Our research for development project is launched today by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), both members of the CGIAR Consortium (www.cgiar.org). LIVES will directly support of the Government of Ethiopia’s effort to transform smallholder agriculture to be more market-oriented.

Azage Tegegne

Supported by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the LIVES project is jointly implemented by ILRI, IWMI, the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural research (EIAR), the Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture and regional Bureaus of Agriculture, Livestock Development Agencies, Agricultural Research Institutes and other development projects.

LIVES project manager, Azage Tegegne emphasized that this project is unique in that it integrates livestock with irrigated agriculture development. The project is designed to support the commercialization of smallholder agriculture by testing and scaling lessons to other parts of Ethiopia. “It is also excellent opportunity for CGIAR centres to work hand in hand with Ethiopian research and development institutions.”

Ethiopian State Minister of Agriculture H.E. Wondirad Mandefro welcomed the project, asserting that it will directly contribute to both the Growth Transformation Plan (GTP) and the Agricultural Growth Program (AGP) of the Ethiopian Government. Canadian Head of Aid, Amy Baker expects this investment to generate technologies, practices and results that can be implemented at larger scales and ultimately benefit millions of Ethiopian smallholder producers as well as the consumers of their products. Canadian Ambassador David Usher noted that the project will contribute to Ethiopia’s efforts to drive agricultural transformation, improve nutritional status and unlock sustainable economic growth. LIVES is also a reflection of Canada’s commitment to the 2012 G-8 New Alliance for Food and Nutrition Security which will allow Ethiopia, donors and the private sector create new and innovative partnerships that will drive agricultural growth.

LIVES actions will take place over six years in 31 districts of ten zones in Amhara, Oromia, Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples and Tigray regions, where 8% of the country’s human population resides. LIVES will improve the incomes of smallholder farmers through value chains development in livestock (dairy, beef, sheep and goats, poultry and apiculture) and irrigated agriculture (fruits, vegetables and fodder). The project, with a total investment of CAD 19.26 million, aims to directly and indirectly benefit more than 200,000 households engaged in livestock and irrigated agriculture, improve the skills of over 5,000 public service staff, and work with 2,100 value chain input and service suppliers at district, zone and federal levels.

“Projects that support local farmers can help a community in so many ways; not only by providing food and the most appropriate crops, but also by teaching long term skills that can have an impact for years to come,” said Canada Minister of International Cooperation the Honourable Julian Fantino. “The Livestock and Irrigation Value Chains project teaches smallholder farmers new agricultural techniques and provides technical assistance, training, and mentoring to government specialists. They in turn will provide production and marketing assistance to local farmers. This is a project that helps all areas of farming and agriculture development.”

The project will focus on clusters of districts, developing and improving livestock production systems and technologies in animal breeding, feed resources, animal nutrition and management, sustainable forage seed systems, sanitation and animal health, and higher market competitiveness. Potential irrigated agriculture interventions include provision of new genetic materials, development of private seedling nurseries, work on seed systems, irrigation management, water use efficiency, water management options, crop cycle management, and pump repair and maintenance.

The main components of the project are capacity development, knowledge management, promotion, commodity value chain development, and documentation of tested and successful interventions. Gender and the environment will be integrated and mainstreamed in all components of the project.

Some photos from the launch event

The Livestock and Irrigation Value chains for Ethiopian Smallholders (LIVES) project contributes to enhanced income and gender equitable wealth creation for smallholders and other value chain actors in Ethiopia through increased and sustained market off-take of high value livestock and irrigated crop commodities.

LIVES is jointly implemented by by ILRI (the International Livestock Research Institute), IWMI (the International Water Management Institute), the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural research (EIAR), the Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture and regional Bureaus of Agriculture, Livestock Development Agencies, Agricultural Research Institutes and other development projects.

Last week, some 50 people involved in the the LIVES project (Livestock and Irrigation Value chains for Ethiopian Smallholders) met to plan project interventions in commodity value chain development.

Involving LIVES project staff as well as partners from regional bureaus of agriculture and water, regional research institutes, officials from the ministries of agriculture and of water and energy, participants debated the project approaches (action research, knowledge management, capacity development) as well as cross cutting issues like gender, the environment and mechanisms to ensure integration. Regional working groups dived deeper into their specific needs and priorities, examining potential project interventions, commodity by commodity.

ILRI’s Dirk Hoekstra welcomed participants from across the four project regions. He pointed to the country’s strong emphasis on “impact-oriented agricultural research” and emphasized that LIVES will achieve this by combining national and international expertise to benefit rural communities. “At the end we want to have impact on the lives of the rural people.”

