and the innovations, partnerships and policy developments that are creating new opportunities in this field.

In particular, the Briefing featured an exchange of views and experiences around agriculture in urban and peri-urban areas, and the main drivers for its growth and uptake by youth and women. It shared best practices and achievements across ACP countries from the…

The next Brussels Development Briefing no. 51 on ”Agriculture as an engine of economic reconstruction and development in fragile countries ” will take place on 27 June 2018 from 09h00 to 13h00, ACP Secretariat, Brussels 451 Avenue Georges Henri, 1200 Brussels. This Briefing will be organised by the ACP-EU Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), in collaboration with the European Commission / DEVCO, the ACP Secretariat, and CONCORD.

To participate in the next Briefing please register online

Background Note

Programme 

Reader (coming soon)

Photos (coming soon)

Biodata of the speakers (coming soon)

Resources

–Brussels Briefing 50: ”Growing food in the cities: Successes and new opportunities”

PROGRAMME

08h00-09h00     Registration

09h00-09h15      Introduction to the Briefing

Introductory remarks: Viwanou Gnassounou, Assistant-Secretary-General, ACP Secretariat; Leonard Mizzi, Acting Director Devco C, Planet and Prosperity and Head of Unit Rural Development, Food Security, Nutrition, Europeaid, European Commission; Michael Hailu…

In this episode of GFAR Talks, we will examine how agricultural research can and must become a participatory process in which everyone is involved—from the perspectives of farmers, researchers and donors themselves.

A woman milks one of her goats in Mali (photo credit: ILRI/Valentin Bognan Koné).

The Feed the Future Mali Livestock Technology Scaling Program is a three-year initiative (2016–2019) promoting inclusive growth of all actors adding value to the production and marketing of ruminant livestock in this large, and largely livestock-dependent, West African country. The program, led by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) aims to increase the incomes and food and nutritional security of 266,000 people who keep cattle, sheep and goats, as well as  other actors in this value chain in three regions of southern and central Mali: Sikasso, Mopti and Timbuktu. Supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) as part of the US government’s Feed the Future initiative, this livestock program is helping to close productivity gaps in Mali’s ruminant production systems, enhancing both the volume and the value of these animals…

A Spanish shepherd and his flock (photo via Flickr/Jeromy Johnson).

From the Mediterranean Consortium for Nature and Culture
‘Mobile pastoralism is the movement of people and livestock through the landscape in search of water and pasture, and includes different practices such as transhumance, semi-nomadic and nomadic pastoralism and certain practices of extensive grazing—all involving people, herds and movement, and all having a positive impact on biodiversity.

‘This 10,000 year old cultural practice which still occurs in a wide variety of forms across the Mediterranean Basin, and is important in all the Mediterranean Consortium for Nature and Culture countries, is today threatened. Below are the activities the MCNC is involved in, to help ensure this vital way of life remains robust enough to stand it’s ground in today’s world.

‘For the last 5 years we have been studying the practice of Mobile Pastoralism in the Mediterranean Basin, and the innumerable ways in which it helps protect the…

Dairy cow in Tanga, Tanzania (photo credit: ILRI/Paul Karaimu).

As a vegetarian, my occupation as a livestock scientist might come as an odd choice. But here’s the thing: Livestock science isn’t about promoting meat eating; it’s about investigating better ways of farming meat so we don’t harm the environment in the process.

‘Global projections show that rising incomes are only expected to increase the demand for meat. I don’t think that has to be a bad thing.

‘The question for me is not whether we produce or eat meat — but how we do it. And lab-grown meat, which has recently grabbed global headlines, is not the only way.

‘Some key reasons farmers keep animals, especially in developing countries, are so they can earn better incomes, have better prospects for their families, and produce manure to fertilize their farms. Eating meat regularly is often not an option. Milk, eggs and other dairy products, however, contribute…

Beef cattle on pasture in the USA (photo credit: BEEF magazine).

A new research paper by Michigan State University scientists analyses the impacts of soil carbon sequestration on life cycle greenhouse gas emissions in Midwestern USA beef finishing systems.

