Cattle grazing in Borena, Oromia, Ethiopia (photo credit: ILRI/Camille Hanotte).

‘It is fair to assume many private investors in Africa did not grow up milking a cow or shepherding cattle through the Sahara Desert.

‘But, with a growing number of firms gobbling up arable land in Africa—not solely for crop production but also for livestock and cattle—investment shops are slowly redirecting capital to this agricultural subsector.

Investing in this segment of African economies can be transformative, as a significant portion of African wealth and growth opportunity is walking on four legs on the African continent.

Africans are demanding an increased percentage of meat in their diet.

‘Livestock investment addresses other poverty in the agricultural value chain—manure, feed and milk—as well as providing economic protection against drought. Yet investors will have to overcome both institutional and physical constraints on the livestock sector—market information, diseases and available pasture—to achieve financial returns.

‘Market information (and market distortions)…

Photo credit: Food Tank

Tata Somba, Benin – September 6, 2012: Local woman with a small child passing through the green field. – http://foodtank.com/assets/images/head/iStock_76694969_MEDIUM_opt_opt.jpg

New Report Urges African Governments to Increase Sustainable Agricultural Practices

by Marisa Tsai

Recently, the Montpellier Panel, a team of African and European experts in agriculture, trade, ecology, and global development, released a report titled, “Set for Success: Climate-Proofing the Malabo Declaration.” The report reviews the climate-related targets of the Malabo Declaration on Accelerated Agricultural Growth and Transformation for Shared Prosperity and Improved Livelihoods, a set of agricultural goals adopted at the African Union Summit in 2014. Panelists urge African governments to better address climate change challenges by increasing support for smallholder farmers and scaling up innovative programs.

According to the report, the impacts of climate change pose a high risk to African food security and economic growth. Agricultural activities employ between 60 and 90 percent…

Photo credit: SciDevNet – Copyright: Panos

Fighting low wheat production in Africa

If scientists, farmers and policy makers could consistently work together, Africa will achieve self-sufficiency in wheat production in the very near future.

That was one of the central themes at a meeting convened in Nigeria recently to discuss wheat matters, including presentations of various studies.

From the participants at the 4-day international wheat conference of the Support to Agricultural Research for Development of Strategic Crops (SARD-SC) Project held in Abuja, Nigeria, 27 February to 2 March, it was quite clear to me that wheat is becoming a major staple on the continent.

It is an important source for vitamins and minerals as well as carbohydrates, fiber, magnesium, vitamin B, folic acid, antioxidants and phytochemicals. These nutrients can help prevent many of the chronic diseases plaguing Africa, where the disease burden is great and overstretching the health infrastructures.

Growing the…

Nelson Chikowa, Malawi potato and groundnut farmer (photo credit: ILRI/Stevie Mann).

‘. . . The United Nations projects that the global population will increase from 7.3 billion in 2015 to 9.7 billion in 2050. This growth will be concentrated in the world’s poorest countries, where standards of living are set to rise rapidly, increasing demand for resource-intensive meat and dairy products. Together, these trends are heightening fears that the world’s cupboards may run bare in the coming decades.

‘This scenario leads to the nearly ubiquitous assertion that we must double world food production by 2050, which is widely repeated by agribusinesses and scholars alike. This claim is often coupled with calls to reduce impacts on the environment even as food production ramps up. The common prescription is for a ‘sustainable intensification’ of agriculture that both increases yields and reduces the harmful side effects of tilling and fertilizing billions of acres of land.

Image credit: Humidtropics.