Mentioning that LIVES is one of several value chain oriented projects in the country, he talked of partnership and complementarity – “it is important that we link up with them from the beginning to maximize opportunities for scale and wider impact.” The launch event the same week was an important opportunity to connect with these many other potential partners.

He introduced the workshop’s objectives as “creating partnerships, so we get to know each other”, creating understanding of the objectives and activities of the project, and “fertilizing each other with knowledge, to have greater impact.”

Introducing LIVES, project manager Azage Tegegne explained its focus on high-value market-oriented irrigated agriculture and livestock. LIVES aims to contribute to enhanced income and gender equitable wealth creation for smallholders and other value chain actors through increased and sustained market off-take of high value livestock and irrigated crop commodities.

He outlined some key strengths of LIVES: “It is a unique model for partnerships between CGIAR centers, national ministries, national research institutes and development institutions”; it aims to integrate work on high-value irrigated crops and livestock production for system intensification; it will test and develop irrigated fodder production to address the critical feed challenges in Ethiopian livestock production; it will improve water use efficiency and develop a model for enhanced nutrient management through the use of manure for horticultural crops; and it will be a platform to test enhanced water governance through water users associations.

He introduced the main project components: Value chain development, capacity development, knowledge management, action research, and scaling out.

Thereafter, the workshop particiapnts focused first on livestock value chain interventions then on irrigation value chain interventions.  Participants worked through potential interventions for each commodity. They characterized the actors in each value chain, the main constraints and intervention opportunities and, most important, their ‘vision’ for each value chain – essentially initial outcome statements with indicative pathways. The results of this work will be further discussed in the coming months through a series of 10 zonal workshops.

A key session towards the end asked participants to consider ‘integration’ challenges, opportunities and action points for the project. The discussions generally surfaced actions needed to integrate work on crops and livestock; to integrate research with field activities; to integrate gender and environmental concerns; to integrate different components and teams in the project; to address institutional cultures that work against integration. More specifically:

Some of the integration challenges LIVES needs to address are:

• Different institutional and organizational cultures
• Rapid expansion and growth at the expense of natural and environmental assets
• Ensuring full gender representation
• Fierce competition for water, land and environment by both irrigated agriculture and livestock
• The value chain approach is new to many and poses risk management challenges.

Some of the perceived opportunities for LIVES are:

• Complementary of livestock and irrigated crops: What is left from the livestock goes to irrigated fruits and vegetables, and vice versa
• National policies promote the integration of livestock and irrigation agriculture
• The existing participatory integration of watershed management approach provides methods for the project to build on
• There are many people on the ground to take the ideas and practices to communities
• Project intervention sites already use mixed crop-livestock farming systems, thus integration is already familiar to them.

Some of the LIVES action points are:

• Keep a strong focus in the design of interventions to maximize household incomes
• Create awareness and knowledge to integrate and understand environment and gender issues
• Strengthen womens’ associations and ensure fair representation of women and youth groups in the project and its interventions
• Ensure continuous dialogue among project partners and actors
• Focus on capacity development of women at all levels
• Carry out cost benefit analysis for the interventions proposed
• Identify and communicate clear sets of activities that are to be implemented by all actors.

Some photos of the workshop are online

Notes from the workshop are online

Report by Peter Ballantyne

The Livestock and Irrigation Value chains for Ethiopian Smallholders (LIVES) project contributes to enhanced income and gender equitable wealth creation for smallholders and other value chain actors in Ethiopia through increased and sustained market off-take of high value livestock and irrigated crop commodities.

LIVES is jointly implemented by by ILRI (the International Livestock Research Institute), IWMI (the International Water Management Institute), the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural research (EIAR), the Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture and regional Bureaus of Agriculture, Livestock Development Agencies, Agricultural Research Institutes and other development projects.

LIVES launching workshop participants

On January 22, 2013, the Livestock and irrigation value chains for Ethiopian smallholders (LIVES) project was officially launched in Addis Ababa in the presence of many participants coming from many different private and public institutions and organizations working to transform Ethiopian Agriculture. This five-year project is funded by the Canadian International Development Aid (CIDA) to work on market-oriented commodity value chain development in high value livestock and irrigated crops of. Iain Wright, representing the director general of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) indicated that LIVES is an excellent example of CGIAR centers in Addis Ababa working together with Ethiopian partners to improve the livelihoods of smallholder farmers.

Simon Langan, representing the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), co-implementer of the project, indicated the need to focus on irrigated vegetables, fruits and fodder to bring farmers into market oriented commodity production and IWMI’s commitment to contribute to this. Amy Baker, from CIDA Ethiopia noted that LIVES is an ambitious project that requires strong partnership and collaboration to improve the livelihoods of smallholders.