Highlights
• On-farm beef production and emissions data are combined with 4-year soil carbon analysis.
• Feedlot production produces lower emissions than adaptive multi-paddock grazing.
• Adaptive multi-paddock grazing can sequester large amounts of soil carbon.
• Emissions from the grazing system were offset completely by soil carbon sequestration.
• Soil carbon sequestration from well-managed grazing may help to mitigate climate change.

The following excerpts (excluding references) are from the paper.

Abstract
‘Beef cattle have been identified as the largest livestock-sector contributor to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Using life cycle analysis (LCA), several studies have concluded that grass-finished beef systems have greater GHG intensities than feedlot-finished (FL) beef systems. These studies…

Monique Eliot, director general of the OIE, leads a high-level panel discussion at the Global Forum for Food and Agriculture, in Berlin, 19 Jan 2018 (photo credit: BMEL/Inga Kjer/photothek).

Improved animal health and welfare standards do more than improve animal health and welfare, as important as those are. Applying such standards can increase food production in ways that also protect the environment and enhance the resilience of livestock producers and systems.

Any transition to more responsible and efficient livestock production models depends on nations implementing, and meeting, appropriate health and welfare standards. This is why equipping national officials and private businesses with the technical knowledge and resources to adapt global standards to local circumstances is so important.

This point was repeatedly raised by the keynote speakers at a high-level panel on the future of animal health and welfare organized by the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) as…

​

The Cow with the Subtile Nose, by Jean Dubuffet, 1954.

‘. . . According to Reuters, the Gates Foundation will pump $40m into research for higher-yielding dairy cows, as well as chickens that lay better quality eggs, livestock vaccines and “supercrops” that can withstand droughts or disease.

‘These will help farmers in need across the globe—the International Livestock Research Institute says that there are 750 million people in low and middle-income countries who depend on livestock (cattle, sheep and goats) farming, which acts as a source of both nutrition and income.

“If you care about the poor, you should care about agriculture. And if you care about agriculture, you care about livestock,” Gates told an audience at the University of Edinburgh on Friday.

“What that means in this context is helping poor farmers get as much as possible out of their animals.”

‘The input from Gates will be part of a $174 million agricultural project with Britain’s Department…

More oxen for ploughing means less labour for farmers (photo: ILRI/Stevie Mann). In Ethiopia’s Ghibe Valley, ILRI-led tsetse fly control methods allowed cattle to flourish in an area previously almost uninhabitable for them. This encouraged more farming in the area, relieving to a degree population and soil erosion pressures in higher, tsetse-free, elevations. Such was the impact this has had on the livelihood of farmer Worku Mengiste that he was able to employ two casual labourers to do work he previously did himself. Here he watches on as they plough his field.

Research to improve the health and productivity of farmed animals in tropical climates has received a £4 million boost from the UK Government.

The investment from the Department for International Development (DFID) was announced by the Secretary of State for International Development, Penny Mordaunt, during a visit to the University of Edinburgh.

Funding will enable scientists in…

For several days this week (18–20 Jan 2018), several scientific directors and staff of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI)—Jimmy Smith, Shirley Tarawali, Dieter Schillinger, Lutz Merbold and Kristina Roesel—will be participating with several ILRI partners in the Global Forum for Food and Agriculture (GFFA), held in Berlin, Germany.

This annual German three-day international conference focuses on the future of the global agri-food industry. Now in its tenth year, the GFFA in 2018 is focusing on Shaping the Future of Livestock—Sustainably, Responsibly, Efficiently.

GFFA is organized by the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture in cooperation with the Berlin Senate, Messe Berlin GmbH and the GFFA Berlin e.V. This is the tenth year of GFFA, which takes place at the start of International Green Week (19–28 Jan 2018), a large Expo-like international exhibition of the food, agriculture and gardening industries. GFFA also includes the

At the recent Africa Agriculture Extension week in Durban, there was a common refrain: “Demand for food in Africa is growing and expected to double by 2050.” This is why we see continued growth and employment opportunities in the agricultural value chain and why agriculture extension—or training– is more important than ever.

