Improved animal feed equals increased dairy incomes in Bihar

Improved animal feed equals increased dairy incomes in Bihar

Anuj Kumar Jha, a very young farmer of Kalyanpur village, Sarairanjan block, Samastipur district of Bihar. He only has 0.5 acre of agricultural land and was unsure about what to do with scarce land and unemployment. All that changed in 2011, when he met ILRI-CSISA people in livestock training and shared his concerns with them. Following that conversation, he was […]

Woman farmer celebrates better life through livestock in Odisha, India

Woman farmer celebrates better life through livestock in Odisha, India

Pravati is the secretary of the Kapila Muni women Milk Society under local government cooperative society (Orissa State Cooperative Milk Producers’ Federation (OMFED)) in Barandua village. She is also the only trained artificial insemination expert providing services to farmers under the ILRI portion of the Cereal System Initiatives for South Asia (CSISA) Project in that village. As the secretary, she […]

Barbara Wieland joins ILRI’s Animal Science for Sustainable Productivity team

Barbara Wieland joins ILRI’s Animal Science for Sustainable Productivity team

Barbara Wieland joined the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) on 5 January 2015 as team leader herd health in the Animal Science for Sustainable Productivity (ASSP) program. Wieland is a Swiss national who graduated as a veterinarian at the University of Bern. She did her post-doctoral fellowship  in  the UK in a joint position with the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) […]

Study shows how Tanzania dairy farmers stand to benefit from improved commercial feeds

A new study has revealed the extent to which dairy farmers in Tanzania are under-served by the feeds manufacturing sector, which despite having adequate capacity, is operating at only 50% of installed capacity. On average, dairy feeds account for just 4% of what is produced by feed manufacturers in Tanzania, with poultry feeds production dominating (96%) the sector. According to […]

Mending our food systems: Upstream and downstream research must work together

Future food security will be achieved by exploiting the power of ‘new biosciences’. The new biosciences include genomics (the study of the structure, function, evolution and mapping of all the heritable traits of an organism), immunology and vaccinology (the science or methodology of vaccine bio-informatics. But without marrying the power of these new biosciences tools and approaches with judicious applications […]

Lessons from research: Delivering results from FoodAfrica

Experts from different scientific fields and international research organizations shared their expertise on food and nutrition security on Monday 16 June, 2014 at the FoodAfrica midterm seminar. The seminar, organized by FoodAfrica co-ordinators MTT Agrifood Research Finland, was held at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Karen Marshall and Stanly Tebug were part of the team that represented the International Livestock […]

Farmer Yohannes smiling all the way to the bank – chicken and eggs sustain Ethiopian farmers

Farmer Yohannes holds his sixteen (16) eggs, five hundred Ethiopian Birr and his brand new savings account book for his first ever bank account with only two entries – the starting balance and one subsequent saving deposit. He is celebrating a successful chicken farming enterprise; a partnership with his wife who helped feed the chickens at the right time and […]

Producing more milk, more meat with less water

    When Sasakawa-Global 2000 and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) provided training and loans to a group of farmers in the Awash Valley, Ethiopia, little did they anticipate what such resources in the hands of hard working, poor, small scale farmers could yield. The farmers in the Awash River Basin were trapped in poverty, earning a mean annual […]

Insurance, carbon capture and markets may support pastoralists

Three options exist to move pastoralists from vulnerable to resilient lifestyles. They are commercialization of livestock systems, payment for ecosystem services and social and financial safety nets including insurance.  This was said by Iain Wright, head of the Ethiopian office of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).  He was addressing about 70 delegates from around the world who are working […]

‘Boni’ scaling the heights to greater success

She steps forward to the podium, her face breaking into her characteristic charming smile.  Her black, short cropped hair compliments her light skin.  Standing at average height, she is comfortable in front of the microphone as she would be in her own kitchen. Her name is Siboniso Moyo, popularly known as ‘Boni’- the regional representative in Southern Africa, for the […]