‘LIVES has a special opportunity to pilot and adopt new technologies and lessons in agricultural development and also to learn from IPMS experiences and find alternative ways to adopt new technologies’ said State Minister H.E. Wondirad Mandefro of the Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture (MoA).  It was also clear from the various remarks that LIVES is in line with the Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP) and Agricultural Growth Program (AGP) of the government of Ethiopia; and that this collaborative project offers much potential to bring together international, national and regional partners. Solomon Assefa, director general of the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR) explained that the project is appropriate, relevant, timely and in line with the current Ethiopian government strategy. He also indicated that EIAR has generated many proven technologies both in the livestock and irrigated agriculture sector which have not yet reached the smallholder producers and that EIAR aims to extend these technologies by collaborating with LIVES.

Alongside the project launch, a major output of the IPMS project –  “a guide book to market orientated extension services with special reference to Ethiopia” – was introduced by Berhanu Gebremedhin (the main author) and launched by the State Minister. The book is expected to promote market-oriented extension and build the capacities of development practitioners and actors to provide essential services and support to farmers.

The second part of the launch event included presentations on the project’s objectives, implementation sites, commodity development interventions, and planned action research and capacity development activities.

During the launch, project manager Azage Tegegne extended special thanks and appreciation to Dirk Hoekstra for leading the very successful IPMS project for the past seven years and his enormous contribution to the realization of the LIVES project.

Finally regional representatives from Amhara, Oromia, SNNPR and Tigray spoke of their good experiences in IPMS in the past and excitement and commitment to build strong partnerships to implement LIVES activities in their respective regions.  The event was closed with a few remarks from the Canadian Ambassador to Ethiopia, David Usher, who very much looks forward to the successful implementation of this important project in Ethiopia.

Some photos from the launch event

Presentations from the launch 

Some news items from the launch

1. Ethiopian Herald http://www.ethpress.gov.et/herald/index.php/herald/news/982-institutes-launch-smallholder-life-changing-project
2. Addis zemen (Amharic   http://www.ethpress.gov.et/addiszemen/index.php/addiszemen/national-news/1413-2013-01-24-05-08-33
3. Walta quoting from ERTA  http://www.waltainfo.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=7110:new-intervention-for-livestock-a-irrigation&catid=52:national-news&Itemid=291
4. ERTA http://www.waltainfo.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=7110:new-intervention-for-livestock-a-irrigation&catid=52:national-news&Itemid=291
5. The daily monitor- printed on January 24-25
6. Modern ghana http://www.modernghana.com/news/441223/1/ethiopian-farmers-to-get-market-boost.html

In March, some 75 people from national and international research institutes and governmental agencies joined the research planning workshop of the Livestock and Irrigation Value chains for Ethiopian Smallholders (LIVES) project.

The workshop was organized to develop an overall research framework for LIVES, to determine priority multi-locational research topics in support of the proposed interventions in LIVES sites and align with activities of regional and national partners as well as with CGIAR research programs, and to identify potential research partners to lead and synthesize the research and partners to implement such multi-locational research in zones and regions where LIVES will be implemented.

The project research framework, presented by Berhanu Gebermedihin- the LIVES research coordinator, comprises three distinct and complementary research components:

1      Diagnostic research will be conducted to identify, describe, quantify value chain constraints and opportunities as well as technological, organizational and institutional intervention requirements.

2      Action research will be conducted to generate qualitative and quantitative information on the development process and performance of a single or combination of interventions. This information can then be used to modify interventions, and/or identify context-specific adoption factors that can be used to scale up/out good practices.

3      Impact research will be conducted to generate knowledge as well as qualitative and quantitative information about the impact of interventions on economic, social and environmental conditions of smallholders targeted by the project.

The research components of LIVES are expected to generate knowledge, results and lessons on commodity value chain development. The priority research topics will be in relation with the commodity value chain stages, input supply and service provision support functions, institutional/organizational environments and cross-cutting issues on gender, knowledge management, capacity development, food safety and the environment. The importance of embracing environmental issues while developing a commodity value chain was stressed during the workshop.

Participants split into six working groups to identify priority research topics i.e dairy, poultry, fattening, apiculture, irrigated agriculture and extension, knowledge management and capacity development. Each working group also proposed a coordinating team with lead research partner organizations, including ILRI, IWMI and EIAR.

Gender is another focus area receiving lots of attention and interest. In practical terms, however, gender remains difficult to integrate in the research and development work of many programs and projects. National and regional government representatives showed tremendous support to work on gender and youth in this workshop. The strategy of LIVES to mainstream gender consists in featuring it highly on the project strategy and on the menu of interventions by paying particular attention to how women will be targeted.