A new book from CGIAR offers lessons for researchers working with smallholder farmers in Southeast Asia to further adoption of integrated agricultural systems innovations. ‘

Published by the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) as an output of the recently concluded CGIAR Research Program on Integrated Systems for the Humid Tropics  (‘Humidtropics’ for short), the new book offers insights and recommendations to support research on integrated agricultural systems targeting smallholder farmers. Its lessons are gleaned from Humidtropics program research in the Central Mekong ‘Action Area’.—Lisa Hiwasaki on ICRAF’s ‘Agroforestry World‘ blog

From the book’s preface
‘The Mekong region covers several mainland Southeast Asian countries. The region has a huge heterogeneity in its topography, farming systems, ethnic populations, markets and sociopolitical systems. It is moreover undergoing intense social, economic and ecological changes that offer many economic opportunities, and at the same time pose potential threats to the livelihoods…

Lucy Wangeci Kuria of Kenya with her cow and her phone (via Flickr/Jeff Haskins).

A CABI-led consortium has gained GSMA funding to help three million people access nutrition information using mobile technology.

More than three million people in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia will soon be able to access vital nutrition and health information using mobile technology as part of a new project to help tackle malnutrition – a leading cause of child death worldwide. The GSMA Mobile for Development Foundation has appointed a CABI-led consortium as the global content provider to the mNutrition initiative – a UK Department For International Development (DFID)-funded project that aims to improve the nutritional status of more than three million people. The initiative will tackle malnutrition and help beneficiaries to access nutrition-based agricultural and health information using mobile technology.

The consortium comprises CABI, BMJ, the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition…

Tanzanian woman on her cell phone (photo credit: CCAFS/Cecilia Schubert).

A new open-access Nutrition Knowledge Bank has been created as part of a GSMA mNutrition initiative to help tackle malnutrition in Africa and Asia. This collection of content on good nutritional practices includes factsheets and mobile messages for anyone to download and use. Funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the mNutrition project aims to deliver nutrition information to 3 million people in 12 developing countries.

Adequate nutrition is critical to the physical and mental development of children and to long-term human health, but one out of three people in developing countries suffers from micronutrient deficiency. Experts consider poor access to agricultural and health information a major barrier to the uptake of improved nutritional practises, particularly by women and vulnerable groups in marginalized areas.

mNutrition delivers content to people at risk of malnutrition in Bangladesh, Ghana…

Photo credit: FAO

A market in Boulder, Colorado, USA.

People need affordable food, but prices must provide decent livelihoods for small-scale family farmers

Declining prices could thwart international efforts to eradicate hunger and extreme poverty unless steps are taken to guarantee decent incomes and livelihoods for small-scale producers, FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva said today.

Globally, food prices are believed to be back to their long-term downward trend in real terms, as supply growth outpaces demand.

This follows the price surges experienced during the 2008-12 period and a prolonged period of volatility in food markets, Graziano da Silva told Agriculture and Trade Ministers and other government officials and experts, attending a high-level meeting on agricultural commodity prices at FAO’s headquarters in Rome.

“As policy makers, you are confronted by the challenge of keeping nutritious food affordable for the poor, while ensuring good incentives for producers, including family farmers,” he…

Photo credit: FAO

Members of an Indian farmers group measure local groundwater levels at an observation well.

Failure to act now to make our food systems more resilient to climate change will “seriously compromise” food production in many regions and could doom to failure international efforts to end hunger and extreme poverty by 2030, FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva warned today.

“Agriculture holds the key to solving two of the greatest problems now facing humanity: eradicating poverty and hunger, and contributing to maintaining the stable climatic conditions in which civilization can thrive,” he told participants at a roundtable on climate change during the World Government Summit in Dubai.

The FAO Director-General stressed in particular the need to support smallholder farmers in the developing world adapt to climate change.

“The vast majority of the extremely poor…

Photo credit: FAO

Empowering small-scale farmers and providing them better access to information, markets and technologies is key to ensuring future food security. Photo: FAO

Business-as-usual not an option with future global food security in jeopardy, cautions UN agency

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsId=56221

Warning that diminishing natural resources and a changing climate have put humankind’s future ability to feed itself “in jeopardy,” the United Nations underlined today that while the planet still has the potential to produce enough food, “major transformations” are needed to make production sustainable and to ensure that all of humanity benefits.

