To guide detailed development of our strategy, we have developed a ‘storyline’ setting out our overall thinking (see below). We developed it as a way to guide our attention and focus on the issues we face in addressing livestock development. Alongside this, we are looking at the ways we do research, the partnerships and approaches we use, and how to make these more effective.
See a summary of the feedback received so far
Please read the storyline below and give us your comments and feedback :
- Do you agree with the starting diagnosis – that ILRI needs to expand its scope, focus and targets, and the reasons why? Tell why you disagree and what you disagree with!
- How about the three approaches and the system typologies underpinning them – ‘inclusive growth’, ‘low growth’ and ‘growth with externalities’. Do these reflect the livestock development world as you know it? Is it an appropriate way to generally organize and conceptualize our work? Are there any missing elements we overlooked? What would improve it?
- Are there any gaps or failures in the logic that need to be addressed? Please suggest any specific examples or cases we might use to support our arguments.
ILRI strategy storyline: ‘Solutions for a Transforming Livestock Sector’
We developed the text below as a way to guide our attention and focus on the issues we face in addressing livestock development. Alongside this, we are looking at the ways we do research, the partnerships and approaches we use, and how to make these more effective.
- Our past strategy ‘Pathways out of poverty’ has been a useful framework
ILRI’s strategy for the past ten years (‘livestock – a pathway out of poverty’) was based on a simple but insightful conceptual framework to understand the potential roles of livestock in poverty reduction. It describes three main opportunities – or pathways – to enhance the role of livestock in providing a pathway out of poverty, summarized as ‘securing critical assets to the livelihoods of the poor’, ‘sustainably improving their livestock productivity for food and income’, and ‘linking livestock keepers to markets’ to increase the value from their production.
These pathways were particularly relevant in the context of the rapidly rising demand for animal-source foods in the developing world, termed the Livestock Revolution. The challenge to ensure these three pathways could reduce poverty while also responding to the Livestock Revolution helped to put ILRI’s research into context and identified opportunities by which its research could better support the pathways.
- However, this framework needs to take into account changes ongoing and projected in the global context
Pursuing the pathways out of poverty has sharpened ILRI’s research focus on interventions and institutional strategies for pro-poor livestock development. Our experience over the past decade, however, shows that achieving research impact across the pathways is a continuing challenge.
During the past years, we have observed that the context for livestock development is rapidly evolving, driven by the continued Livestock Revolution, particularly in Asia, and a greater recognition that the ongoing transformation needs to be nuanced in relation to the roles of smallholders (and thus the pathways out of poverty), their diverse economic situations and the different livestock commodities they produce.
Meanwhile, the food price crisis and heightened volatility has raised concerns about having sufficient food supplies into the future and renewed threats of food insecurity for the poor, particularly in the face of increasing land and water constraints. The private sector in developing country food economies has become much more dynamic, creating new types of opportunities for smallholder livestock production and marketing systems and means for market development, but also causing rapid structural changes in scales and quality of livestock commodity production, marketing and consumption. And pressure to raise animal production is increasingly weighed against its impact on the environment, health issues and climate change.
The combined challenges of growing demand for food, continued rural poverty, climate change and scarcity of land, energy and water require changes in livestock production systems, i.e. livestock production needs to be highly productive and highly sustainable.
- We need to expand the scope of the pathways out of poverty and its focus on the poor livestock keeper, to a wider vision of livestock commodities in developing country food systems and how they can evolve to improve food security while reducing poverty in a way that is environmentally sound and has positive human health outcomes
These trends calls for us to redefine the targets of ILRI’s research.
Our past strategy has focused on poor livestock keepers and using their livestock assets as a means out of poverty. The focus must now expand to meet the future challenges of addressing the role of livestock to address food security, poverty, environmental and health issues – it must be inclusive.
Based on the diversity of livestock systems and their likely transformation in the coming decade, three main approaches emerge, characterized in relation to the potential livestock sector growth scenarios (these largely derive from a recent High-Level Consultation for a Global Livestock Agenda to 2020 co-convened by ILRI and the World Bank).
Inclusive Growth Systems
The first approach is to develop sustainable food systems that deliver key animal-source nutrients to the poor, while facilitating the structural transition from a majority of smallholder households keeping livestock in low-productive systems to a livestock sector raising productive animals in more efficient, intensive and market-linked systems. These are the systems that currently provide significant animal and crop products in the developing world and where there is likely to be the most growth, and the greatest opportunity to influence and empower that growth. In some regions, this transition is occurring relatively quickly through the development of more specialized livestock farms, but in many areas of Africa and Asia, the transition is happening slowly and will be long term. Likewise, marketing systems associated with smallholder systems are largely informal, even though elements of modern supply chains exert an increasing influence. When viewed as value chains, opportunities can be identified to improve production and supply chain efficiency, employment creation and benefits captured by the poor.
