The economics of trypanotolerance
Disease control and biotechnology
Lessons in service delivery: The extension services in focus
A good deal of policy research over the last decade has been devoted to economics of disease control, particularly on trypanosomosis which results in an estimated annual loss of US$ 1.6–5 billion (Falconi et al. 2001), as such disease represents a major source of loss of productivity and farmers' incomes. However, other diseases of economic importance have also been evaluated as the result of the methodologies and approaches developed. The research extended beyond economics of the disease and its control to issues of delivery and privatisation of veterinary services as well as property rights and local institutions. As we will see, there are important lessons that can be learnt from the experience of ILRI in working with communities in diseases control.
The early research on trypanotolerance was driven by the demand for policy information. The exploitation of genetic resistance to the disease using African trypanotolerant breeds of cattle was given an increasing attention in a bid to reducing the effects of the disease (Itty et al. 1995). A great deal of information on the health and productivity of these cattle has been accumulated through research conducted at contrasting monitoring sites of the African Trypanotolerant Livestock Network (ATLN) since the late 1980s. In some of these sites, trypanotolerant cattle were introduced from regions of origin.
Several publications addressed the question about the circumstances under which trypanotolerant cattle enterprises can be economically viable in regions of origin and areas of introduction (Itty and Swallow 1994; Itty et al. 1995; Itty 1996). Village cattle enterprises in four countries in West Africa (The Gambia, Côte d'Ivoire, Togo and Zaire) were analysed. These studies concluded that trypanotolerant cattle represent a solution to the problem of producing cattle in regions of Africa affected by trypanosomiasis. Expansion of trypanotolerant cattle systems cannot, however, be recommended without a comparison with other tsetse and trypanosomiasis control strategies. In sites where cattle were to be introduced (Togo and Zaire), for instance, the level of costs need to be kept low because the benefits were limited to production of beef and breeding stock.
In contrast to the case of village cattle production using trypanotolerant breeds, other research considered the productivity of cattle herds raised under local management with a systematic regime of drug therapy, as the case in the Ghibe valley of south-western Ethiopia (Itty et al. 1995). As this work was completed during the time of expectations of devaluation of the Ethiopian currency and the privatisation of provision of veterinary services, the analysis had to focus on these two policy issues. The results indicated that economic returns increased considerably with higher costs of foreign exchange because of the resulting higher shadow prices for milk and meat. However, with high market price for trypanocidal drugs, the internal rate of return on investment for the cattle owner would decrease from an average of 25% to its worst-case scenario of 20%.
The policy research paper presented at an annual conference on the Ethiopian economy, Mussa and Gavian (1994) raised several policy issues regarding privatisation of animal health services in Ethiopia. The paper, based on economic theory, argued that vaccination against contagious diseases and vector control are public goods since the benefits extend to the whole economy, while curative services (diagnosis and treatment) of non-transmittable diseases are primarily private goods. Preventive services work better when managed by the state while privatisation could be encouraged for curative services.
Even if public goods such as preventive service work better when managed by the state, the question of willingness on the part of the community to the provision of local public good remains unanswered. Swallow and Woudyalew (1994) investigated whether local communities are willing to contribute in terms of money and/or labour for trypanosomiasis control programmes that used baited targets to kill tsetse flies in south-western Ethiopia. When asked contingent valuation questions about the maximum amounts of money and/or labour that they would be willing to contribute to the control programme, 59% of the households surveyed volunteered both money and labour and only 3% volunteered neither. Willingness to contribute money was related to the gender of the household head, the number of cattle held by the household and the participation of the household in a monitoring exercise being conducted by the research organisation. Willingness to contribute labour was related negatively to off-farm employment status of the head of the household, and positively to the information available to the respondent about the programme. Apart from direct applicability of these results to increase local involvement of the affected population in the control programme, the study stressed that the methodology used here, when integrated into participatory research approach, can generate practical results for evaluating the prospects for local participation in the provision of public goods.
Recently, the policy analysis of disease control took a new angle by examining the potential benefits to research on maintaining resistance to trypanosomiasis in tolerant and susceptible animals of two research thrusts: historically field-based and biotechnology-based (Falconi et al. 2001). This was motivated by the interest in understanding and exploiting the inherited resistance to trypanosomiasis of some livestock species and the opportunity for exploiting the emerging biotechnology to speed up the slow but steady progress made through field-based research. The issue here is prioritisation and research resource allocation. Such analysis is critical under conditions such as that of increasingly tight research budgets, pressures to demonstrate relevance, cost-effectiveness and impacts of particular research thrusts. The analysis concluded that overall priority should be given to the biotechnology option since resource devoted to field-based research on trypanotolerance generate significantly low potential benefits on aggregate than do those from biotechnology research. However, the relevance of biotechnology research and, most importantly, the likelihood that farmers will actually adopt outputs of that research and realise the potential gains that hinges on close link with field-based work.