So what exactly is agriculture extension? Agricultural extension focuses on delivering advisory services for technologies that help crop, livestock, and fishery farmers, among others. Extension workers are trainers, advisors, project managers, community developers and policy advocators. They also conduct administrative support for local governments and help farmers make decisions and share knowledge. Agriculture extension, which services smallholder farmers throughout the value chain, is crucial in achieving food, nutrition and income security.

Even though agriculture extension is key to building the food systems of the future, it is not always fit for purpose. In Africa, for example…

I got impressed by the virtues of collective actions while reading the GFAR blog post Remembering our collective actions: The unforgettable story of Rinderpest eradication. This infectious disease which was once thought very difficult to control, was nevertheless totally eliminated from the world, thanks to the collective actions. My institution, ICAR-Indian Veterinary Research Institute, among several others, played an active role in the global campaign against Rinderpest under the leadership of FAO and OIE. This disease is history now.

And I am wondering, what could be the next big opportunity for collective actions to make an impact on the livelihoods of people depending on livestock? Those of you who have background in the livestock sector must have figured out already: it’s Peste des petits ruminants (PPR), a destructive, fast spreading viral disease that kills sheep and goats—the livelihoods of millions of the world’s poor. Many of you…

Mark Lundy is the Leader of Sustainable Food Systems at CIAT

It is big and involves so many processes and actors. Some would even say it’s scary.

I’m talking about the food system, or the movement of food from cultivation of crops to disposal of food scraps.

“It’s everything and it’s nothing. But the important thing about the food system as a concept and as a tool is it allows us to connect things,” said Mark Lundy, leader of Sustainable Food Systems program at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), during the #CIAT50 celebrations at the center’s headquarters in Cali, Colombia.

At CIAT, Lundy is leading efforts to define a sustainable food systems approach, particularly the focus areas of research.

CIAT characterizes sustainable food systems as food systems that “aim at achieving food and nutrition security and healthy diets while limiting negative environmental impacts and improving socio-economic welfare,” and…

Dan Berne and Valeria Pesce

Dan Berne introducing the course

In the week of 20-24 November 2017, GFAR convened a course and symposium on Farmers’ access to data in Centurion, South Africa.

This event is an example of the activities that GFAR wants to promote towards ensuring that communities determine their own needs and their own future, which is one of the key focal areas on which partners in GFAR have agreed to work. Farmers’ awareness of their needs and their rights, in this case data needs and data rights, is key in this process..

GFAR organized the event in collaboration with the Information Training and Outreach Centre for Africa (ITOCA), the Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) initiative and the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA).

Breakout groups

In the training course, we brought together a group of 16 participants from 14 countries learning, but…

Dan Berne and Valeria Pesce

Dan Berne introducing the course

In the week of 20-24 November 2017, GFAR convened a course and symposium on Farmers’ access to data in Centurion, South Africa.

This event is an example of the activities that GFAR wants to promote towards ensuring that communities determine their own needs and their own future, which is one of the key focal areas on which partners in GFAR have agreed to work. Farmers’ awareness of their needs and their rights, in this case data needs and data rights, is key in this process..

GFAR organized the event in collaboration with the Information Training and Outreach Centre for Africa (ITOCA), the Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) initiative and the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA).

Breakout groups

In the training course, we brought together a group of 16 participants from 14 countries learning, but…

Burundi women dance to welcome visitors during farmers open day.

The year 2017 marks the 50^th anniversary of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA). The anniversary was celebrated to reflect two milestones: the first 50 years, covering the period from its inception up till now; and the next 50 years, covering the present to the next 50 years. The first core event, held on 24 July, celebrated the achievements of the institute and its people – researchers, staff, alumni, partners and donors – that have been part of the history and success of the institute.

The second celebration event was a conference organized to address the challenges, opportunities and strategies for ensuring food and nutrition security for the coming 50-year period. The conference had a foresight and futuristic focus; this is pertinent particularly given the key challenges of population growth and climate change and their impact…

IITA’s first 50 years showed how partnership is a key ingredient for success in IITA’s efforts to bring about transformation in agriculture.