The goal is for the transition to be as broad-based as possible, allowing for those who can – and those who may already be advanced – to continue on the path to sustainable, highly productive and resource efficient small-holder systems, including in some cases, intensification and specialization to do so, and for others to participate in different non-production elements of the value chain (such as trading, processing, input or service provision) or to accumulate sufficient capital to exit from agriculture without falling back into poverty. The role of research is to inform, devise and enable the up-scaling of interventions, organizational strategies and policies that will support such inclusive growth and agricultural transition that maximizes the well-being of people now and in the future, addresses the growing threat of a supply gap whilst addressing environmental and human health challenges.
Low Growth Systems
But it is not likely to be feasible to create the same levels of opportunities for all poor livestock keepers, especially in areas where productivity growth may be limited by remoteness or ecological and social constraints, such as in some pastoral systems or areas with slow demand growth or chronically low market access. In these situations where smallholder livestock systems may face few incentives or possibilities to improve productivity or market participation, a second more nuanced approach will still look for incremental growth and productivity options within the constraints, but more emphasis will be given to enhancing the role of livestock for resilience, both in terms of ecosystem services and household/community livelihoods. Livestock will continue to play a strategic role for household food security and social protection, and research can support this role through technologies and institutions to protect livestock assets of the poor and their contribution to stewarding the natural resources upon which they rely.
Growth with externalities
A third approach recognizes that in some intensifying small-scale livestock systems, dynamic markets and increased human resource capacity are already driving strong growth in productivity and livelihoods, but may give rise to negative impacts on environmental services, or human health, and may also be leading to a highly stratified structure of production, with the resource poor being left behind . For example, many smallholders raising pigs in Vietnam may create pollution problems for local water supplies, while also rapidly intensifying production and marketing in ways which expose themselves and consumers to increased health risks. In these areas, zoonotic diseases may also be of importance. The approach in these settings will also be multi-faceted, with strong emphasis on understanding and anticipating the potential negative impacts of small-scale livestock intensification, and conducting research will address the incentives, technologies and strategies for market-driven options for mitigation risks to health and environment, but also organizational and product innovations to allow the resource poor to play some part in changing markets and to comply with increasing market standards.
Our current thinking is that ILRI will devote the greater share of its research resources to the first challenge of supporting inclusive growth and transition as this has the potential of benefiting the largest number of poor, both poor producers and poor consumers, as smallholder production increases.
The second and third challenges remain important, very strategic components of the ILRI research portfolio. Regional variation in economies, policy environments, and production systems will determine the relative emphasis among the three approaches in specific regions.
Please give us your comments and feedback :
- Do you agree with the starting diagnosis – that ILRI needs to expand its scope, focus and targets, and the reasons why? Tell why you disagree and what you disagree with!
- How about the three approaches and the system typologies underpinning them – ‘inclusive growth’, ‘low growth’ and ‘growth with externalities’. Do these reflect the livestock development world as you know it? Is it an appropriate way to generally organize and conceptualize our work? Are there any missing elements we overlooked? What would improve it?
- Are there any gaps or failures in the logic that need to be addressed? Please suggest any specific examples or cases we might use to support our arguments.
ILRI Strategy Development 2012 
Borrowing from ILRI’s Mario Herrero and his colleagues at CIAT, you might call this strategy refresh of ILRI’s ‘LivestockPLUS’ for its focus on ‘inclusive growth’, ‘green growth’ and ‘healthy growth’ of developing-world livestock systems.
If I understand the storyline developed so far, ILRI’s agenda will expand its focus on enhancing pathways out of poverty—principally by securing the LIVESTOCK ASSETS of the poor (largely through better animal health and genetics), sustainably increasing LIVESTOCK PRODUCTIVITY (through better animal production), and enhancing LIVESTOCK MARKETS of the poor (through better access to animal markets).
Query: If ILRI is expanding rather than replacing its current long-term strategy, how do all the components of the current strategy fit into the expanded strategy?
Some rephrasing to consider:
ILRI’s new agenda will focus on enhancing:
(1) INCLUSIVE GROWTH and smart, sustainable transitions in fast-changing livestock systems of the poor
(2) GREEN GROWTH (or RESILIENT GROWTH) for better resilience and environmental stewardship in pastoral and other slower growth livestock systems of the poor
(3) HEALTHY GROWTH of intensifying livestock systems of the poor to reduce risks of environmental damage and human disease.
A few suggestions:
Consider replacing references to ‘low-growth livestock systems’ with ‘slower growth’ livestock systems’ (e.g., the ‘low-growth’ pastoral systems of the Horn provide 90% of the meat consumed in this region—and some would argue that in some respects the pace of change occurring in these pastoral systems can match that of many intensifying systems).
Consider adding improving the efficiencies (EFFICIENT GROWTH) of livestock systems of the poor to improve productivity while simultaneously reducing environmental damage.
Consider including, as central to the storyline, changes in how we do research as well as in what research we do.
Dear ILRI
As an opinion survey I wonder how you will weight comments; for this reason I will be brief.