Rapid gains in genetic resistance to trypanosomosis in cattle population of affected areas of Africa is expected from identifying 'marker-assisted selection' of target genes and 'marker-assisted introgression' coupled with AI. This complexity of the research product, together with its cost, raises the question about the means of delivering this technological product. To answer the question, the authors considered alternative arrangements of property rights. The paper compares the research impacts under two regimes of ownership rights, and delivery of research outputs. These are the complete private ownership vs. the complete public ownership. Under any scenario, institutional capacity to manage the implications of intellectual property rights for research activities is crucial to the distribution of gains of biotechnological research on trypanotolerance. The authors suggested that further research is needed to consistently identify and track the impacts of alternative intellectual property rights regimes, their implications for delivery options, and thereby their effects on the levels and distribution of research benefits.
It is necessary that agricultural extension systems be efficient and effective for technology diffusion to end-users. Agricultural extension systems across Africa are under great pressure to become more efficient and effective. Although there are sufficient proposals to what African governments should do in order to achieve these goals, those addressing how they might do so are rare. Are there any lessons that we can draw from ILRI's involvement in the interventions to control trypanosomiasis that may contribute to increasing the efficiency and efficacy of national extension systems in SSA?
The analysis of the outcome of the multi-year, farmer-centred intervention to control trypanosomosis carried out by ILRI in South-West Ethiopia offered an important guidance to the specific factors and processes that likely influence development and diffusion of agricultural technologies in given circumstances (Omamo et al. 2002). While not conceived as such at the time, this intervention emerges, in retrospect, as a real-world experiment in decentralised private provision of a traditional public extension activity. The nature of the control technology and several biophysical and socio-economic characteristics of the region selected for control, and that of participating farmers suggest insights into a range of issues that arise when analysts and decision makers take the question of how to reform agricultural extension services in Africa.
The significance of ILRI's experience is summarised as follows:
The primary lesson for extension reforms emerging from ILRI's experience is that it is the demand-driven nature of an agricultural extension system that matters the most, i.e. the demand for new information, which itself derives from demands for such goods and services as improved inputs and credit.
The policy work on health has not been restricted to trypanosomiasis. The economic loss due to ovine faciolosis in the Ethiopian highlands was estimated and opportunities for reducing these losses were explored (Ngategize et al. 1993). The study indicates that the returns from anthelmintic use to control fasciolosis are potentially high since the infrastructure already exists. Returns from endoparasitic control of fasciolosis in the Ethiopian highlands were estimated to be as high as 215%, and nutritional supplementation has the additional effect of reducing endoparasitism. Based on the results from this study, the authors justified control of this disease.
The policy work has not been limited to Africa, either. With ILRI's global mandate, LPAP researchers extended their effort to South-East Asia. In recent work, social welfare of adoption of herd health control programmes on smallholder dairy farms in central Thailand were estimated and the implications of heavy public policy support to the Thai dairy sector were analysed (Hall and Ehui 2000). In this study, the main concern is the impact that the adoption of herd health control programmes has on the exogenous, policy-induced distortions that benefit the Thai farmers. Results of the study indicate that dairy farmers of central Thailand have incentives to adopt herd health measures and that, following adoption of such programmes, there is a reduction in the degree of social inefficiency resulting from public policy supporting dairy farming. Following a reduction in the incidence of bovine disease on adopters' farms, the study predicts that there would be an increase in private profits due to the increase in farm revenues exceeding the increase in veterinary input costs.
On-going research on disease control and delivery of animal health service at LPAP includes a collaborative project with the Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD) on sustainable delivery of animal health services and appropriate decision making for control of contagious bovine pleuropneumonia (CBPP). CBPP is a major respiratory disease of cattle prevalent in most of African countries and widespread in several regions of Ethiopia. Its economic importance is mainly due to high mortality, production losses and costly and inefficient control strategies. Its control is expected to substantially improve productivity of cattle. A cost–benefit analysis of CBPP control strategies at herd level in traditional livestock farming systems of Ethiopia reveals that antibiotic treatment, as local practices prove, is the most cost-effective compared to other treatments such as vaccination, vaccinations and antibiotics, and multiple vaccinations. The study was implemented in close collaboration with local research and other stakeholders, mainly constituting the Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture, EARO, National Animal Health Research Centre, National Veterinary Institute, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and University of Claude Bernard Lyon I, the National Institute of Agronomic Research (INRA), the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), the French Food Safety Agency (AFSSA) and the National Veterinary School of Lyon in France.
With the recent emergence of diseases of trade where imports from certain host countries are restricted, policy work on diseases is expected to focus on the analysis of the welfare impact of these on trade and the smallholder producers. This focus necessitates a closer integration of research in economics of disease control and market, and regional and international trade research. Trade globalisation and the emerging stringent health and environmental regulations in importing countries can substantially affect smallholder producers' market participation and the level of benefits or losses resulting from the evolving Livestock Revolution.
