Introduction
Livestock
in developing countries contribute up to 80% of agricultural GDP. 600 million rural poor people rely on livestock for their livelihoods.
Two-thirds
of the world's domestic animals are kept in developing countries,
where over 90 percent are owned by rural small holders. These
farmers depend on ruminant animals -camels and water buffaloes
- as well as cattle, sheep and goats, for food, livelihoods,
and an efficient means for preserving natural resources.
The major
constraints to improving livestock productivity in the tropics
and subtropics, where production efficiency is only one-quarter
that in developed regions, include a devastating animal disease
burden, a near-ubiquitous shortage of good-quality livestock
feeds, rapidly diminishing forage and animal biodiversity,
poor access to markets, and unresponsive policy environments.
The CGIAR
investment in livestock for 2005 was approximately US $ 45
million. This represents about 11 percent of the CGIAR's sector
and commodity investment.
International Livestock Research Institute
Disease
and inadequate feed are the biggest constraints to improving
animal agriculture in the developing world. One of the CGIAR
research centers, the International
Livestock Research
Institute (ILRI) based in Kenya and Ethiopia, works
to improve the well-being of people in developing countries
by enhancing the contribution livestock makes to small holder
farming. ILRI scientists work with a wide consortium of partners
in the South and North to develop technological interventions
and other research-based products that increase and sustain
whole-farm productivity. ILRI transfers these products, which
include high-quality information and training, to the national
agricultural research systems of developing countries.
Most of
ILRI's work therefore focuses on improving livestock health
and nutrition, which allows farmers to increase their production
of milk, meat, crops, forages, manure and traction. ILRI also
works to help sustain farm intensification by determining
optimal methods to integrate crop-and-livestock production
systems. These include such methods as 'precision' manuring,
'patchy' grazing, forage legume rotations and grazing animals
on particular crop residues.
Other
ILRI research is working to:
- refine
management systems to enhance the positive and minimize
the negative environ-mental impacts due to the intensification
of livestock-dominated systems (pastoral, agropastoral and
mixed crop-livestock)
- characterize
and conserve the genetic diversity of indigenous tropical
livestock and the forages and crop residues that feed them
- select
and improve tropical livestock, forages and microbes to
increase food production efficiencies, to allow for better
adaptation to harsh production environments, and to take
advantage of changes in demand, production or marketing
systems
- provide
policy options that support equitable and sustainable development
of livelihoods that depend on livestock resources, encouraging
in particular policies designed to reduce hunger and poverty,
improve food security and protect the environment
The major
scientific fields represented at the CGIAR institute are cell
and molecular biology; molecular and quantitative genetics;
immunoparasitology; bovine immunology; epidemiology; animal
science, nutrition and breeding; farming systems, ecology
and socioeconomics.
ILRI is
the convening centre for the System-wide
Livestock Programme which involves 10 other centres
in a collaborative effort to improve feed utilization and
natural resource management in crop-livestock systems.
ILRI's
research products include maps of bovine and protozoan genomes,
improved vaccines and diagnostics, integrated disease-control
strategies, economic and systems models, policy analyses,
GIS-based decision-support systems, a tropical forage genebank,
technologies for incorporating forages onto small--holder
farms, systems that improve feed supplies for small-holder
dairy producers, feeding strategies for multiple purpose livestock
(dairy-draught cows), and animal traction technologies that
improve the productivity of heavy clay soils.
This research
addresses primarily small holder crop-livestock systems in
arid, humid, and highland agroecological zones and in transition
from subsistence to a market economy. ILRI's research products
and related outputs are disseminated through an outreach programme
that works to strengthen collaborations with and capacities
within the national agricultural research systems of developing
countries.
Multipurpose Tropical Grasses and Legumes:
The Tropical Forages Project
at CIAT
The steep,
erosion-proned hillsides, forest margins, and low fertility
savannah soils in tropical Latin America, South East Asia,
and Africa have long constrained productivity in smallholder
crop-livestock systems. In Latin America, as much as 70 percent
of agricultural land in the tropics is pasture, and nearly
80 percent of livestock production and 40 percent of milk
production takes place on small farms.
An estimated
one half of this pasture land is in an advanced state of environmental
degradation. Traditional means of regenerating soil fertility
through shifting cultivation have become progressively less
sustainable, as fallow periods become shorter in the face
of population growth and other pressures. The same pressures
have displaced livestock toward less fertile pasture areas
characterized by native forage species of low nutritional
value and very limited potential for intensification.
The Tropical
Forages Project at the Center for International Tropical
Agriculture (CIAT) works on environmentally sound meat and
dairy production based on combinations of highly productive,
highly nutritious grasses and legumes. The product of decades
of research at CIAT, these forage hybrids are designed to
be multi-purpose - delivering superior, highly digestable
protein for increased animal production while contributing
to sustainable land use by regenerating degraded soils, replenishing
nitrogen, and improving soil's capacity to retain water.They
are highly tolerant of acid soils, which frees up more optimal
lands for crop production, and enables producers to intensify
livestock production in marginal conditions.
CIAT holds
a global mandate for tropical forages research with focus
on
humid and subhumid environments in the CGIAR, and its genetic
resources
collection includes some 22,000 entries on which researchers
can draw in designing combinations of plants for specific
environmental niches and types of livestock in prevailing
crop-livestock systems. Superior forage plants are obtained
through direct selection among germplasm accessions and, in
specific cases, through plant breeding. In addition to traits
that improve livestock nutrition and rehabilitate degraded
soils, CIAT scientists and their partners engage in strategic
research on plant resistance to pests, diseases, and tolerance
to infertile soils and drought conditions. They are also investigating
the potential benefits of a recently discovered relationship
between fungal endophyets with tropical grasses. CIAT's development
of forage databases, geographic information system-based targeting
tools, and new participatory methods is geared to making forage
technology more accessible to farmers.
Sources:
Getting
the Better of Global Change: CIAT in Perspective
2000-2001
Tropical
Forages: A Multipurpose Genetic Resource
CIAT in Focus
Pathways
Out of Poverty: CIAT in Perspective 1998 - 1999
Technical
Advisory Committee. CGIAR Priorities and
Strategies for Resource Allocation during 1998-2000. 1997.
International
Livestock Research Institute.
Fact Sheets, 1998.
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