1) Within the three approaches, I ‘vote’ for “Low Growth Systems” as this is closest to ILDI’s mandate as I interpret it, and is possibly of most benefit. The ILRI ‘preferred’ strategy (the first one) seems to be more of the same – the words even suggest this – and this locks livestock into a monetized system, yet ILRI’s and IFAD’s own documentation indicates that small integrated farms rely on livestock and keep 2 billion persons fed rather than becoming immigrants to cities. The group for which the focus on ‘poverty’ is most relevant is the rapidly growing urban poor who are vulnerable to food price rises and reject food – more hazardous for livestock than other foods. China’s policies for urban groups may prove more useful than is currently considered in this respect. Rabbits and other species are of rising importance to the poor.
2) As noted in our EPMR of ILRI, Asia has the most livestock, the most people, the most poor and the lowest ILRI presence. A new approach is warranted rather than that used in ILRI in its slow emergence from Africa to be a global centre. A means of attracting some of the many good animal scientists of Asia into ILRI programs, without having them relocate, remains an innovation that ILRI could well accept – if donors can be coaxed into a different approach.
Offered in the spirit of cooperation.
Lindsay Falvey
The three working issues in your collection are much focused on technical aspect. If you can revolutionised the livestock development working on those issues then the problems on non-technical aspects may be less important. However, the benefit from addressing those problem results slowly.
Current most challenging issue in livestock sector is invasion of pasture land for other uses including environmental conservation. The invading agencies (both national and international) claimed that they are helping poor and other local people for sustainable development. In practice these agencies are providing flash incentives in the name of sustainable development and working to weaken local institutions. The land grabbing agencies have also used national elite groups by providing incentives. The uses of elites and flash incentives have made local people powerless to understand and act against the oppressive actions.
Even some international agencies (e.g. IUCN, WWF and other reforestation agencies) are involved on invading the pasture lands. Due to growing criticism working at front line these agencies are working now from backgrounds.I strongly believe the multilateral organizations including ILRI have well understood this problem.
If ILRI is really dedicated working for marginalised community that reducing the land grabbing is the most important working issues. ILRI work seriously on the issue and communicate effectively at international forum it could make considerable difference to the marginalised communities. I would like to know your opinion and experience why is the ILRI is not actively working on the issue ? Is there any hidden policy?
Thank you for providing opportunity to put my opinion and query?
With Regard
B. Dhakal
I take exception to the suggestion by Dhakal that IUCN is invading pasture lands or is a reforestation agency, but I do understand where the perception comes from. I hope Dhakal will take time to visit the website of the World Initiative for Sustainable Pastoralism that IUCN has run for the last 6 years – as a deliberate step to reverse some of the anti-pastoralist attitudes.
But this minor disagreement aside, I agree with most of the points raised through these various comments. I certainly strongly endorse the recommendation of Susan MacMillan to put women at the forefront of the livestock development agenda, and equity more generally since many livestock keepers are politically marginalised within their country. It is hard to escape the fact that the livestock sector is under developed because of underlying ethnic issues.
I also endorse the recommendation to optimize the long term benefits of livestock to human health and wellbeing within a broader ecological or socioeconomic context. This is the background of IUCN’s interest in pastoralism. Reiterating my other comment, there needs to be a significant distinction between smallholder livestock production and pastoralism, even though I recognise that this is not always an easy distinction to make. When you look at the extent of rangelands in Asia and Africa (significantly more than half the land mass) then to neglect rangelands production is to neglect one of the principle reasons that the livestock sector is so important.
Dear Jimmy,
It has been and always will be marketing and land use issues, not production or valuation problems, that have held back the modernization of the agricultural sector, in general, in developing countries. Only after customs and laws have changed to allow for 1.) larger farm sizes through well-functioning land-markets and 2.) well functioning markets for the products of these farms will production and valuation issues become important. Where countries are held back by these other problems, land owners and farmers lack the economic incentives to produce in an economically efficient manner, or to put it another way a scrawny ox producing work at 25% of its maximum efficiency is optimal for a farmer who on a hectare of land and whose primary production is for his own household.
This is not news, is it?
So, if you ask me, focus your research in general on these land use and marketing issues. Develop models that are tied to primary local data and can simulate the impact of land use and marketing policies on household production. The hard part is how to model the institutional changes, other than by snapping one’s fingers as one moves from a no-market to a competitive market scenario. That suggests that, in general, the models need to be able to simulate how real policy instruments and their costs affect farm and market-level behaviour, using some kind of response functions that link policies to on-farm agent actions.
That’s where I think the money ought to go.
Good luck.
Regards,
Mac Callaway
Mac Callaway, Ph.D
Senior Economist
UNEP-RISØ Centre
P.O. Box 49
DK-4000 Roskilde, Denmark
Institute of Management Engineering
Risø Campus
Technical University of Denmark – DTU
Building 110, P.O. Box 49
DK-4000 Roskilde, Denmark
http://www.risoe.dtu.dk
I agree with the statement that livestock R4D needs to be expanded from its present scope towards a wider angle, including efficiency increases in a transition towards market-oriented livestock production. This will also raise opportunities to better link the livestock sector to other agricultural sectors, like cropping systems that provide more “industrial” inputs for more efficient livestock systems. What I missed in the above is the linkage between livestock and bio-energy, e.g. biogas, and how, again, to integrate these systems into their wider systems and to create more synergies between cropping, livestock and energy.
