Animal Feeding

Archived Posts from this Category

October 5, 2011

SLP participation in the 5th World Congress of Conservation Agriculture incorporating 3rd Farming System Design Conference

Posted by Diego Valbuena under Animal Feeding, Conference, Conservation Agriculture, Crop Residues, Crop-Livestock, Crop-Livestock, East Africa, Intensification, Livelihoods, South Asia, Southern Africa, Survey, West Africa | Tags: |
Leave a Comment 

SLP was part of the 5th WCCA & 3rd FSD held in Brisbane, Australia last week. Diego Valbuena (SLP Postdoc Scientist) gave an overview on the crop residue use in different mixed crop-livestock systems across Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. This presentation reflects the current analysis and synthesis of the village-level data of the SLP Crop Residue project. The main points of this presentation were that:

  • Crop residues in mixed systems are fundamental resources for short-term objectives, especially for livestock feed.
  • Residues as mulch is not a common practice, mainly occurring in regions with relatively very high crop production or with high crop production and relatively low feed demand. In regions with high pressure on residues, an increase of agricultural production is needed.
  • There are no silver-bullets: each region has its own potential, challenges & options for more sustainable agriculture.

Finally, the presentation shows the next steps of the SLP Crop Residue project.

The presentation is available from the Slideshare website

Advertisement
 

September 22, 2011

SLP releases database on nutritive value of feeds in Sub-Saharan Africa

Posted by Diego Valbuena under Animal Feeding, Central Africa, Crop Residues, East Africa, Ethiopia, Forages, ILRI, Southern Africa, West Africa | Tags: |
1 Comment 

SLP has now formally released the sub-Saharan Africa Feeds database – a user friendly searchable database containing information on the nutritive values of 20,913 samples of 566 of the major feeds used in 15 countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The database is available both on the web or on CD. This is the first time that such large amount of data on common feeds has been made publically available in this way. The purpose of putting both the database and the software to access it in the public domain is to enable extension, development and research agents to design scientifically-based and best-cost rations for meat, dairy and draught animals of small-scale African farmers. As their livestock assets are healthier and better nourished, these farmers become more food-secure and are able to increase their income from animal products.

This useful information tool was created as a joint effort of the SLP, International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR) and the Ethiopian Sanitary & Phytosanitary Standards and Livestock & Meat Marketing Program (SPS-LMM) with funding from USAID. The information can now be used to improve the feed analytical capacity to support livestock development in Ethiopia and throughout SSA. A poster has also been compiled on the nutritive values of the most commonly used feeds in Ethiopia to disseminate the information widely in Ethiopia.

The SSA Feeds database was described by Dr Alan Duncan as ‘a valuable resource for livestock research and development professionals in Ethiopia and beyond. It makes available a wealth of information about the nutritive value of feeds commonly used in Ethiopia. This will help in designing feeding strategies for livestock that are based on sound scientific principles. This is important as livestock production moves from subsistence to a more market-oriented mode of operation in certain areas.’ Developing “SSA Feeds” and making it available to the general public, its target users and ultimately, to its beneficiaries -small-scale farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa- is the result of the combined efforts of many individuals. The project was coordinated by Dr Salvador Fernandez-Rivera, whose dedication to feeds research in sub-Saharan Africa resulted in the development and design of this searchable web-published database. Since 2009 the project has been coordinated by Dr Bruno Gerard with support on animal nutrition and data quality from Dr Alan Duncan. Scientists and staff working over the years at the Animal Nutrition/Analytical Services Laboratories of ILRI in Addis Ababa and the feed labs of EIAR in Holetta, Ethiopia, provided and analyzed thousands of samples of feedstuffs and provided the basic data for the tool. David O. Anindo, Abdullah N. Said, A. Lahlou-Kassi, Jean Hanson, Markos Tibbo, Abate Tedla and Asebe Abdena contributed scientific expertise, Ephrem Getahun developed the computer programme and the ILRI web and graphics teams designed and manage the website.