In The Future of Food and Agriculture: Trends and Challenges report, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) highlights that while “very real and significant” progress in reducing hunger has been achieved over the past 30 years, these have often come at a heavy cost to nature.

“Almost half of the forests that once covered the…

Many may not realise that agribusiness and tourism are two of the top five emerging growth industries to 2030.

According to a recent report from Deloitte Access Economics, our sectors are two of the best positioned to take advantage of key features such as Australia’s:

• large area of arable land;
• relatively low land use conflicts;
• strong biosecurity status;
• relative ease of doing business;
• technological readiness;
• high education levels;
• an innovative culture and
• close proximity to export markets.

Holding us back are a few key disadvantages, including regulatory burden, rainfall, water availability and water reliability, low soil fertility, an ageing workforce and high labour costs.

At least three of these six disadvantages are common to all Australian businesses, and are areas where we can find ways to work together to boost our competiveness. And what greater way to seek to overcome them, and capitalise on the opportunities ahead for our sectors…

Please come to the sources of the natural health. I assure you camels’ milk really works. Look the use of antibiotics at such a high level in dairy sector and other spheres of life. Slow, natural and ecofriendly foods can save the health of humanity.

We disagree with having cows filled with antibiotics, primarily because of the problems created by bacterial resistance to drugs given without cause. But now we’re learning that there’s even more wrong with antibiotics in cattle: their dung releases more methane. Catherine Elton reports for Conservation Magazine: Antibiotic use and overuse in livestock has long been […]

via Antibiotics, Even Worse than Anticipated — Raxa Collective

Making technologies available to smallholder mixed crop–livestock farmers to grow fodder can increase milk yields and quality in an environmentally sustainable manner. Hyderabad, India. (photo credit: ILRI/Stevie Mann)

In 2015–2016, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and partners revealed extraordinary findings that the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from cattle in Kenya maybe up to 10 times lower than previous estimates, clearly making the case for improving Africa-specific understanding of GHG emissions to develop better-targeted climate change mitigation and adaption strategies. Taking this research one step further, working with governments and other civil society partners, offers opportunities to bring about change in international policies benefitting smallholder farmers, as was shown with the passing of the United Nations Environment Assembly resolution on combatting climate change. Moreover, translating research in a favourable policy environment paves the way for capacity building that can translate into the mass scaling of the sustainable intensification of farming.

Women peeling cassava roots in a cassava processing centre (photo credit: IITA).

‘The US government, yesterday, said it has invested $75 million (about N2.3 billion) in [Nigeria’s]  agricultural sector, just as it launched agribusiness partnerships with Chi Farms and Niji Foods. . . .

‘Speaking at the USAID Feed the Future Partnering for Innovation Initiative in Lagos, Mission Director of USAID Nigeria, Mr. Michael Harvey, said that USAID aims to address development and business challenges to agricultural inputs and mechanization by providing quality technical advisory services and expanded market opportunities for smallholder farmers via these partnerships, noting that the partnerships will also capitalize on the untapped potential of smallholder farmers and small processors to help grow agribusinesses, create secure jobs, and boost economic growth in Nigeria.

‘Harvey said, “Since 2014, Feed the Future has invested $75 million in Nigeria helping 800,000 Nigeria farmers acquire improved seeds, fertilizers, tools and access…

Photo credit: UN NEWS CENTRE

Rural development and youth employment are strongly connected to migration. Photo: FAO/Riccardo Gangale

Global Goals on poverty and hunger require $265 billion annually – UN conference told

The world must take urgent action to mobilise the estimated $265 billion a year needed to achieve the first two Sustainable Development Goals to end poverty and hunger by 2030, the head of the United Nations agency for financing rural development projects has told an international conference.

“The need is urgent,” Kanayo F. Nwanze, President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) said at last night’s opening of a conference, titled “Investing in inclusive rural transformation: innovative approaches to financing,” held in Rome, Italy on 26-27 January.

