A new livestock sector analysis from the Ethiopia’s Livestock State Ministry (LSM) and Ministry of Livestock and Fisheries (MoLF) and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) was recently published. This work was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) to help Ethiopia in its fact-based planning. Continue reading
Category Archives: Cattle
Empowering ruminant livestock enterprises in Mali—A Feed the Future-ILRI project
What happened in the Feed the Future Mali Livestock Technology Scaling Program (FTF-MLTSP) in early 2018? Open Day and stakeholder consultation for the program, PPR vaccine deployment, and market monitoring. Continue reading
Ugandan Emma Naluyima describes her thriving pig+crop farm at the Global Forum for Food and Agriculture
Emma Naluyima is a smallholder farmer and private veterinarian in Uganda who has integrated crop growing and livestock raising to build a thriving, profitable and environmentally friendly farm enterprise for her and her family. Continue reading
DFID/UKAid provides £4 million for genetics and health research to aid sustainable livestock production in Africa
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 DFID was announced by the Secretary of State for International Development, Penny Mordaunt, during a visit to the University of Edinburgh. It will support research in the Centre for Tropical Livestock Genetics and Health—a joint venture between the University of Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute, SRUC, ILRI, the latter of which has major research facilities in Kenya and Ethiopia. Continue reading
ILRI’s Kapiti livestock research station—and Kenyan and global public goods—imperiled by land grabs in Kenya
Over the past several weeks, illegal attempts to grab land have escalated at Kapiti Plains Estate (‘Kapiti’, or ‘Kapiti research station’), located about 60 km southeast of Nairobi along Mombasa Road, in Machakos County. Members of groups involved in the illegal sales have started trespassing and building illegal structures on Kapiti research station. No land at Kapiti is for sale. Continue reading
Gates Foundation grants Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Livestock Systems USD8.7 million to improve human nutrition in Burkina Faso and Ethiopia
The University of Florida has been awarded USD8.7 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to fund livestock research over the next five years to tackle high rates of food insecurity and undernutrition in two of Africa’s landlocked nations—Burkina Faso, in the west, and Ethiopia, in the east. Continue reading
Scaling up use of livestock technologies in Mali—progress of a Feed the Future program
The most recent progress report from the Feed the Future Mali Livestock Technology Scaling Program describes some successes and swift progress made in recent months towards achieving these goals as well as some new challenges the program is facing. Continue reading
Closer, smarter integration of crops, animals and soils has bolstered food security, livelihoods and incomes in rural Zimbabwe
Partners and funders of a research-for-development project in rural Zimbabwe called ‘ZimCLIFS’ yesterday (18 Sep 2017) convened in the capital, Harare, to take stock of how small-scale mixed crop-and-livestock farmers improved their food and nutritional security and their livelihoods in four main districts (Goromonzi, Murewa, Gwanda and Nkayi, from 2012 to 2017) and in two spillover districts (Mutoko and Uzumba, from 2015 to 2017). Continue reading
India’s Odisha State and ILRI join forces to improve livestock feeding and mechanization
A three-year ILRI-Odisha State project, ‘Feed and Fodder Production in Different Agro-Climatic Zones and its Utilization for Livestock of Odisha,’ which is worth more than USD2 million (INR18.08 crore), will map feed and fodder supply and demand, improve feeding practices and build capacity of key players in the feed value chain in the state. Continue reading
Beef value chain actors reap big gains from new financing in Southern Africa
Efforts by research and development partners are offering renewed hope for livestock financing in Southern Africa. This was revealed at an International Conference on Livestock Value Chain Finance and Access to Credit, organized by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in partnership with the Swaziland Water and Agricultural Development Enterprise (SWADE) and Swaziland’s Micro Finance Unit (MFU) 21-23 Feb 2017. Continue reading