Month: June 2018

The mixed systems are a source of income for people in the developing world and they play a substantial role in enhancing food security as they provide most of the staples and feed resources and they are reported to produce 90 percent of the world’s milk supply and 80 per cent of the meat from ruminants (Herrero et al., 2013).

As I have mentioned earlier that my work is based on targeting climate-resilient feeds and forages for the smallholder mixed farming system of East Africa. To achieve this, I am going to map feed constraints (feed constraints which hamper livestock productivity) and adoption factors (factors influencing the adoption or uptake of climate-resilient feeds and forages by smallholder farmers). Mapping the feed constraints and adoption factors will produce maps which will show changes in forage production under current and future climate conditions. Thereafter, areas which will show vulnerability to current and future climate conditions will be areas of interest. With this being said,today I am in CIAT where I will be doing the 'GIS mapping' part of my project. I will be working hand in hand with Dr. An Notenbaert, John Mutua and Tyler Breen. I am so grateful to CIAT for hosting me for the coming few days.

Mixed farming systems are systems in which crops and livestock are integrated on the same farm, they are also termed crop-livestock farming systems (Thornton and Herrero, 2014). In these systems, crops sustain livestock productivity by providing feed in a form of crop residues, while livestock provide inputs such as manure and traction for subsequent crops (Duncan et al., 2016).

I came across a really interesting article to read on the CCAFS blog. Bruce Campbell (CCAFS), Philip Thornton (CCAFS), Svend Christensen (University of Copenhagen), Ishmael Sunga (SACAU), and Dawit Solomon (CCAFS) share their thoughts on how agricultural advisory services at global scale can be instrumental in achieving the SDGs. The article lists five key issues around agricultural advisory which need to be addressed in order to reach half a billion farmers and achieve the SDGs by 2030.
The key issues include:
1. Private sector involvement
2. Market-orientated and demand-driven advisories
3. Digitized information
4. Data ownership
5. Bundling

To read more on this, check out the link below. Happy read!
https://ccafs.cgiar.org/blog/agricultural-advisory-services-global-scale#.WyJWIUxuJPZ

Molasses is the syrupy by-product of the production process to extract sugar from sugar beets.The residual liquid that is left over is an excellent source of energy for livestock.

It is one of the good feed resource which farmers can adopt to improve livestock productivity. Supplementing poor quality hay or pastures with molasses increases digestion of roughages, improve palatability thereby promoting higher feed intake and a rapid energy release (Kemp and Nougher, 1999) (Broderick and Radloff, 2004). Feeding molasses to dairy animals has been reported to increase milk production (Senthilkumar et al., 2016).In addition, a study to demonstrate profitability of enhanced livestock nutrition reported that supplementing crop residues with cotton seedcake, dried grains and molasses resulted to a daily weight gain of 0.67 kg on cattle fattening. The study also reported an increase in income on the sales of live and slaughtered animals due to the increase in weight (Ayoola and Ayoade, 1992)

"Articles in the Bibliography section"

In low and middle income countries, land allocation for cultivation of high quality forage crops such as legumes for livestock feeding is given least priority among farmers due to the growing population which demand the land for growing crops for food as well as building settlements. As a result, land availability and poor quality feed eventually constrain livestock productivity. In addition to the land availability challenge, climate change causes extreme variabilities in rainfall patterns and temperatures which affect livestock productivity through lowering the quality and quantity of forages. Therefore, farmers need inexpensive alternatives of feed resources which can be used to mitigate quality constrains, enhance digestion of low quality feed resource, thereby improving livestock productivity.

Climate change negatively affects the livestock productivity through decreasing the quality, quantity and availability of feed and forage. Scarcity of feed and forage is a challenge that is inevitable and propels the need to target climate-resilient feed resources to improve livestock productivity and improve farmers' income. Therefore, the feed assessment tool (FEAST/Techfit) presents feed interventions which have a potential to mitigate feed scarcity and feed quality constrains. These interventions include:
1. Fodder trees and shrubs which is a good intervention where feed quality constrains livestock productivity.

2. Short duration fodder crops such as maize, oats, sorghum, are a good option in areas where feed scarcity is the major constrain for livestock productivity.

Check out the link below to find out more about the feed interventions
https://feeding-innovation.ilri.org/2017/02/27/feast-feed-sheets/