“Despite decades of commitments and considerable effort to end poverty and hunger, nearly 800 million children, women and men still go hungry every day, and an almost equal…

John Oboum’s climate-smart small-scale farm site in Western Kenya (photo credit: CCAFS / Cecilia Schubert).

‘One of the most urgent challenges we face in the next several decades is feeding a growing world population without irreparably damaging Earth’s land, air and water systems. Nearly 800 million people worldwide are undernourished today. The U.N.‘s Sustainable Development Goals call for ending hunger and achieving food security by 2030. . . .

‘Since 2000, [hunger] has decreased across all regions of the world, but 50 countries—mainly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia—still have alarming or severe hunger rates.

‘At the Global Landscapes Initiative in the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment, our research focuses on increasing global food security while reducing harmful impacts from agriculture to Earth’s natural resources.

We have found that one key strategy to combating food insecurity—lack of access to nutritious foods—is increasing food production on small…

‘For just the fourth time in its 72-year history, the United Nations General Assembly has focused on a health issue: the rise of “superbugs” and antibiotic-resistant infections. These pose a “fundamental threat” to society, said then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and are inspiring a fresh sense of urgency to find solutions.

‘The livestock sector has played an important role in creating this emerging health threat. It can also help stop it. . . .

‘Unless we take effective action, we could run out of effective ways to treat some of the world’s most serious diseases.

‘We have recently seen worrying evidence in China and in the US of E. coli, a common bacterium, that is resistant to the last line of antibiotic defense, a 1950s drug called colistin. . . .

Two-thirds of human infectious diseases originate in animals. And drug resistance that starts in animals may follow into…

As one of the panelists, I attended a discussion on “Strengthening Social Science and Policy Research” hosted by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)’s South Asia Office and the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) at the 24^th Annual AERA Conference held at the ICAR-Indian Veterinary Research Institute in Izatnagar (India) on 17 December 2016.

Do you love rabbits? Do you know rabbit meat tastes so good and are very healthy too? Do you know you can make good money in 2017, raising rabbits? To find answers to this questions we visited Doeland Farms and discussed with the CEO. See excerpts below….

I am Ogbonna Bethel U. I had my Bachelor in Agriculture from Michael
Okpara University of Agriculture – Umudike, Nigeria, where I studied
Animal Science. I am also a member of Nigeria Institute of Animal
Science.
I studied Animal Science as applicable to Agriculture because right
from childhood I have this passion for nature with special interest
for plants and animals. But Animals occupy a larger place in my heart.
I entered into Agriculture because unlike just farming Agriculture
deals with applications of scientific knowledge and concerted human
effort in solving farm related problems, so as someone who has a knack
for nature…

Livestock in India (photo credit: ILRI/Stevie Mann).

One of the fastest growing subsectors in agriculture–livestock–can significantly contribute to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) if the opportunities it offers, especially for people in developing countries, are harnessed for economic growth, improved livelihoods and food and nutritional security.

Shirley Tarawali, assistant director general of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), says that over the next few decades, smallholder food producers of developing countries, who today produce most of the livestock products bought and consumed in developing countries, can not only help meet the SDGs but can also help meet their countries’ rising demand for milk, meat and eggs.

Five of world’s top six commodities in terms of commercial value are animal-source foods, which are worth over USD700 billion annually and there is increasing demand for them in developing countries.

Speaking at a seminar co-hosted by the Texas A&M College of Veterinary…

A High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE) is the science-policy interface of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), which is, at the global level, the foremost inclusive and evidence-based international and intergovernmental platform for food security and nutrition.

HLPE reports serve as a common, comprehensive, evidence-based starting point for intergovernmental and international multistakeholder policy debates in CFS. The HLPE draws its studies based on existing research and knowledge and organizes a scientific dialogue, built upon the diversity of disciplines, backgrounds, knowledge systems, diversity of its Steering Committee and Project Teams, and upon open electronic consultations.

HLPE reports are widely used as reference documents within and beyond CFS and the UN system, by the scientific community as well as by political decision-makers and stakeholders, at international, regional and national levels.