Agriculture is central to the development of the African continent, currently contributing 40% to 80% to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in several countries. In recent years, it has been put back on to the development agenda of most African governments. In Nigeria, for instance, the agricultural policy document of the current government builds on the Agricultural Transformation Agenda of the previous government, and is tagged as “The Green Alternative”.

For a long time, however, agriculture had been seen as a back-breaking and thankless occupation, contributing to people’s livelihoods and creating employment, but only at the subsistence level. Agriculture, however, has the potential to drive economic development and wealth creation. To harness its potential for transformation, agriculture needs to be seen as a commercial business operation at all…

“If you can’t measure, you can’t manage”
-Peter Drucker

That is why metrics are important for the government or any institution, and development partners in addressing food insecurity, malnutrition, hunger, poverty. According to FAO, after a prolonged decline since 1990, the number of undernourished people has increased to 815 million in 2016, from 777 million in 2015.

FAO’s mandate is to help reduce hunger and to track the progress towards its goal. That brings the importance of having a unified system to get the important data and information and manage the situation in order to effect the eradication of hunger.

CFS44 tackled the importance and the development of common metrics to measure food insecurity in one of its side events. Gone are the days when measurement was viewed from different lenses or tools and methodologies were varied. Though there is no single tool that captures all the dimensions of food…

The development community, with some notable exceptions, is waking up to the absurdity of measuring only their inputs and outputs like the number of farmers trained or the number of hectares certified as “farmed sustainably”.  In many cases, missing is the measurement that matters most: what positive (or negative) difference did their efforts make for the lives of their intended beneficiaries?  What was their impact?.  Of course, the most thoughtful are indeed measuring well and applying the emerging range of mixed methods to understand impact and impact pathways. However, in a shift that portends a seismic change in how sustainability works, it is the private sector that is increasingly pushing the envelope for many commodities. After all, today firms have to increasingly account for the efficacy of all their investments, even those once considered soft investments in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) or sustainability.

We at the Committee on Sustainability Assessment (COSA) applaud…

The interview below, Could animal-sourced protein really solve the world’s hunger crisis?, of veterinary epidemiologist and food safety expert Delia Grace, of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), was originally published in the Oct 2017 ‘Food and Nutrition Security’ issue of the monthly newsletter for Health for Animals. Both display quote graphics below are by Health for Animals.

Each year, 161 million children under the age of five lack the nutrients they require for their development.

This malnourishment causes stunting—both physical and cognitive—and ultimately costs our world 4.5 trillion US dollars in economic impacts each year.

In a world where extreme poverty has fallen in recent decades, this ‘hidden hunger’ can often be forgotten.

‘With such a huge problem to tackle and FAO’s World Hunger Day on October 16th, we spoke to Dr Delia Grace, Programme Director at International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), based in…

We have been cutting trees to plant food crops, since the beginning of time. Forest cover loss is a major contributor to climate change – the biggest challenge of our times. So, we won’t save the world without saving forests.

However, while the connection between forests and climate is very well recognized, agriculture is an elephant in the room at the climate talks and a rare bird at the discussions about forestry.

International deforestation curbing policy infrastructure is well developed. It includes the New York Declaration on Forests, the Bonn Challenge, Initiative 20×20, AFR100 and now also the UN Strategic Plan on Forests 2017-2030, just to mention a few of its components.

These are all great, but throwing billions at conservation and afforestation won’t work without making agriculture sustainable and zero-deforestation. “Foresters must get out of the woods and focus more on deforestation drivers!” invokes Hans Hoogeveen…

It’s another rainy day in the coastal Odisha, India. The Bhitarkanika village looks drenched and dark. Meet Pampa Dolui, age 34, a single mother of two, who has adopted a grim routine over these months, digging soil outside her home to let in the saline water from the sea to enter her sweet water pond.

And she seems to be preparing to uproot the banana tree outside her hut, to create more space for saline water to come in through a freshly dug canal. While chopping the tree she tells her children, “See, the whole tree has turned brown, like rust, nothing will grow anymore, too much salt in the soil”. Now like every other fifth person in village, she is also going to rent out her saline ponds for prawn cultivation at a meager price, as that seems to be the only way to survive.