Looking at the three foci – inclusive, low and externality-bound growth, with all the concentration on the first and the last that is taking place in livestock research globally – many look at higher efficiency, and just as many look at externalities (in particular in the wake of GHG-discussions), the middle point – the low growth group, should not be forgotten, as it is there where the greatest challenges but also the greatest pro-poor/pro vulnerable benefits lie for an institution like ILRI
Steffen Abele
Dear Dr. Smith, Dear Jimmy,
Having visited the ILRI campus a couple of times in recent years let me extend my congratulations on your appointment to the DG position – I know that you can look forward to a challenging but hugely interesting time in your life! I would also like to complement you on your effort to seek some outside comments relating to the development of a new ILRI strategic plan. Here are two modest suggestions.
• Within the context of agriculture for international development and recognizing that most developing country ‘farmers’ are smallholders with many husbanding both crops and livestock, let me suggest that some of the ILRI research effort could be aimed at identifying specific ways that smallholder livestock and plant agriculture can be complementary or even synergistic. For example, as one who advocates for more research attention to high value horticultural crops for development, I have long felt that for poor smallholders unable to purchase chemical fertilizers for a garden growing a high value crop the use of manure from contained livestock that are fed (at least in part) with waste horticultural produce is a synergism that receives too little respect.
• Secondly, allow me to share my bias about the relative importance of ‘increasing productivity’ of meat production vs studying how livestock can in other ways improve nutrition and reduce poverty amongst the rural poor. I come down on the side of wanting to reduce the environmental impact and avoid the energy use inefficiency that comes with intensive production of animals for slaughter. I would rather emphasize looking for ways to optimize the long term benefits of livestock to human health and wellbeing within a broader ecological or socioeconomic context.
If you wish you can most certainly discount these comments as coming from a plant science guy who probably needs to know a lot more about animal agriculture!
Best wishes,
Norman
Norman E. Looney, PhD, FASHS, FISHS
Past President, International Society for Horticultural Science
Principal Scientist Emeritus
Pacific Agri-Food Research Centre
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada
4200 Highway 97 S. (P.O. Box 5000)
Summerland, B.C. Canada V0H 1Z0
Phone: (1) 250-494-6361; Fax: (1) 250-494-0755
International Cell: (1) 250-460-1211
Board Chair
The Global Horticulture Initiative
c/o FAO-AGP Plant Production and Protection Division
Room C-792, Vialle delle Terme di Caracalla
00153 Rome (www.globalhort.org)
On of the key issue you could address is “livestock-environment interactions in the interface of protected areas”, as most of the important rangelands are in the vicinity o the Pas in Africa with strong interactions with wildlife.
SM
I am quite happy to participate in this survey that collects stakeholders view. Inaddition to the three strategies mentioned, I would be happy if you can focus on applied research focuses in Eastern Africa: 1. Animal feed development and management 2. Improving the animal health services (policies and structures, management of drugs and service delivery,capacitation of schools of Veterinary and animal sciences etc.) and 3. Implementing disease control strategies to the major tropical neglected zoonotic diseases are the priority issues that need immediare action.
With best regards
Wim Andriesse, Africa Desk Manager at Wageningen International, Wageningen University and Research Cnetre, The Netherlands;
As a relative outsider -as far as livestock production systems are concerned- I do like to share my appreciation for ILRI to sollicit external inputs into its strategy development. Therefore, a few modest sugestions from my side as follows:
1. ILRI’s current strategy was brought to us under the ambitious banner of ‘Livestock-A pathway out of poverty’. Accepting that -over the ten-years that have past since- new societal, economic and environmental issues have emerged, as well as new scientific insights, one would nevertheless like to be informed on what exactly ILRI has achieved under that banner: Has ‘livestock’ indeed created a pathway out of poverty, to what extent, and which approaches have been most succesful? Or, if you like: Which approaches have not worked.
2. Such an analysis could then be used to target further research and development efforts on the three categories that are being distinguished under the new strategy: ‘Inclusive growth systems’, ‘Low-growth systems’ and ‘Growth with externalities’. Apart from the somewhat ‘concealing’ semantics that is being applied, it is good to see that in all three categories much emphasis is being placed on the pull factor of markets. Some of my fellow commentors picked that point out as well. However, I would think that the market-pull is not working really for the Low-growth livestock sector, much along the lines in which it is not really working for crop production systems in a part of society which I always characterize as ‘marginalized people on marginalized lands’. Grossly overstating on emight say that these people are under-educated, have extremely little access to general as well as agro-related services and land, and very poor linkages with mat=rket-economies. Small improvements may be possibble here, yes, but I do think that -upon succesful market-oriented development in the two other categories, this low-growth sector will be negatively affected further and will require alternative sources of income (e.g. eco-tourism but looking at the spatial scale and the sheer numbers of people involved, I have my doubts -or governmental support: Safety nets and other social/societal security legislation.