Integrating livestock and irrigated agriculture comes naturally in LIVES as the project targets have already a framework of integrated agriculture production. The participants anticipate that these synergistic research and intervention activities on livestock and irrigated agriculture will bring a higher impact than the conventional separate efforts made in each of the areas. Synergies between these 2 project component will be targeted in particular through irrigated permanent and/or rotational annual fodder production and use of horticultural crop residues for livestock feed and  use of organic manure for soil fertility and conservation. Knowledge and lessons on economizing water resources while improving access to water for livestock production is an area expected be captured.

Workshop participants also expressed the crucial need for continuous and strong communication, coordination and alignment with other research areas and programs. They are very eager to see LIVES engaged in field activities. The next activity of the commodity lead team is to develop/review research methodologies and proposals on the basis of the identified research priorities and areas for each commodity value chain development while incorporating cross cutting issues.

Some photos from the research planning workshops

Some notes from the workshop 

Recent LIVES presentations

LIVES outputs in our repository

Recently, Lia Bardoel, a Masters Student in Industrial Design from Eindhoven University of Technology, visited LIVES. She presented her work on a solar cooling system for fluid milk and the subsequent studies she did on use of the system ‘away’ from the main road.

The cooling system sets out to improve the quality of evening milk and thus the income of the farmers. The system makes ice at milk collection centers, which the farmer takes home in the morning to cool the evening milk before bringing it to the collection center the following morning. The system is designed to work on solar and electricity grids.

In this way, the evening milk quality remains as high as the morning milk!

See the video:

More information, contact Lia Bardoel at: liabardoel@gmail.com

In May and June 2013, LIVES regional and zonal teams in the four regions (Amhara, Oromia, SNNP and Tigray) were busy, together with public sector staff, prioritizing and aligning project interventions with the bureaus and agencies at region, zone and district levels. As a result, the regional team identified and aligned action plans and assigned responsibilities to kick off value chain interventions in selected priority areas and commodities. Furthermore, many of the sites have an assigned LIVES focal person to ensure rapport and working procedures for implementation of the planned interventions. The project expects to have 49 such focal persons from the public sector. In all project sites, pilot project areas (Pas) were selected according to mutually agreed upon criteria that included on the ground validation. In addition, space for the LIVES Zonal Coordinators offices and knowledge centers were provided. In all the consultations, the innovative participatory approach and focus of LIVES to contribute to commercialization of livestock and irrigated agriculture value chains was appreciated by the partners.

Contributed by LIVES regional team

ILRI scientist and LIVES project manager, Azage Tegegne, was honored by James cook University of Australia  as an outstanding alumni of 2013.  Read more about   Azage Tegegne’s recent accomplishment on ILRI news

The Government of Ethiopia recently established a Livestock State Ministry within the Ministry of Agriculture. The State Ministry officially started  on 15 March 2013 with the appointment of State Minster Dr, Gebregziabher Gebreyohannes. In this interview, he explains the mandate and functions of the new State Ministry.

What led the government to establish the State Ministry?

In Ethiopia, livestock is the basis of the livelihood of both smallholder producers and pastoralists. The whole of our agriculture is based on livestock, either to use for farming related activities or as a livelihood. Nevertheless, the sector has not developed as much and has not helped the country to gain the required economic growth. Other countries with smaller number of livestock have benefited a lot from livestock sector. Experience from these countries shows that when a greater focus is given to livestock, greater benefits are reaped. In our case, efforts were limited, and so were the results.

With all good intentions, for many years the livestock sector was led by a Directorate under the Ministry of Agriculture, then it was merged with the Extension Department. This structural arrangement came with minimal focus in provision of resources and operationalization of strategies.

Issues with regard to improving the efficiency of the sector and its contribution to the economic development were raised in various platforms and forums, and these issues, inter alia included: The mismatch between expectations of the livestock sector’s contribution to economic growth in  the growth and transformation plan (GTP), and the actual gain; the need to revisit policy and strategy directions, building on experiences of  other countries that are gaining economic benefits even with lower resources; addressing the results of studies and analysis on the ‘wobbly’ focus towards the livestock sector. It is now anticipated that the State Ministry will carefully address these and other pertinent issues.

The mandate of the State Ministry

The mandate is to contribute towards the realization of the wider vision of the ministry of agriculture, which is to create market–led modern agriculture and a society free from poverty by contributing to the creation of a modern and a highly productive agricultural system that uses more advanced technologies.

The core activities of the State Ministry              

Activities on livestock development have certainly already been taking place in the Ministry of Agriculture. Now, there will be greater focus and emphasis on existing functions and also new ones. The core activities include;

• Scale up and out existing good practices to increase production and productivity of the livestock sector through partnership with various stakeholders;
• Prevent animal diseases;
• Support private investments and facilitate participation of the private sector in production and processing;
• Create strong linkages with private enterprise;
• Pastoral area development on issues like feeds and pastures, breeds, production and water availability;
• Collaborate with national and international research  system towards advancement of the livestock sector.