In October 2014, the CFS requested the HLPE to prepare a…

Visit this Pinterest page maintained by ILRI for 102 advocacy communications: Livestock—Opinions.

This year, with a pilot project funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation starting in Sep 2016, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) stepped up its advocacy work supporting livestock development for a more sustainable and equitable world.

The following are among ILRI’s top advocacy communications of 2016.

By Shirley Tarawali
Plant scientist and crop-livestock and pastoral systems specialist/ILRI assistant director general
Harnessing livestock for the Sustainable Development Goals, 21 Mar 2016

By Shirley Tarawali
DID YOU KNOW? ILRI in the Livestock Global Alliance, 1 Jun 2016

By Delia Grace
Veterinary epidemiologist and food safety expert/ILRI program leader/A4NH flagship leader
Pandemic proofing the world—An epidemiologist in Nairobi on the next Zika virus, 28 Jun 2016

By Jimmy Smith
Animal scientist and leader/ILRI director general
Jimmy Smith’s address to UK parliamentary group on…

Nathanael Johnson, a talented food writer at Grist, a non-profit environmental news and commentary site based in Seattle, has published a thoughtful special series of eight articles around a question seldom looked at squarely in the eye—that is: How can we eliminate absolute poverty from the world without destroying the environment in the process?

Helpfully, Johnson provides some solutions and best practices, and draws out some principles from them, showing how humanity just might protect people and the planet both. Unusually for an environmentalist, he recommends we ‘put people first’

Excerpts from his new series follow (emphases added), but readers are encouraged to go to the Grist site and read the whole series. The landing page where you’ll find links to all eight articles in the series is here.

‘. . . The escalator out of poverty runs on fossil fuels and forests. There’s overwhelming evidence on this point.

Farmer from southern Ethiopia’s Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples’ region holding one of her household chickens (photo credit: ILRI Camille Hanotte).

Written by Calestous Juma, Harvard University.

Africa, which imports nearly 83% of the food it consumes, has a real chicken and egg problem. The continent is caught between pressure from imports in some countries and an inability to meet demand in others.

Africa’s chicken crisis is an expression of overall weaknesses in its agricultural system. If Africa cannot raise its grain production it cannot expect do well in increasing its chicken output.

It is a complex problem. Producing chickens requires low-cost feed such as corn. Yet producing grain to meet human needs remains one of the continent’s most pressing challenges. Africa’s urban populations, for example, are growing faster than the continent can produce grain. This has contributed to Africa’s shift from being a net food exporter to…

Farmland in Mali (photo by World Bank).

‘. . . [A]ccording to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, . . . [Africa] will . . . need to dramatically increase its agricultural efficiency. Right now, Africa imports 20% of its cereal needs, despite having a quarter of the world’s arable land. . . .

With a population expected to expand by another 1.3 billion people by 2050, Sub-saharan African countries will have to import half of all needed cereals in the next 30 years, if drastic changes to agricultural methods aren’t taken, the study concluded.

‘In addition to closing the gap between actual and potential crop yields, farms will need to increase crop intensity, or the amount of crops grown on the same field within a year, and expand irrigation.

‘“If intensification is not successful and massive cropland land expansion is to…

Boost for Africa’s smallholder farmers’ access to sustainable agricultural technologies as USAID announces $ 50 million Africa RISING Phase 2

by JONATHAN ODHONG

The U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Bureau for Food Security in Washington DC has announced funding for a second 5-year phase of the Africa Research in Sustainable Intensification for the Next Generation (Africa RISING) program beginning October 2016. Funded through the agency’s Feed the Future initiative the second phase of Africa RISING will focus on ensuring farming communities within target feed the future zones of influence in Ethiopia, Malawi, Zambia, Tanzania, Ghana and Mali get access to the best-bet/best-fit improved farming practices identified by the project’s research team during the first phase of the project.