3. Last point I want to make is the need to look at interactions/competion between smallholder livestock systems and other land use(r)s, in particular high external input systems in both crop (bio-fuels!) and livestock cultivation, or nature conservation (Peace Parks!!). The issue was raised by colleagues in their comments, as well.
Hope useful, all the best.
Wikm
I recommend putting women front and centre of the new strategy. See, for example, the latest from Roget Thurow:
Commentary – The Last Mile: Reaching Women Farmers, 17 May 2012
http://globalfoodforthought.typepad.com/global-food-for-thought/2012/05/commentary-the-last-mile-reaching-women-farmers.html
By Roger Thurow
Roger Thurow, author of the new book, The Last Hunger Season: A Year in an African Farm Community on the Brink of Change, is senior fellow for global agriculture and food policy at The Chicago Council on Global Affairs. This was originally posted on the InterAction Blog.
Go to the end of most any dirt road in rural Africa and you will see a smallholder farmer, most likely a woman, tending her crops.
Those farmers, so neglected and marginalized over the years, will be front and center in the discussions of food security this weekend, at the Chicago Council’s Symposium on Advancing Food and Nutrition Security in Washington DC on Friday and at the G8 meetings at nearby Camp David. There will be declarations of renewed commitments and new partnerships to improve agricultural development in the poorest countries of the world.
And then what?
“We want to make sure that they are connected all the way into the field. It is the problem of the last mile,” says Ritu Sharma, the co-founder and president of Women Thrive Worldwide.
Paul Schickler, the president Pioneer Hi-Bred, a DuPont business, nodded his head enthusiastically. “We are the last mile,” he said. “My business is unique. We touch that last person who puts the seeds in the ground.” Going that last mile, bringing the benefits of agricultural development to the farmers at the end of the road, is the challenge within the challenge. The overarching challenge confronting the world is the need to double food production by 2050 to meet the demands of a global population that is growing in both size and prosperity. The smallholder farmers of Africa and other developing regions of the world are indispensable if any success is to be achieved. The challenge of going the last mile is creating the conditions for these smallholder farmers to be as productive as possible, so they can eliminate the hunger season and feed their families throughout the year and add to the global food supply.
Since the majority of these farmers are women, this will mean not only overcoming decades of neglect of smallholder farmers in general, but also overturning generations of entrenched gender inequality. This inequality is evident in women generally having less access to the essential elements of farming: land ownership, seed and fertilizer, capital and credit, education and training.
“If we are going to ensure global food security and make tangible progress, women farmers are an essential part of the solution,” Paul said.
“And it is important that we ask them what they need,” Ritu added. “The solutions need to be in sync with women farmers.”
“Giving them what they need, not what we think is right,” Paul agreed. He pointed to a rural education center that Pioneer built on the advice of the farmers; the company then turned over the center to the local village.
The two leaders on the agricultural development front came together for a Chicago Council conversation shortly before the Symposium. They are both members of the advisory group of the Council’s Global Agricultural Development Initiative.
One of the things women farmers say they most need is time. More time. Labor saving devices are at a premium. Like irrigation pumps that can bring water to the fields rather than the women having to haul it in buckets balanced on their heads. Like machines that grind the grains rather than the women having to do the arduous and tedious pounding themselves. Like better seeds that increase the yields of their work.
Just hauling water from a stream or a well, Ritu said, can consume the equivalent of 6 months of full time labor. It has been said, she noted, that the real energy crisis in the rural areas of the developing world is women’s time. “They work 17 to 18 hours a day. The extra time they need to learn, to improve, comes out of something else. It is less time for water hauling, less time to care for sick children. Only then can they spend more time on their crops.” She added: “Women farmers are agnostic about what is the right solution. They want to haveaccess to all the solutions.”
The solutions are so myriad, Paul said, “that no one can do it by themselves.” Public-private partnerships are critical, he maintained, be they cooperative ventures with local schools, agricultural research institutions, seed producers, or 4-H clubs. “We need to have that collaboration,” he said.
And, he added, they must be long-term programs that deal with the entire agricultural value chain at the same time. For instance, efforts that increase the access of women farmers to better seeds and fertilizer and farming advice, and thus lead to greater harvests, are wonderful. But they must also, at the same time, solve the problem of the woeful storage facilities of most smallholder farmers and the inefficient markets that are often unable to absorb any surplus production. “It will be a real tragedy if all this (production) rots,” Ritu said.
It is a matter of going the last mile literally and figuratively. “It’s really important to expand our lens,” Ritu added, “to see what’s happening on a bigger scale.”
One of those bigger scale items is ensuring that women farmers have greater access to land. In many countries in Africa, culture and tradition preserve land ownership for men.
“What we’re seeing is more women having legal rights to land. Next will be inheritance rights,” Ritu noted. “When women have joint title or sole title to land is when incentive begins. It makes no sense to improve the land if someone can just take it away.”
Paul embraced the importance of creating incentive, noting it applies to large corporations as well as to women smallholder farmers. As land rights spread, so does respect for the rule of law, which is particularly attractive to investors. “With rule of law and a stable investment climate, businesses will invest and invest aggressively,” he said.
