Systemwide Livestock Programme

GCARD 2010 meeting on SciDev.Net

• Do we pursue global food security better by supporting smallholder farmers, agro-pastoralists and pastoralists or commercial producers?
• How can we make sure Livestock Keepers rights become a general broadly accepted principle?

The Community of Practice for Pro-poor Livestock Development and The Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition invite interested parties to discuss these and other questions related to the future of Livestock keepers.

The topic is raised by Ilse Koehler Rollefson from the League for Pastoral Peoples and Endogenous Livestock Development. Among the participants will be Antonio Rota from IFAD, Walter Mwasa from CARE International and Livestock experts from FAO.

Results of the debate will help with advocacy work and in preparation for the Convention on Biological Diversity 2010 at Nagoya. The main outcomes of the discussion will also be presented at the InterAgency Donor Livestock Group (IADG) Annual Meeting which will be hosted by IFAD in May 2010

join the discussion

Among the key findings in the report are:

• More than 1.7 billion animals are used in livestock production worldwide and occupy more than one-fourth of the Earth’s land.
• Production of animal feed consumes about one-third of total arable land.
• Livestock production accounts for approximately 40 percent of the global agricultural gross domestic product.
• The livestock sector, including feed production and transport, is responsible for about 18 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.

Read the story on the Woods Institute for the Environment Website

To obtain a copy of Livestock in a Changing Landscape, contact Angela Osborn at Island Press: (202) 232-7933 (extension 35) or aosborn@islandpress.org.

see FAO website

The Consultation process will now move into the second part which is the face-to-face Workshop scheduled to be held from 23-26 March 2010 at Embrapa, Sete Lagaos, Minas Geráis, Brazil.

The Workshop programme and agenda will be posted on the above website this week, and the outcome of the Workshop will be shared with you in due course.

Past, present and future of livestock in development programs illustrated with cases of Heifer and others.

Heifer publication Livestock and Livelihood – final version.pdf

From  the Meat Trade News Daily website

New evidence from a study from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) indicates that on-going extreme changes and variability in Zambia’s climate could bring losses of more than US$4 billion in agricultural income in the next 10 years, driving hundreds of thousands into poverty and food insecurity.

Read the full story

The Thematic Papers are part of a Toolkit for Project Design recently published by IFAD which reflects its commitment to developing a sustainable livestock sector in which poor farmers and herders might have higher incomes, and better access to assets, services, technologies and markets. They intend to be practical tools for development practitioners, project designers and policymakers to define appropriate livestock development interventions with recommendations on critical issues and also possible responses and actions to encourage the socio-economic empowerment of poor livestock keepers.

–          Emergency Livestock Interventions in Crisis and Post-crisis Situations

–          Gender and Livestock: Tools for Design

–          Integrated Crop-Livestock Farming Systems

–          Livestock and Climate Change

–          Livestock and Land

–          Livestock and Pastoralists

–          Livestock and Rural Finance

–          Value Chains, Linking Producers to the Markets

–          Water and Livestock for Rural Livelihoods