Structure of the State Ministry

There are three directorates, namely;

• Animal health: focusing on health services provision, quarantine services and regulatory services. The directorate is crosscutting in that it works with both other animal production and pastoral directorates.
• Animal production and feed: focusing on production technology adoption and feed resource development;
• Pastoral: focusing on the pastoral areas, encompassing both animal health and production issues.

There are also four autonomous institutions that operate under the State Ministry:

1. National veterinary institute
2. National artificial insemination centre
3. National animal health diagnostic and investigation centre
4. Animal feed and drug  administration and control authority

Partnership and collaboration with other institutes and programs

The State Ministry works with partner institutions (government/ non-government), research organizations, development programs/ projects) by coordinating and collaborating with the development agenda that is in line with the GTP. The Rural Economic Development and Food security (REDFS) network is an important joint platform that brings together development programs and projects in the livestock and other sectors. The State Minister leads the livestock technical committee which is one of the four pillars of the REDFS.

A partnership with international research institutions, bilateral and multilateral development organizations, NGOs, and the private sector is one way of ensuring synergy and complementarity among the diverse actors.

Human resources at the State Ministry

As the State Ministry is newly formed, it is capacitating itself with required human resources and skills that would enable the sector to contribute to economic development in greater depth and breadth.

The Minister, Gebregziabher Gebreyohannes (PhD), has a profound experience in the livestock sector. He studied animal production in the then Alemaya University, now Haramaya University, where he earned his Bsc and MSc degrees. Gebregzoabher was a graduate fellow at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) during his MSc study and was supervised by Azage Tegegne. After gaining research experience in animal production, he did his PhD in dairy animal breeding Kasetsart University in Thailand. He has more than 25 years research experience, and he served in the Oromia and Tigray agricultural research institutes in different research and administrative positions. His most recent position was Director General of the Tigray Agricultural Research Institute.

The establishment of the new State Ministry is a major milestone worth celebrating. This institutional arrangement that we now see at the federal level will soon reach to the regions and districts, thus giving greater emphasis to the operationalization of strategies and plans of the sector.

This new beginning is promises to create a better environment for development and progress. It is a welcome opportunity for all livestock professionals to keep on contributing individually and professionally in bringing the cherished objectives of the sector to reality. Dr. Gebregziabher strongly believes that research and development should closely work hand in hand towards developing the livestock sector, which cements the important of each and every professional involved in the sector.

The annual conference of Ethiopian Society of Animal Production (ESAP) was held for the 21^st time at the headquarters of the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR) from August 28-30 The theme was ‘Livestock and Economic growth: Value chains as pathways for development’. The event was the first of its kind to be officially addressed by the very first Ethiopian Livestock state minster, Gebregizabhier Gebreyohannes, a senior livestock researcher for the past 25 years.

Some 350 participants, new and old society members and invited guests attended the three-day event. Topics covered included: approaches and experiences of different projects and programs on livestock value chain development in Ethiopia, an update on the county’s livestock master plan (process spearheaded by ILRI), the livestock investment plan in the Ethiopian Climate Resilient Green Economy, and the contributions of livestock market information systems.

THe livestock value chain development concept and approaches aim to stimulate the contribution of the livestock sector in the economic growth and development of the country at large and gender equitable wealth creation at smallholder level. The Livestock and Irrigation Value Chains (LIVES) project was well-represented with its focus, approach and implementation modalities discussed and debate. During a brown bag lunch on day one, value chain concepts, gender mainstreaming strategies and knowledge management approaches of the project were presented. Dirk Hoekstra reported on the LIVES dairy value chain development strategy that distinguishes between fluid milk and butter channels.

This year’s ESAP conference created a platform to discuss current trends of research, development and policy in the livestock sector, within a value chain framework. Research outputs from the national research system and universities on different components of the livestock value chain (feeds, breeds, inputs, processing and marketing), as well as small ruminant value chain work of the CGIAR Research Program on Livestock and Fish were discussed.

As a mark of appreciation for the support rendered to the ESAP conference and looking forward to strong future partnership in the development of the livestock sector in Ethiopia, the ESAP executive committee presented LIVES with a certificate of acknowledgement. 

A team of three researchers from the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) recently joined a LIVES field mission in Tigray and Amhara regions. The team set out to familiarize the IWMI and regional LIVES teams; to discuss modes of communications and to get updated with ongoing activities and achievements. After understanding the context, the team identified potential sites to undertake participatory rural development appraisal (PRDA), and discussed planned activities with respect to irrigated agriculture value chains in LIVES.