Women owning land has benefits far beyond the field, reaching into the house and into the community. “Women having assets lessens potential for violence,” Ritu said. “You see women playing a greater role in the household, in financial discussions.” And in those discussions, women will generally demand that a greater share of the income goes to caring for their children.
“Let’s make sure,” Ritu said, “that at the last mile, women farmers do get their fairshare of the land.”
Ram Deka – ILRI Office in Guwahati, Assam, India
I fully agree that ILRI needs to expand its scope, focus and targets because of the upcoming scenario of climate change, emerging diseases, growing concern for food safety and zoonosis, increased competition for food between human and animal and changing global economic trend. Hence, ILRI’s focus may go beyond bringing the people out of poverty to ensure safer and healthier world for future.
Now, the target of research work should be more linked to the field problems and working out the solutions that can guide the development partners to address the problems.
We need to talk more about the solution than talking about research findings. Research findings should be the means to find out the solution but should not be the goal.
This change in our attitude and actions may help to get more appreciation from the local government, development partners & donor agencies which in turn may help us to generate more revenue.
ILRI Delh Office (Nils Teufel, Arindam Samaddar, Dhiraj Sing, Swain Braja, Paolo Ficarelli)
• ILRI should broaden its scope based on the dimension related to livestock for livelihoods and asset protection, even though this has already happened in practice
• The issue debated was which (strategic) framework is most suitable to focus strategies for future ILRI work. Strategies define scope and not the other way around (faulty storyline logic?)
• The ” threes system framework” chosen in the storyline may be useful to structure research work, but not necessarily to define strategies (leads to conflict of objectives or to too many objectives, overlapping of approaches amongst systems, systems boundaries debates etc.)
• Addressing the various drivers of change (where is climate change?) impacting the different livestock-based systems (in a positive or negative way) it is felt could be a better framework for developing strategies and setting intervention boundaries for research areas (e.g. the proposed areas Value chain approach, productivity increase and animal/human health interface, but not only).
• Such framework could have higher chances of surviving in longer-term than the CRPs and the livestock systems dynamic changes
• The storyline does not mention other dimensions that normally define scope, such as regional and livestock species dimensions, and the reasons that led to these decisions (de facto these dimensions have reduced scope of ILRI work)
• What is the relationship between systems and research areas a) value chain approach b) Technologies to improve productivity c) Animal human health interface? Are they supposed to be interfaced with each system?
• Is this storyline not already made part of the CRP LaF concept and approaches?
Which strategy directions for ILRI? ILRI strategy storyline: ‘Solutions for a Transforming Livestock Sector’
1. Do you agree with the starting diagnosis – that ILRI needs to expand its scope, focus and targets, and the reasons why? Tell why you disagree and what you disagree with!
Ten years later and following the interim Strategy of 2011-2012, ILRI needs to revisit its strategy –building on the strengths of the previous strategy, and evolving the priorities to reflect the key changes summarised in this storyline. This storyline emphasises the major significance of smallholders in food production and poverty reduction, the food price crisis and renewed threats of food insecurity, the increased recognition of the need for public-private sector partnerships, and the increased focus on environment, health issues and climate change. This storyline should also incorporate elements of the transformation of the CGIAR, and the advent of CRPs, reflecting major policy changes of member countries and the UN ; for example the recent statements from G8 and G20 on the significance of agriculture for development, and the commentary around Rio+ 20.
2. How about the three approaches and the system typologies underpinning them – ‘inclusive growth’, ‘low growth’ and ‘growth with externalities’. Do these reflect the livestock development world as you know it? Is it an appropriate way to generally organize and conceptualize our work? Are there any missing elements we overlooked? What would improve it?
There are many approaches to system typologies, but that selected here is less than inspiring. These typologies need to be clear on people and geography. The rather tedious technical descriptions given here are a step back from the typology used in the « ILRI strategy 2013-2022 – annotated outline » of last March:
“ Mixed crop livestock systems, currently providing much of the World’s food and likely to change dramatically although differentiated regionally, in the coming decades. dimensions at the same time.
Pastoral systems which are very dependent on natural resources, often operating at the margins of both society and agriculture
(peri) urban systems include intensified and at times specialised systems, where challenges of environment and health are often paramount. “
I see that page 11 of that outline gave an initial indication of the development challenges associated with these three systems – clearly useful work in progress.
The title “ low growth systems “ is clearly a loser. Maybe greater flexibility could be introduced by something of the sort: resilient livelihoods in sensitive ecosystems, if pastoral systems are now considered a trifle restricting. A key point is that all three typologies need to be more people (and women) –centric. I recall earlier discussion of pastoralists and the key principles of sustainability, empowerment and flexibility. “Growth with externalities” could give more emphasis to the positive aspects of intensifying systems, and hence the need for research on the potential negative impacts. This descriptor should also call on the language of climate change and CRP7, and not limit itself to environment. However both this and the “inclusive growth systems” should call on the value chain approach which ILRI and partners have deployed in CRP 3.7. The note that ILRI will devote the greater share of its resources to this inclusive growth challenge seems sensible, but again the language would profit from referring to the mixed crop-livestock systems of the earlier “annotated outline”.