The database is available from the SLP website

 

September 7, 2011

Crop Residues in Sustainable Mixed Crop/Livestock Systems: past literature on-line

Posted by Diego Valbuena under Africa, Animal Feeding, Asia, Conference, Crop Residues, Crop-Livestock, Crop-Livestock, ICRISAT, ILRI, Latin America, South Asia, South East Asia, Southern Africa, West Africa
Leave a Comment 

These proceedings are an important source of information for animal and crop scientists working on the challenges of feeding the developing world’s rapidly rising livestock population and improving the productivity of its agriculture. It is hoped that, by collaborating more closely, these scientists will be able to develop the innovative approaches and new technologies needed in the next century

Pdf book available from ICRISAT website

 

September 2, 2011

Biomass production, chronosequence and vegetation indexes: Outputs of students working with SLP

Posted by Diego Valbuena under Africa, Animal Feeding, Crop Residues, Crop-Livestock, Crop-Livestock, Drought, East Africa, Ethiopia, Food security, ILRI, Modelling, Publication, Survey, Wageningen University | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , |
Leave a Comment 

SLP has been strengthening links with different academic institutions. The result of these links has been a small set of internships, BSc or MSc thesis with various universities. Research topics are diverse trying to investigate the complexity of mixed crop-livestock farming systems from different but complementary disciplines, tools and scales. Topics include: biomass production and management; chronosequences, land-use/cover and soils evolution; and remote sensing,  NDVI analyses and R scripting.

Crop residue management and farm productivity in smallholder crop-livestock system of dry land North Wollo, Ethiopia (Hailu Terefe, Wageningen University, The Netherlands).

The objective of this study is to explore and analyze crop residue and manure management practices and their influence on farm productivity. Data collection and analyses include farmer resource allocation and socio-economic by semi-structured questionnaire; biomass production, N content and digestibility of crop residues and soil nutrients; and crop-growth simulations to explore the influence of crop residue management use on farm production. The results show that nutrient contents and physical structures of arable plots are declining. Modelling results suggest that to reverse this situation, farmers should retain about 70% of crop residues in the field; but retention should ensure incorporation into the soil. To achieve this strong interventions are needed.

Pdf document available from ILRI website

Development of an open source tool to analyze Vegetation Index from Remote Sensing data (Romain Frelat, INSA, France).

During this internship, I have developed a free package in R to conduct automated analysis of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) from different optical satellite instruments (AVHRR and Spot Vegetation). Land Surface Phenology metrics can be easily computed from points or polygons generated either in GIS software (shp) or Google Earth (kml). Metrics and vegetation anomaly maps are calculated for every cropping season to support the study vegetation dynamics in agricultural landscapes.

Pdf document available from ILRI website

R package available from CRAN

Evolution de l’occupation des terres en lien avec les caractéristiques physico-chimiques du sol dans un village pres de Nekemte, Ethiopie (Matthieu Crespin, UCL, Belgium).

C’est dans ce but que ce travail, réalisé à l’échelle du village, devrait permettre de quantifier et de comparer la qualité des sols pour des occupations et des situations topographiques différentes : cultures, pâturages, forêts d’une part et vallées, pentes et sommets d’autre part. Il devrait également permettre de tracer l’évolution de la fertilité pour des sols de forêt jusqu’à des sols convertis à la culture et ce pour trois groupes d’âges différents.

 

January 31, 2011

Crop residue tradeoffs in crop-livestock systems project: lessons and gaps

Posted by Peter Ballantyne (ILRI) under Animal Feeding, Crop Residues, Crop-Livestock | Tags: |
Leave a Comment 

From 9-10 December 2010, Researchers in a project carrying out four regional cases studies of ‘crop residue trade-offs in crop–livestock systems’ met in Addis Ababa to review progress and plans.

We recorded the reporting back sessions that discussed lessons and gaps related to the content focus of the project, the process followed so far, and the tools used.

In this video, Alan Duncan reports on the content discussions. Some ‘gaps’: Are the survey tools capturing sufficiently the higher-level policy and institutional environment? Are we capturing more open questions about how farmers make decisions? On the lessons: we need to better integrate the social with the technical; and we need to keep our eyes on the global drivers, as well as the regional ones. View the video

In this video, Diego Valbueno reports on the discussions of the process lessons and gaps. First, such a regional study needs someone to really facilitate coordination, harmonization and information sharing (among the regions and not just between regions and the central project coordination). We needed a common understanding of the tools we are using, and why. Very important – how are we going to disseminate information – to farmers, to policy? Are there some better ways in which we could have developed our framework and instruments? Perhaps we could have had a better picture of our analysis steps before we devised our data collection instruments? View the video

In this video, Nils Teufel reports on the tools and technical software used in the project, including SPSS, CSPRO, Google Earth. A big issue across the tools was training and we need to, for instance, draw on people with specialist knowledge across the project. Data management and archiving was discussed and some lessons from the questionnaires and survey tools were derived. View the video

More on the meeting

 

October 1, 2010

Interested by crop residue tradeoffs in mixed systems? Read more about our on-going research

Posted by brugerard under Animal Feeding, CIMMYT, Conservation Agriculture, Crop Residues, Crop-Livestock, Global, ICRISAT, IITA, Modelling, South Asia, Southern Africa, Wageningen University
Leave a Comment 

Smallholders in mixed crop–livestock systems make up a large proportion of the farming enterprises in developing countries. In these systems, crop residues are an important component of production since they have multiple uses including livestock feed, construction materials, cooking fuel and organic fertilizer for the fields.

