Delia Grace Randolph, a veterinary epidemiologist and food safety expert who co-leads the Animal and Human Health program at ILRI, was interviewed recently by Wilton Park, a non-profit discussion centre in the UK. The event at which Grace spoke was a workshop held 11–13 Apr 2018 in West Sussex on Innovations to reduce the use of antimicrobials in food-producing animals in low- and middle-income countries. Continue reading
Category Archives: Environment
Shirley Tarawali on convergence in consumption of milk, meat, eggs at the Global Forum for Food and Agriculture
Shirley Tarawali’s keynote presentation at a GFFA expert panel session focused on Food of animal origin: Demand and diversity. She said that global demand for livestock-derived foods is changing both in quantities—with demand flattening in rich countries but increasing in low- and middle-income countries—and in qualities, varying by region and commodity, and that meeting that rising demand for livestock-derived foods ‘sustainably, responsibly and efficiently’ requires two main things—(1) moderating the demand, wasting less, producing more and improving production efficiency while also (2) taking account of the diversity of livestock systems and producers to maximize opportunities to address the United Nation’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Continue reading
Kenya’s Robin Mbae on livestock and climate change at Berlin’s Global Forum for Food and Agriculture
Robin Mbae, deputy director of livestock production at the Kenya Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, describes Kenya’s planning and implementation of interventions to address the impacts of climate change on the livestock sector and vice versa. Continue reading
BMZ’s Stefan Schmitz on sustainable solutions for the livestock sector
Following a welcome by ILRI Director General Jimmy Smith, Stefan Schmitz, head of BMZ’s division of rural development and food security and commissioner for BMZ’s special initiative on One World–No Hunger, launched in 2014, gave an opening speech. Continue reading
Towards a sustainable, responsible and efficient livestock sector—Jimmy Smith at the Berlin Global Forum for Food and Agriculture
A delegation from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) was involved in several of this year’s GFFA events, including a kick-off event, with ILRI Director General Jimmy Smith serving on the panel. Continue reading
Sense of an ending—Imperatives for delivering research with the (SDGs) end in mind
Speaking last week at the opening of the annual meeting of the Centre for Tropical Livestock Genetics and Health (CTLGH), ILRI Director General Jimmy Smith reminded his scientific audience of the specific livestock means by which the world can meet their ambitious goals. The four livestock development pathways Smith describes for meeting the SDGs—economic growth, equitable livelihoods, nutrition and health, ecosystem health—(see below) are largely unknown outside of the South, where they are taken for granted. Time for that to change, Smith said. Time for livestock researchers to conduct their science ‘with the end in mind’. Continue reading
On what (and how and when) to measure when measuring impacts of agricultural research for development
By ILRI’s Iain Wright: On 6–8 Jul 2017, I attended a conference at ICRAF on Impacts of International Agricultural Research: Rigorous Evidence for Policy organized jointly by the CGIAR ISPC’s SPIA and PIM. I welcomed the delegates at this meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, on behalf of ICRAF and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), the two CGIAR centres headquartered in Nairobi. A modified version of my address and personal reflections on impact assessment in CGIAR follows. Continue reading
Six new papers on the ancient, complex and everlasting farm animal–zoonotic disease–human well-being nexus
Six new high-level publications by scientists and partners of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH) on zoonoses, livestock and well-being. Continue reading
Livestock-wildlife trade-offs for pastoral livelihoods in the conservancies of the Masai Mara
A new research paper, Trade-offs for climate-resilient pastoral livelihoods in wildlife conservancies in the Mara ecosystem, Kenya, was recently published in Pastoralism: Research, Policy and Practice, May 2017. The paper is co-authored by Claire Bedelian, of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Overseas Development Institute (ODI), and University College London (UCL), and Joseph Ogutu, of ILRI and the University of Hohenheim. Continue reading
Sustainable livestock systems – highlights from ILRI’s corporate report 2015–2016
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. Continue reading