3. Are there any gaps or failures in the logic that need to be addressed? Please suggest any specific examples or cases we might use to support our arguments.
In addition to the comments under 2, I support the comments made by Susan Macmillan on 22 May that the storyline (and indeed strategy) must articulate the centrality of gender (indicated as work in progress on page 19 of the March annotated outline). I see that the outline refers (page 6) to FAO’s SOFA, 2011 on “closing the gender gap”. The ILRI team has I hope seen IFAD’s Gender Policy (approved by the Exec Board in April 2012) with its focus on approaches to three objectives in rural development : economic empowerment of women, representation and citizenship rights and women’s workload reduction. That policy draws on the UN System-Wide Action Programme, led by UN Women (launched 2011).
I am commenting separately on the “tough issue” of value chains, but this is underplayed in the storyline, which is also silent on ILRI’s emergent role in CRP3.7 and indeed the other CRPs, which all talk of value chains and not simply ”marketing systems” as in this storyline.
Dr R.D. Cooke 23 May
On 18 May a group of scientists (from ICARDA, ILRI and CIMMYT) met to reflect on the questions posed. Here are the main comments, in bullet format.
1. Need to show what’s already been done … this does not draw enough on lessons. Do we really know what impact the past strategy had, and why/where to change?
2. Do the three scenario’s link to ‘pastoral’, ‘semi-commercial’ ‘commercial’?
3. Before, the ILRI approach seemed more ‘inward’ and ‘diagnostic’; this is a welcome opening – towards more development actions/partners, to a wider scope
4. Be clear in the priority setting; Where will we really make a difference?
5. More attention needed on environment – the negative impacts
6. Need to be MUCH clearer what is ‘growth’ in the storyline and table? Production? Productivity? Potential? Market orientation? What are we measuring/characterizing?
The story line is fine as far as it goes, but it completely neglects a major component of the livestock sector that offers tremendous opportunity for growth, namely pastoralism. There may be a risk of contradiction in combining a focus on the poor with building productive and sustainable livestock systems. In pastoral areas many of the poor are not livestock keepers, but they are called pastoralists because of their ethnic association. If you focus livestock research and investment on the poorest – the destitute part of the population – you give them incentives to stay on the periphery of the pastoral system which is often not viable for their future and does nothing to help the wider livestock economy.
The livestock sector will benefit most from a) research into technologies and management practices that improve the prospects for successful pastoralists, b) research into the social dimensions of poverty that will address inequity and underlying weaknesses in human rights and property rights, and c) research into ways out of pastoralism. The ex-pastoralist population has a massive role to play in livestock development – they are the future consumers of pastoral products and the future services providers to pastoralists. Currently I don’t think anybody is doing much to facilitate this important and on-going transition. Although these seem like pretty disparate points, they are all a necessary part of the livestock development agenda.
If ILRI is not equipped to deal with points (b) and (c) it should partner with agencies that are more focused on these issues. On point (a) ILRI does plenty of relevant research into disease control, markets etc. Nevertheless, market penetration is low and the dominant pastoral output, milk, gets virtually no attention – yet in 2012 Kenya suffered a major milk shortage and had to resort to importing something that is produced in abundance in the drylands. The principle management strategy – rangelands management – also seems to get no attention and provides a great opportunity for applying new ideas and management strategies.
The livestock-poverty link is also clouded by the focus on smallholders, which perhaps betrays ILRI’s bias towards the settled cultivator populations. Pastoralists cannot be thought of as smallholders – many successful pastoralists clearly are the opposite – and the roles of livestock and their importance in the overall economy are substantially different. In a pastoral setting the key determinants of success – if we examine the places where pastoralism is thriving – seem to be high levels of education, secure communal tenure arrangements, regulation of mobility, market access and investments in environmental services. Once these things are secured then pastoralists are very quick to make better use of the various technologies that are already on offer. This is needs strong applied and inter-disciplinary research.
Considering the focus on sustainability, pastoralism also deserves particular attention on its contribution to environmental protection and ecosystem services. More research is needed into the environmental benefits around carbon sequestration and water cycling, and the conditions under which these services are provided or not provided.
IMPERTINENT ENQUIRY ON THE DANGER OF
OVER-PROMISING AND UNDER-DELIVERING
A current blog by development thinker Owen Barder perhaps gives us something to chew on as we develop our institutional strategy.
‘David Roodman explains that rigorous evaluations of micro-credit suggest that, on average, it has no effect on poverty . . . [although] it can produce significant benefits for the poorest people, by enabling them to manage volatile and uncertain incomes.
‘We should think of microcredit not as a catalyst for economic growth, but as a utility, providing a key service to poor people. Subsidizing the provision of this service is a relatively low-cost way to help people to increase their welfare.
‘In his book, “Due Diligence: An impertinent enquiry into microfinance”, David explodes the lavish claims made by the microfinance industry about the difference it makes, while accepting that financial services have an important role to play in supporting poor people.’
