September 7, 2011
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 6, 2011
The co-location of WCCA and FSD, with input from Landcare, provides a great opportunity to explore the application of conservation agriculture practices and principles in a systems context with broader environmental awareness. The common objective is the design of more productive, economic, and sustainable farming systems to meet the challenges of expanding population, global change, and environmental degradation.
Our objective in program design has been to provide a stimulating Congress for all, regardless of participant’s background – high or low resource, scientist or farmer, and regardless of speciality –Conservation Agriculture, Farming Systems Design or Landcare. By mixing traditional oral/poster paper presentations, with workshops, “so what” sessions and the field day we have tried to balance specialist requirements with opportunities for broader discussion between people with different backgrounds and disciplinary perspectives.
Pdf document available from the WCCA website
September 2, 2011
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
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.
September 1, 2011
This study reviews evidence on the practice, outcomes, and future potential of CA in sub-Saharan Africa as an approach to increasing food security, alleviating poverty, conserving biodiversity and ecosystem services, and supporting climate change adaptation and mitigation at local to global scales. The study was conducted by EcoAgriculture Partners in conjunction with CARE, WWF, and the World Agroforestry Centre to assist CARE, WWF, and their Alliance in developing an Africa-wide strategy for incorporating CA more effectively into their projects, programs, and policy advocacy work. Research methods included an extensive literature review, interviews, field visits to four CA projects in Tanzania and Mozambique, and critical analysis of these data to assess the most promising opportunities for CA in sub-Saharan Africa.
Pdf document available from CA2Africa website
August 31, 2011
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
March 29, 2011
The Technical Consultation on Integrated Crop-Livestock Systems for Development reported in this document was the culmination of a collaborative process in which FAO, IICA, EMBRAPA and IFAD and
many individuals from a number of organizations participated over several months to ensure its success. The Consultation process was initiated by the Office of the Assistant Director General of the Agriculture Department of the Food and Agriculture Organization (AG-FAO) of the United Nations. The process comprised two parts – an electronic Consultation during February and March 2010 in which some 300 individuals from a number of organizations participated, and a face-to-face Technical Consultation that was held at the EMBRAPA Maize and Sorghum Institute in Sete Lagaos, Brazil, from 23-26 May 2010. Institutions that helped to plan and organize the Consultation included: FAO, IICA/PROCITROPICOS, EMBRAPA, IFAD, FARA, ICRAF, ILRI, CGIAR-SLP.
Pdf document is available from FAO website
February 8, 2011
CA2Africa project (Conservation Agriculture in AFRICA: Analysing and Foreseeing its Impact – Comprehending its Adoption) is seeking to understand why Conservation Agriculture (CA) techniques have not been adopted widely throughout Africa. The results of the project will be used to tailor future CA efforts to local needs. The objective of the project is, therefore, to examine the agro-ecological, socio-economic and institutional conditions that determine success or failure of CA.
Read CA2Africa Newsletter
January 31, 2011
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
January 25, 2011
SLP projects are presently conducting household surveys in 9 different countries. To gather and/or enter those data we are exploring the use of CAPI (computer assisted personal interviewing) to replace paper based interviews. The advantages of CAPI over PAPI (paper and pencil interviewing) are: faster flow of data between enumerators and regional/central offices, skip the entering data process, an improved error-tracking process and reduced use of paper. Yet, several challenges need to be addressed, including: capacity building, acquisition of technological gadgets, battery requirements and establish/use reliable communication channels to transfer information.
Two main tools have been identified: Surveybe and CSPro. Surveybe is a commercial, very user-friendly software package. CSPro is a public-domain software hosted by US Census Bureau. We want to assess both software packages to see whether they cover our needs. We might not have the resources to implement computerized surveys in all the regions for the present projects. Still, we will try to test it in East Africa and by developing the questionnaire in CSPro, we will be able to use the platform across regions to enter the data gathered on paper in the field. CSPro was tested this week in Ethiopia (see photo below).
Hailu Diressie (MSc student from Wageningen University) interviewing a farmer in a village nearby Ginchi
January 14, 2011
The corporate report looks ‘back to the future’—to the thousand million farmers practicing small-scale mixed crop-and-livestock agriculture in poor countries—the kind of seemingly old-fashioned family farming systems that have become so fashionable in recent years among those wanting to reform the industrial food systems of rich countries.
The report synthesizes results of a study, ‘Drivers of change in crop-livestock systems and their potential impacts on agro-ecosystem services and human well-being to 2030,’ being published in book form in 2011. The study was a collaborative endeavour conducted by a group of scientists in centres belonging to the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). The study was funded and coordinated by the CGIAR’s Systemwide Livestock Programme and led by Mario Herrero, a livestock systems analyst at the International Livestock Research Institute.
The SLP study shows that it is not big efficient farms on high potential lands but rather one billion small ‘mixed’ family farmers tending rice paddies or cultivating maize and beans while raising a few chickens and pigs, a herd of goats or a cow or two on relatively extensive rainfed lands who feed most of the world’s poor people today, and is likely to play the biggest role in global food security over the next several decades, as world population grows and peaks (at 9 billion or so) with the addition of another 3 billion people.
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