Ongoing activities in the LIVES sites in relation to irrigation value chains include;

• Selection of intervention peasant associations (PAs) for irrigation related interventions.
• Selection of households/ groups as irrigation implies more often than not some form of collective organization that cannot be addressed by individual households.
• Demonstration of planting fodder and fruit trees in such a way that they could be inter-cropped with cereals, sowing of fodder in pasture land and planting fodder around gullies, canals and buffer zones.

The team observed considerable development in Tigray region in changing the farming systems from dominantly rain-fed subsistence farming to a market-oriented irrigated-based farming system. Tigrayan farmers told the team that approximately 70-80% of cropped land is irrigated in some of the existing schemes.

Irrigated farming systems in Tigray valley bottoms combine several technologies: river diversions, motorized pumps, small dams, and shallow wells taping in the same water resource. The farmers grow irrigated cash crops, mainly vegetables, in the dry season, and cereals in the rainy season with supplementary irrigation when need be. At valley level, community-based committees are in charge of regulating water use and distribution. For instance, pump owners can only pump water according to a schedule set by the committee. The same organizations are in charge of maintenance of irrigation infrastructure and watershed management that is strongly linked to irrigation development.

As in Tigray, farmers in Amhara increasingly produce cash crops in rainy season (such as potatoes) and strikingly chat is replacing other crops produced by irrigation in the area. The 6,000 ha Koga irrigation scheme of Amhara is another vast resource for irrigation agriculture development in the region.  With better assessment of the institutional and organizational situation of this scheme, significant intervention and impact could be seen in irrigation value chain development.

Contributed by Philippe Lempériere

Some photos from the field 

Sidama is one of the two targeted zones of LIVES in the Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples Regional State (SNNPR). In this zone, three districts have been selected by LIVES for value chain interventions (Arbegona, Bensa and Bona Zuria). The major livestock and irrigated crops and commodities selected for intervention are dairy, small ruminants, poultry, fruits, vegetables and fodder.

During the inception phase of the LIVES project, regional and zonal team of SNNPR realized that zonal and district level decision makers lack a full understanding of the objectives and focus areas of the project in general and value chain approach for the development of selected commodities in particular. Therefore, the regional and zonal teams of the project organized a two day field visit (5-6 July 2013) to Dale, a former IPMS learning district, for key stakeholders at Sidama zone and the three districts. The idea was to  give them a better understanding of the value chain approach within their context.

The program had two sessions: Discussion and presentations about LIVES project objectives and expected outcomes in the region in particular and the country as a whole. The group interacted with the Dale district Office of Agriculture staff who had  experience on the participatory market oriented commodity value chain development approach of IPMS. The team then visited the agricultural knowledge center of Dale that was established by IPMS to demonstrate the importance of knowledge centers (KC) for value chain and capacity development process.

The team also visited farmers who are suppliers of grafted avocado seedlings  and a village where oestrus synchronization and mass insemination of local dairy cows was carried out. Participants were inspired with the two day event and gained a better understanding of the objectives and the value chain approach  of LIVES. They have shown their interest to cooperate in the implementation of the planned interventions and their commitment to actively get involved in the process. 

Contributed by Yoseph Mekasha

Supply of inputs, such as feed and drugs is one of the core activities in a livestock commodity value chain.  However, this component is poorly developed in Ethiopia. One reason for this is lack of awareness of the business opportunities. Previous experience from projects like IPMS show that the development of effective input supply systems will undoubtedly improve livestock productivity and market success in Ethiopia.

Alemitu is a female dairy farmer and small scale trader in Arbegona district of Sidama zone, SNNPR. She retails food items and other necessities for the township.

In late 2012, she attended a stakeholder meeting of Sidama zone value chain actors and service providers organized by LIVES project. She represented dairy farmers in her district (Arbegona) – a LIVES intervention site. She learned that concentrate feed supply could be a business opportunity in her district, considering the reasonable number of  crossbred dairy cows in the town and that other local small shops and kiosks only sell small quantities of wheat bran or furushca.

So, after the meeting, she set out to start up a feed shop to sell concentrates for other dairy cow owners. She established contacts with Alito farmers union in Hawassa (the only plant that mixes concentrate for commercial purposes in the region) and some other private traders who bring oil seed cake from Adama in Oromia region.

Several months after starting her new business, Alemitu also started to supply concentrate for fattening animals in her township. Her stock has turned over 6 times and now she estimates it to be around Birr 10,000 in value. She has regular customers and several occasional ones. She plans to expand her business even further.

Creating local access to animal feeds such as concentrates, as Alimitu is doing, and developing linkages among actors and service providers is an important step in livestock value chain development.