Mixed crop–livestock systems are very dynamic and are evolving rapidly in response to external drivers such as demographic pressure, development of urban markets, climate variability and climate change. In addition, recent interest in biofuels has further implications for land use and resource allocation.

This study aims to improve understanding of the tradeoffs among different crop residue uses in cereal-based systems in four regions: millet-, sorghum-, and maize-based systems in West Africa; maize-based systems in eastern Africa, maize- and sorghum-based systems in southern Africa; and wheat/rice-based systems in South Asia. The major trade-off in most systems is the short-term benefit gained from using crop residues to feed livestock versus the longer-term benefit gained from leaving crop residues in the field to improve soil fertility and control erosion.

The study focuses on decision-making processes at the farm and household level and the findings will capture the diversity and contrasts as well as recent changes in crop residue uses at various scales. The results will help decision makers to target technical, institutional and policy options to improve livelihoods, without compromising the long-term sustainability of these farming systems.

Project Flyer

Newsletter July 2010

Newsletter August 2010

Newsletter September 2010

 

August 27, 2010

Is the Brazilian model transforming agriculture replicable/desirable?

Posted by brugerard under Animal Feeding, Brazil, Conservation Agriculture, Embrapa, Food security
1 Comment 

Brazil has revolutionised its own farms. Can it do the same for others?

An interesting article in the Economist on the transformation of farming systems in the cerrado of Brazil. Certainly addressing food security at global level but may be not equity, the future of small scale enterprises and other social and environmental issues…  To put in parallel with technical models linked to land deals (grabs) in Africa?

A related story: the recent and ambitious development partnership plan aiming at strengthening agricultural collaboration between Africa and Brazil which was launched at the 5th FARA/ African Agriculture Science Week in Burkina Faso on 21 July.

 

August 24, 2010

The impact of fodder trees on milk production and income among smallholder dairy farmers in East Africa and the role of research

Posted by brugerard under Animal Feeding, Dairying, Forages, Kenya, Publication | Tags: |
Leave a Comment 

by Place F, Roothaert R, Maina L, Franzel S, Sinja J and Wanjiku J.

Abstract
The objective of this study is twofold, to demonstrate (1) the effects of fodder shrubs on milk production and their value at the household and regional level and (2) the contribution of research by the World Agroforestry Centre toward strengthening the impact of fodder shrubs. The study is a synthesis of previous studies related to dissemination, adoption and impact combined with two new analyses, one quantitatively measuring the impact of the shrubs through econometric analysis and the other a qualitative analysis to better understand constraints on adoption and gender issues related to participation and control of benefits from fodder shrubs. Among the study findings are that fodder shrubs have been widely adopted in East Africa, by an estimated 205,000 smallholder dairy farmers by 2005. Women were active in planting shrubs, as monitoring found almost half of planters to be women. Several studies have confirmed that shrubs do have an impact on milk production. While feeding trials have found that 1 kilogram of calliandra increases milk production by 0.6–0.8 kilograms, a new survey of farmers’ perceptions in Kenya found the effect to be about half as large after controlling for the effects of breeds, season and other feeds. Whether the effect is the lower or higher estimate, the overall impact of theshrubs in terms of additional net income from milk is high, at US$19.7 million to $29.6 million in Kenya alone over the past 15 years.

Full report in pdf

 

June 15, 2010

Fodder fact sheets for Ethiopia

Posted by brugerard under Animal Feeding, Ethiopia, News, Publication | Tags: |
Leave a Comment 

The Fodder Adoption Project has recently published Fodder Fact Sheets for Ethiopia in English, Amharic and Oromiffa

 

June 9, 2010

Can bio-energy replace petroleum in Kenya?

Posted by brugerard under Animal Feeding, Biofuels, Crop Residues, Crop-Livestock, Kenya, Wageningen University
Leave a Comment 

An interesting study by Wageningen University which unfortunately ignores completely livestock in the system, crop residues playing a major as feed. System specific trade-off analyses are certainly needed to assess competitive use of crop residues to either feed animals, maintain soil productivity or produce energy looking both at short and long term impacts on livelihoods and system productivity.

 

« Previous Page — Next Page »