Other residents in nearby…

GFAR partners CGIAR, GODAN (Global Open Data Initiative for Agriculture and Nutrition) and Asociación Andes, through a GFAR Collective Action supported by GFAR Secretariat, organized on 19 September 2017 a second webinar on the topic of Farmers’ Rights. The webinar was an opportunity to exchange information and best practices on how researchers and smallholder farmers work together in a complementary way, to achieve the conservation of genetic diversity, food security and improve the livelihoods of the most vulnerable populations. The interest in this topic was remarkable, with more than 160 people registered and 65 participating on-line.

Participants are aware that the formal and informal seed systems alone cannot achieve the conservation of genetic diversity, food security and improve the livelihoods of the most vulnerable populations. Joint efforts and collective actions between researchers and smallholder farmers are needed. Trust, better communication skills and partnerships should be promoted and strengthened.

Bags of high quality cassava peel mash feed, Ibadan, Nigeria (Photo credit: ILRI/Iheanacho Okike)

With livestock production expected to more than double in the next 40 years, transforming cassava peels into high quality feed holds huge potential for African economies struggling to meet rapidly rising demand for animal-source products, according to research proposal recently published by three CGIAR centres.

Africa’s estimated 50 million tonnes of cassava peel waste per year could generate at least 15 million tonnes of HQCP, substantially addressing shortfalls in the supply of animal feed and eventually creating a USD 2 billion a year industry.

The research has been proposed by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and International Potato Center (CIP), with the support of CGIAR Research Programs (CRPs) on Root Tubers and Bananas (RTB), Humidtropics, and Livestock and Fish. Working closely with private sector partners, ILRI is leading…

Cassava peel processing factory under construction in Benue State, Nigeria (photo credit: ILRI / Yinka Olasusi).

Nigeria is the world’s largest producer of cassava, with a yearly output of about 50 million tonnes and a production increase of about 3% yearly.

Presently, about 25 million tonnes of fresh cassava roots are used for garri (a popular West African food made out of cassava tubers), 6 million tonnes for local food products, 1.5 million tonnes for production of dried chips and 3.5 million tonnes are lost to wastage before or during peeling and processing the tuber. This annual amount of cassava production is projected to increase to up to 150 million tonnes by 2020.

Cassava processing generates cassava peels, stumps and undersized or damaged tubers, which together account for up to a third of processed whole-tuber weight. Cassava peels are perishable and are mostly disposed of by burning or allowing them to rot in heaps…

GFAR partners CGIAR, GODAN (Global Open Data Initiative for Agriculture and Nutrition) and Asociación Andes, through a GFAR Collective Action, are pleased to invite you to:

Our webinar:
“Farmers’ Rights: How Complementarity between Researchers and Farmers Impact the Conservation of Genetic Diversity, Food Security and Livelihoods of the Poor”

Date: 19 September 2017
Time: 15h00 Rome time
Duration: 2 hours max

Registration: open

This webinar aims to exchange best practices and information on:

• how to achieve complementarity in practice between the formal research and smallholder farmers to achieve food security and improve the livelihoods of smallholder farmers;
• how to contribute to the protection of traditional knowledge and the implementation of the rights of farmers to participate in the benefits arising from the use of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture;
• how to save, use, exchange and sell farm-saved seeds and propagating material.

Agricultural research has faced a…

West African dwarf goat in Ghana (photo credit: ILRI/Paul Karaimu).

A new paper by scientists at in the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and Wageningen University and Research (WUR) compared the lifetime performance of West African Dwarf goats (WAD) kept under various feeding systems. They conclude that West African smallholders can best enhance their goat production systems by supplementing the diets of their grazing goats with farm-generated feeds.

Comparisons of the lifetime productivity of individual animals raised by farmers using alternative livestock interventions allowed the research team to assess, reliably and over the long term,  the investment opportunities for smallholder farmers.

A dynamic modelling approach was used to explore the effects of different feeding strategies on the lifetime productivity of West African Dwarf goats in southwestern Nigeria. These goats, which are markedly stunted, with typical heights of 30 to 50 cm (12 to 20 in), are more disease…