Join the CGIAR GENDER Platform, launched this week. Help us build and use evidence to make gender equality central to agriculture and to our entire food system. Continue reading
Author Archives: Susan MacMillan
Chicken intervention in Ethiopian households improved the nutrition and growth of young children
ILRI animal geneticist/breeder Tadelle Dessie is one of many authors of a new paper in the Journal of Nutrition that is based on an intervention made by the African Chicken Genetic Gains project in Ethiopia, led by Dessie. Among the main findings of the paper are that a chicken production intervention with or without nutrition-sensitive behavior change communication may have benefited child nutrition and did not increase morbidity. Continue reading
New alliance for better dairy animal nutrition in Kenya will work to advance ‘human nutrition, success and progress’
Yesterday (7 Sep 2020), ILRI and four partners—Bidco Land O’Lakes, Corteva Agriscience, Forage Genetics International (FGI) and Land O’Lakes Venture37—announced their new alliance in a project to strengthen dairy production in central Kenya. The project aims to help 5,000 smallholder dairy women to advance their sustainable farming practices and to ease the shortage of dairy products in the country. Continue reading
Improving animal health in southern Africa—Why it matters and what to do
In a new book chapter, Delia Grace, a veterinary epidemiologist and food safety expert at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), in Nairobi, Kenya, and the Natural Resources Institute, of the University of Greenwich, in the UK, says animal diseases are a threat not only to the livestock sector of southern Africa, but also to its economy (via reduced benefits from the region’s wildlife resources), and also to human health in the region. Continue reading
Millions of new social groups are delivering better agricultural and land management
A new paper in the scientific journal Global Sustainability presents some interesting findings on the rise over the past 20 years in social movements around sustainability management. Jules Pretty, professor of environment and society at the Unversity of Essex, UK, is the lead author; ILRI’s Africa RISING project coordinator Peter Thorne is a co-author. Continue reading
Laughter, the universal language
I’m a gender researcher working on a project to control peste des petits ruminants (PPR). I have wondered what our international agricultural research would be like if we researchers and the farmers/herders we work with and for could all understand each other perfectly. Continue reading
Building gender sensitivity into the next generation of livestock scientists
About 20 research and graduate fellows attended a virtual training entitled ‘Integrating gender into livestock research’ which took place 16–17 Jul 2020. This two-day course was facilitated by Zoë Campbell and Renee Bullock of ILRI and hosted by Wellington Ekaya, ILRI’s head of capacity development. Continue reading
A One-Health approach is needed to protect both people and the planet—ILRI and UNEP leaders
Op-ed by ILRI’s Jimmy Smith and UNEP’s Inger Andersen arguing that human health, animal health and environmental health are inextricably linked, originally published in the Mail & Guardian (South Africa). Continue reading
Joint UN-CGIAR assessment explains how animal-to-human pandemics like COVID-19 occur and how to prevent them in future
A scientific assessment from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and ILRI finds that unless countries take dramatic steps to curb zoonotic contagions, global outbreaks like COVID-19 will become more common. The assessment, Preventing the next pandemic: Zoonotic diseases and how to break the chain of transmission, published on 6 July, describes how 60 per cent of the 1,400 microbes known to infect humans originated in animals. Continue reading
World’s largest public agricultural research network launches COVID-19 Hub to support global scientific response
The CGIAR COVID-19 Hub, coordinated by CGIAR, the world’s largest publicly funded agricultural research network, in collaboration with the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), will bring together the latest science on agriculture and health to inform a research-based response to the pandemic. The Hub will compile relevant work from across the CGIAR system and partners around the world as well as share future breakthroughs and identify opportunities for new research. Continue reading