This short story illustrates how value chain actors like Alemitu, when exposed to new ideas through stakeholder meetings, can really feed on the knowledge they pick up from projects like LIVES.

 (Contributed by Yoseph Mekasha) 

Bensa district, one of the LIVES project sites in Sidama zone is constructing a new building to be an agricultural knowledge centre (AKC).

The decision to build a centre emerged from a visit to Dale district where experiences of an existing IPMS-supported knowledge centre were seen first hand and convinced decision makers to replicate the approach.

The visitors were convinced that an agricultural knowledge centre offering offline and online resources, print materials, and spaces for discussion and learning is instrumental in imparting knowledge and building capacities.

Officials from Bensa immediately allocated fund to construct a new building to be an agricultural knowledge centre. Couple of months after the visit to Dale, the building is almost complete (see picture). This story demonstrates that awareness and peer-to-peer learning does influence decision making.

Like Bensa, other districts and zones where the LIVES project operates are setting up their own knowledge centres as mechanisms to  reinforce skills and capacity development of the public sector staff and act as platforms for knowledge sharing and learning.

LIVES knowledge sharing activities are not confined to the centres. The project is also distributing e-book readers (kindles) to front line extension staff and other regional decision makers. The readers are loaded with selected research and extension resources in local languages and English. These are expected to help extension personnel acquire the knowledge they need to support value chain actors and better deliver extension services. A study on the efficiency of these devices is underway and will be finalized in 2014.

Related post  Seeing is believing: Field visit reveals benefits of value chain approaches in SNNPR

The LIVES project team and steering committee members recently traveled to Kenya see what they could learn from Kenya’s well-developed small scale horticulture and dairy industries.  The group comprised delegates from the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR), Regional Bureaus of Agriculture, Regional Agricultural Research Institutes, Regional Livestock Agencies, and staff from IWMI and LIVES headquarters.

One of our visits was to the Sabasaba Agribusiness Cooperative in Central Kenya’s Murang’a District. The cooperative has a small office next to a rather dusty but busy road. As we had arrived on a market day the office held piles of green bananas dropped off by farmers earlier that morning.

Our large group of 22 managed to somehow squeeze themselves amongst the bananas to sit on chairs that the Cooperative staff had kindly set up. We received a warm welcome from Mr. Alex Kamau, Chairman of the Committee and a farmer himself. He told us how the Cooperative started as a self-help group in 2004 and went on to become a Cooperative in 2009, now boasting 120 active members, out of which 57 are women. He told us that their goal is to have 1,000 members by the end of 2014 and that Sabasaba is led by 5 democratically elected committee members. Alex proudly explained that the 1 acre plot used by the Cooperative is owned by the members and was bought with a loan of 1 million shillings that has long been paid off.

The main business of the Cooperative is bananas and trying to ensure the sustainability of the market and the quality of the bananas. The Cooperative originally aimed to empower and transform farmers to make them more profitable, ethical and prudent in terms of business. Alex explained how an NGO called Africa Harvest provided them with tissue culture banana which is more economical and disease resistant than traditional bananas.

The Cooperative’s manager explained how wholesale buyers call and let her know how many bananas they need and then deposit funds in the Cooperative bank account the same day. She then contacts farmers and instructs them to deliver bananas to Sabasaba before 10 am on the next market day. Once the bananas have been weighed and quality checked, funds are deposited into the farmers’ bank accounts, less the Cooperative’s 1 shilling/kg commission (by 4 pm the same day!). No cash is handled at the Cooperative office. It uses Kenya’s M-Pesa mobile payments system for all transactions. At the moment, the Cooperative sells 20 tons of bananas a month and has targeted 50 tons/month for 2014. An annual audit of income is conducted and reported to members.

Sabasaba’s management has now decided to go a step further and introduce value added products such as ripened bananas, banana crisps, and banana flour (from green unpeeled bananas). This is done on a very small scale at their current (and rather small) location but they plan to expand in the future as it appears that the value added products fetch higher profits. In their operations however, they do face a lot of challenges in terms of capacity building needs, lack of ICT, transportation issues and security but are looking for ways to address these issues.

One of the committee members (all of whom are banana farmers of course) Mrs. Esther Munyua (whose farm we had actually visited) then gave the group a very stern explanation why they need to consume bananas on a daily basis. She told us the list of nutrients that bananas are packed with and stated that in Kenya, a common saying is ‘one banana a day keeps the doctor away’! It’s obvious that not many dare disagree with her, perhaps the same reason she was chosen to be the treasurer for the Cooperative!

