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September 19, 2011

Multi-actor systems as entry point for action research – Burkina Faso & Ghana

Posted by Diego Valbuena under Crop-Livestock, ILRI, Innovation Systems, Livelihoods, Livestock-Water, West Africa | Tags: , , |
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The Volta Basin Development Challenge (VBDC) aims “to strengthen integrated management of rainwater and small reservoirs so that they can be used equitably for multiple uses.”.

One way by which to do this is to increase crop and livestock productivity through Rainwater Management Strategies (RMS) and improve water productivity at the farm level.

Another solution is to implement Innovation Platforms (IPs) that are multi-actor systems. These platforms provide a mechanism to facilitate learning, sharing and communication amongst value chain actors, including farmers, to promote joint action and stimulate innovation. IPs also create common ground for different actors with varied interests and challenges to identify opportunities to enhance their benefits in a given value chain. Membership is based upon peoples’ interest and need to improve the value chain for their own benefit.

The IP approach involves dynamic and fluid platforms of multiple actors at various levels that support action learning and strategies for scaling up and out. Through the Volta BDC project on integrated management of rainwater (V2), the CPWF is working with the Netherlands Development Organization (SNV) in Burkina Faso and Ghana to develop appropriate innovation platforms around identified crop-livestock value chains.

The complete document is available from the CPWF 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
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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: , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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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.

 

August 31, 2011

SLP coordination update and transition planning

Posted by Diego Valbuena under CIMMYT, ILRI, News | Tags: , |
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This blog has been very quiet for some months. However, the CGIAR Systemwide Livestock Program continues to be active. With the departure of the Coordinator – Bruno Gerard – from the SLP, it is also a time of transition for the team.

Below is a short update from ILRI Deputy Director General John McDermott on the coming period:

“Bruno Gérard will be joining CIMMYT from 1 September 2011 as the Programme Director, Global Conservation Agriculture Programme, based in Ethiopia, and will therefore be ending his tenure as SLP Coordinator.  I am sure you would like to join me in both thanking Bruno for his three years as SLP Coordinator and the tremendous leadership he has shown in moving this joint CGIAR agenda forward, as well as congratulating him on his new appointment.

Given that we are undergoing a transition period during which SLP activities will become fully integrated into the new CGIAR Research Programmes (CRP1.1 and 1.2 in particular), we have put in place some interim arrangements for SLP, which we anticipate will continue to evolve as the CRPs are initiated.

Oversight of SLP coordination and administration: Shirley Tarawali (Theme Director of People, Livestock and the Environment, ILRI, Ethiopia). 

Day to day management of the current SLP regional projects: Diego Valbuena,(Postdoctoral Scientist, SLP, Ethiopia) with backstopping from Alan Duncan (Livestock Scientist, People, Livestock and the Environment Theme, ILRI, Ethiopia)

Wubalem Dejene will continue as the Programme Assistant, dealing with budgeting and administrative issues”.

John McDermott
Chair, Livestock Programme Group
Deputy Director General (Research), ILRI, Nairobi

 

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