“Farmers need access to improved agricultural technologies that have gone through an iterative research process to establish suitability and quality if they are to sustainably optimize the productivity of their farms in…

Photo credit: CIAT

An ecosystems approach to the SDGs in Africa: why we need to listen to farmers

by Juliet Braslow

To address all the SDG’s, we’re going to need to think like farmers. That means taking a systems approach that includes all kinds of agro-ecological farm systems. This mantra echoed through all the sessions at the Ecosystem Services Partnership Conference: Ecosystem Services for SDGs in Africa. Goals, 2, 5, 6, and 15 were in the spotlight, and to meet them, we have to think broadly and holistically.

That might not be what you expected to read, but CIAT research shows that farmers are the ultimate, great systems thinkers, and we need to tap into and build upon their vast network of knowledge to tackle the problems that face the ecosystems we are trying to protect and livelihoods we are aiming to support.

Goal 2: End hunger, achieve…

Photo credit: CIAT Blog

Study finds 40% more milk and tens of millions of dollars in revenue possible for African farmers adopting new drought-resistant pasture grass

by Georgina Smith

New varieties of high-quality, drought-resistant forage grasses could boost milk production by 40 percent and generate millions of dollars in economic benefits for struggling East African dairy farmers, according to a new analysis by experts at CIAT.

“Farmers could benefit more from surging consumer demand for livestock products in East Africa,” said Dr. Steven Prager, a senior scientist at the Center. “Our research shows that brachiaria grasses could be the cornerstone of productive and resilient livestock systems that quickly provide more milk and money for small-scale dairy farmers.”

Prager is co-author of the new CIAT study that assessed benefits that could accrue to East African dairy producers from adopting new varieties of a pasture grass called brachiaria. The grasses were developed by…

Figure 1. Gross expenditure on R&D (GERD) across regions, in purchasing power parity (UNESCO Institute for Statistics).

‘. . . In 2012, the share of the world’s articles with at least one African author was around 2.3%. Growing, but still incredibly low relative to the African share of world population of around 15% in 2015. Even in some big and rapidly growing middle-income countries, such as India or Indonesia, much of the research done is carried out by external academics or consultants.

There is a vicious circle of under-investment in research in developing countries, especially in the social sciences.

To make matters worse, expenditure on social science research is generally less than 20% of gross expenditure on R&D . . . .

‘Why does it matter? Because:

The very essence of a democracy with a vibrant civic culture rests on the assumption that citizens and decision-makers have access to reliable…

Scanning electromicrograph if the interaction of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus (MRSA) bacteria (coloured blue) with a human white cell. The bacteria shown is strain MRSA252, a leading cause of hospital-associated infections in the US and UK (image credit: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases [NIAID] of the US National Institutes of Health [NIH]). ‘Superbug’ MRSA is found in US wastewater treatment plants. MRSA is well-known for causing difficult-to-treat and potentially fatal bacterial infections in hospital patients, but since the late 1990s it has also been infecting otherwise healthy people in community settings. MRSA infections acquired outside of hospital settings are on the rise and can be just as severe as hospital-acquired MRSA.

Lethal bacteria are showing resistance to more and more antibiotics, and financial and legal hurdles are making it harder than ever for science to create effective new drugs. . . .

The arsenal of antibiotics is nearly empty.

And significant financial…

ILRI veterinary epidemiologist and food safety expert Delia Grace (photo via Flickr ©FAO/Giuseppe Carotenuto).

This opinion piece, written by ILRI scientist and program leader Delia Grace, was originally published by Devex on 16 Dec 2016.

The numbers when it comes to drug resistance are apocalyptic. Already responsible for up to 700,000 deaths a year, the number of victims could reach 10 million by 2050, making superbugs a bigger killer than cancer is today if urgent action is not taken.

There is great concern (although as yet limited evidence) that much of this growing global health threat is linked to the overuse and misuse of antibiotics in animals, especially livestock. This has accelerated the resistance of disease-causing bacteria and other microbes that also then infect people.

But while such overuse and misuse of precious treatments in animal production is a ticking time bomb, millions are conversely affected today by poor access…