Sabasaba obviously has managed to put a system in place where all 3 parties benefit – the farmers, the wholesalers and the Cooperative itself. Of course, the fact that Kenya’s banking system is quite developed plus the fact that most of the farmers in that area have received some sort of formal education helps but the group was quite sure that we could take some lessons from Sabasaba and find a way to replicate at least some aspects of it in Ethiopia.

The gender working group of the CGIAR research program on livestock and fish recently met in Addis Ababa to find ways to engender livestock and fish value chains.

The LIVES project had an active role in the event: it helped mobilize local gender experts to share their experiences and the project organized a field trip  to one of its project intervention sites in West Shoa Zone of Oromia Region.

Participants visited a dairy farm and a small scale irrigation group in Ejere district; and a private input supplier and service provider in Ambo town. During the visit, they interacted with men and women smallholder farmers; private input suppliers and service providers. Experiences and suggestions for improvement were shared among the visitors and the producers/service providers.

 (Compiled by Ephrem Tesema, LIVES Gender Expert)

Pictures from the workshop

LIVES UPDATES is a quarterly newsletter that is electronically published by the LIVES  project. The updates constitute activities, observations, reflections, and major events carried out by the project and its stakeholders. Updates on the project management are included as well. LIVES UPDATES  is available on Mahider.

Additionally, limited printed copies are distributed to LIVES sites and knowledge centers.

Don’t forget you can subscribe to email alerts from LIVES!

Download LIVES UPDATES

In a visit LIVES team to Tanzania, we came across a farming system which included crops and livestock components: rice, sunflower, dairy and meat cattle. There are also sunflower oil processors and rice mills in the nearby town that sell by-products (oilcake and rice bran) to traders outside of the district we visited. During our discussions with dairy farmers and pastoralists, we learned that possible uses of rice bran and oil cake for dairy or animal fattening is unknown. This reminded me of two similar situations we had come across in IPMS sites in the past.

The first case was in Goma District, where we introduced short term fattening of sheep with supplementary feeding. At first, through a rapid assessment of the input/service supply system in the District, we learned that a cotton seed oil processing factory operated in Agaro, the District capital. The assessment also showed that traders purchase this oil cake and sell it to pastoralists hundreds of kilometers away. In subsequent discussions with the factory manager and a group of farmers interested in sheep fattening with supplementary feeding (cotton seed cake), the IPMS partners made arrangements to link these producers and the factory for bulk supply of the oil cake; and facilitated payment with group loans provided by the local micro finance institute (see this sheep fattening case study).

The second case is from the rice value chain development in Fogera District, where the rice production acreage dramatically increased from 5,000 to 15,000 ha over a 5 years period, resulting in more rice straw. Consequently, rice processing also increased resulting in more rice husk from rough grinding for household consumption, and rice bran from polishing rice for sale of white rice in and outside of the District. More and more farmers in the district became aware of the value of the rice bran and started purchasing it from the grinding mill owners. Still, traders purchase a significant amount of rice bran and sell it to dairy farmers elsewhere in the country (see this rice value chain case study).  In a recent visit to Fogera, we saw that rice straw is now also exported to a particleboard factory, thus reducing its use for livestock in Fogera.

So why are feed resources right under farmers’ noses not used more intensively in the same farming systems? There are several reasons, including perhaps simple ignorance of the possibilities ranks high. Other reasons are that use of the resource outside the District may be more economical and therefore fetches a higher price,  or it may be that farmers who are not market-oriented don’t want to buy inputs, or perhaps the volume available is not worth commercially exploiting, or factory owners may prefer bulk sales rather than individual retail sales. It was for the latter reason that IPMS introduced bulk purchase/payment for “fatteners” in Goma.

The lesson from all this is that value chain practitioners should map and rapidly assess/understand the feed value chain supply system of locally produced feed resources and identify potential interventions for the benefit of livestock producers in the farming system that produces the resource.

On November 21, a news analysis on TR4′s transcontinental leap was posted on the ProMusa: Mobilizing banana science for sustainable livelihoods website. The analysis indicates that  tropical race 4 (TR4) strain of Fusarium wilt (also known as Panama disease)  has been confirmed in Jordan, a location much closer to Ethiopia than other countries where the disease has been seen.

TR4 is a serious soil-borne disease that has the potential to cause a major agricultural catastrophe in a country. Ethiopia’s banana sector could easily be a victim of this disease if necessary precautions are not taken by the concerned bodies.  The analysis elaborates further on measures that need to be taken to control the disease from entering the county – by designating TR4 as a quarantine pest  and other means.

Considering the extent of damage that this disease could cause, Bioversity International has released recommendations to prevent the entrance of quarantine plant diseases of major economic importance for banana. See the recommendations 

(Contributed by Kahsay Berhe)