‘This is, I think, a microcosm of a bigger story about aid as a whole. There is plenty of evidence that aid improves people’s lives, for example by providing food, water, education and health. It is much harder to show that aid catalyses economic, social and political transformation. . . .
‘As in the case of microfinance, the aid industry tends to over-promise and under-deliver. Everyone wants individuals and countries to be able to stand on their own two feet . . . But it does not follow that microfinance can bring this about for individuals, nor that aid can bring it about for countries. Setting this as the standard for success undermines the case for both, by neglecting the very important and demonstrable success of both against more realistic objectives, of helping people to live better lives while that process of development is taking place.’
See Barder’s blog post here: http://www.owen.org/blog/5531
Should we be rethinking livestock ‘pathways out of poverty’, viewing them less as a catalyst for economic growth than as a critical support/service/insurance for poor people as they find their own (varied, messy, iterative) pathways out of poverty?
Question: In line with changes in development thinking and many other organizations, ILRI shifted its focus over time from IMPROVING YIELDS (increasing agricultural productivity) to IMPROVING INCOMES (reducing poverty). It seems that this month’s Rio+20 Sustainability Conference will crystallize a further recent move—to IMPROVING FOOD SECURITY (the latter being considered a better indicator of human welfare than income) as well as to GREEN GROWTH (protecting the environment). Where is ILRI aligned with the recent shifts and, perhaps more importantly, where do we see things differently? Where do we have a different take on the evolving agricultural development paradigm?
Interesting guest post by Harvard’s Felipe Barrera-Osorio on the World Bank blog:
http://blogs.worldbank.org/impactevaluations/node/818 on
THE PROBLEM OF INSTITUTION DEPENDENCY
IN SUPPLY-SIDE INTERVENTIONS
‘. . . Demand-side versus supply-side interventions. There are some demand-side policies that have yielded positive results in several countries. For example, conditional cash transfers (CCT), in which (usually poor) families receive cash in exchange for certain behaviors—for instance, keeping children in school—have been shown to systematically increase enrollment and attendance rates (in some cases, in a very significant way). . . .
‘In contrast, we have not been so successful in replicating the results of several supply-side interventions. . . .
‘[S]upply-side interventions depend on institutions that vary greatly across countries . . . [and] heavily depend on institutions that dramatically differ from context to context, whereas demand-side interventions depend on a more homogenous institution that in principle does not differ greatly across contexts. If this is the case, the replication of supply-side interventions in different context is set to fail since they are institution-dependent, and consistent results will be difficult to obtain without limiting the replications to situations that are virtually identical. Clearly, this problem goes beyond external validity.
‘The implication of this potential hypothesis is that the focus of the next generation of evaluations should be not so much on what works (and the channels, as some people have suggested) but on the types of institutions that make the policy work. . . . I believe that the problem of institution-dependent policies is a sobering –and more challenging—one.’
Thank you for seeking CIAT input. We congratulate ILRI for the open and participatory approach in revising the strategy. Overall, the strategy has right elements, however, we highlight few areas for further thought. For example, Livestock and the environment could be better articulated and attention to equity in value chains can be strengthened.
• Expanding scope: In view of livestock systems evolving at different speeds (for example the ‘Three World of Agriculture’ promoted by the World Bank) further strengthening of South-South Linkages could be useful. In this context consider re-engagement of ILRI in Latin America (LAC) mainly for a) differential economic development including market integration and b) Livestock and environmental issues. Environmental issues could be better articulated and concretized (see also comment from Susan MacMillan on ‘LivestockPlus’, a concept recently lined out by CIAT and ILRI researchers in a chapter of CIAT’s flagship publication on eco-efficiency (chapter available online http://www.ciat.cgiar.org/publications/Pages/eco_efficiency_from_vision_to_reality.aspx). In summary, we do agree in principle with the diagnosis, but it could rather mean ‘changing’ focus and targets rather than ‘expanding scope’ thus allowing leadership in specific research topics mentioned, backed by critical capacity. Tough choices needed in our opinion.
• Approaches and systems typologies: This section may need further thought, and some approaches could be integrated. The example ‘growth with externalities’ is a case where the stated externalities could be an integral part across different approaches.
• Inclusive growth systems and low growth systems: We agree with ‘Inclusive growth systems’ as the main approach. Some comments to the strategy on the ILRI website indicate that the emphasis on low growth may not be ideal. We value these comments, however, different pathways are needed for different contexts. This approach need to be elaborated and strengthening the environmental component will be crucial.
Gaps and failures in logic: We did not detect major gaps per se. Saying this, the issue on ‘Livestock and the Environment’ could be amplified to be even more convincing. This could be very well integrated in the current CRP portfolio, and thus addressing collaboration.
It may be there but I have not seen an analysis of the other research providers to whom ILRI, as just one actor in the system, will be seeking to add value. I believe that will be essential to determining where ILRI can achieve greatest impact. Even if ILRI focuses on just one of the three approaches there will still be much more than it can do alone.
I also look forward to seeing the business model that will underpin the strategy because it would answer questions such as exactly who are the clients for ILRI’s research products and the related value propositions that are unique to ILRI.