ILRI News

We heard today from Mohamed Said, a scientist leading research at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) on pastoral rangelands in eastern Africa, that Kitengela, a Maasai rangeland neighbouring Nairobi, is turning green again after good recent rains following last year’s devastating drought, which the livestock herders in Kitengela say killed most of their livestock along with much of the area’s wildlife.

Interestingly, although already turned green with heavy rains that arrived early in this year, this rangeland remains virtually empty of cattle. It is, rather, full of sheep and goats.

Kitengela’s Maasai herders have driven all their cattle southeast to Emali. Said and ILRI Maasai partner Nickson ole Parmisa say that the herders will bring their cattle back home, to Kitengela, in another few weeks, when the grass in Kitengela, which is now new and short, has grown taller.

Here is a case study in how Africa’s pastoral societies continue to work, against all odds, as communities.

Late last year, when the impacts of the drought in the Horn of Africa were peaking, Maasai herders from throughout Kenya’s Kajiado District descended on Kitengela with their animal herds because they had heard that the Kitengela rangelands had had ‘a few showers’. That was true in a few places, but with all the new livestock driven in to this one part of Kajiado, Kitengela was reduced to a dustbowl within a few days. With no forage to eat, the livestock of Kitengela perished soon after the stock that had been trekked in from far places.

Many people began to question the wisdom of traditional pastoral movement on Africa’s increasingly fragmented rangelands.

Now, just a few months later, the Maasai herders of Emali are returning the hospitality, and mercy, shown them last year by their Kitengela cousins. It is now the Emali Maasai who are sharing their green grass (the rains came earlier to Emali than to Kitengela, so the grass at Emali is taller than that in Kitengela) with the hungry animals of Kitengela.

While scientists at ILRI and elsewhere debate the wisdom of pastoral mobility (does it still work in today’s crowded world?), what apparently is not in doubt is the wisdom of pastoral reciprocity.

Collaborative agricultural research in Africa gets a welcome boost

In recent months, an initiative of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) called the Regional Plan for Collective Action in Eastern & Southern Africa (now simply called the ‘Regional Collective Action’) updated its ‘CGIAR Ongoing Research Projects in Africa Map’: http://ongoing-research.cgiar.org/ This collaborative and interactive map will be launched in the coming weeks through fliers, displays and presentations at agricultural, research and development meetings that have Africa as a focus. Although much of Africa’s agricultural research information has yet to be captured in this map, 14 centres supported by the CGIAR have already posted a total of 193 research projects and much more is being prepared for posting.

The newsletter of the Regional Collective Action—Collective Action News: Updates of agricultural research in Africa—continues to elicit considerable interest and feedback. Recent issues reported on the CGIAR reform process (November 2009) and agriculture and rural development at the recent climate change talks in Copenhagen (December 2009). The January 2010 issue reflects on the achievements of the Regional Collective Action since its inception three years ago (http://www.ilri.org/regionalplan/documents/Collective Action News January 2010.pdf). Several high-profile African networks, including the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN) and the Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa (ASARECA), are helping to disseminate the newsletter of the Regional Collective Action as well as information about its consolidated multi-institutional research map.

Coordinators have now been appointed to lead each of four flagship programs of the Regional Collective Action. Flagship 1 conducts collaborative work on integrated natural resource management issues and is coordinated by Frank Place at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF); Flagship 2 conducts research on agricultural markets and institutions and is led by Steve Staal of ILRI; Flagship 3 conducts research on agricultural and related biodiversity and is led by Wilson Marandu of Bioversity International with support from Richard Jones of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT); and Flagship 4 conducts research on agriculturally related issues in disaster preparedness and response and is led by Kate Longley and Richard Jones of ICRISAT.

These four flagships programs of the Regional Collective Action are expected to play crucial roles in advancing collaborative discussions and activities in the new CGIAR, which is transforming itself to better link its agricultural research to development outcomes.

ILRI’s Director of Partnerships and Communications, Bruce Scott, represented the CGIAR Centres at the December Meeting of the ASARECA Board of Trustees. ‘ASARECA continues to value the work of the CGIAR Centres in this region and welcome the Regional Collective Action,’ Scott said. With the four Flagship Programs off and running, the interactive Regional Research Map live on the web, and Collective Action News reporting on regional agricultural issues regularly, collaborative agricultural science for development in Africa appears to have got a welcome boost.

Satellite Images of Remote African Lands to be Used to Insure Herders from Devastating Droughts

Thousands of herders in arid areas of northern Kenya will be able to purchase insurance policies for their livestock, based on a first-of-its-kind program in Africa that uses satellite images of grass and other vegetation that indicate whether drought will put their camels, cows, goats and sheep at risk of starvation. The project was announced today in northern Kenya’s arid Marsabit District by the Nairobi-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), microfinance pioneer Equity Bank and African insurance provider UAP Insurance Ltd.

The index-based livestock insurance program will use satellite imagery to determine potential losses of livestock forage and issue payouts to participating herders when incidences of drought are expected to occur. If successful in the Marsabit District—where few of the 86,000 cattle and two million sheep and goat populations, valued at $67 million for milk and other products, are rarely slaughtered—the program would be offered to millions of semi-nomadic pastoralists and livestock keepers in other parts of the east African region.

“Today, our agents will begin selling insurance policies backed by UAP that for the first time will provide pastoral families in Kenya’s remote Marsabit District with a simple way to reduce their drought risk —the biggest threat to their cherished herds of cattle, sheep, goats, and camels—from devastating lives and livelihoods,” said Equity Bank Managing Director James Mwangi. “Livestock is the key asset for families in this region and securing this asset is critical to their ability to obtain credit and investments that can allow them to grow and prosper.”

ILRI, which is part of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), developed the project with partners at the Ministry of Development of Northern Kenya, Cornell University, Syracuse University, the BASIS program at University of Wisconsin, and the Index Insurance Innovation Initiative (I4). The project is funded by UK’s Department for International Development (UKaid), United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the World Bank and Financial Sector Deepening Trust (FSD Kenya).

Insuring livestock of pastoral families has long had been considered impossible due to the formidable challenges of verifying deaths of animals that regularly are moved over vast tracts of land in search of food. ILRI and its partners have overcome this impediment by combining satellite images of vegetation in the Marsabit District with monthly surveys of livestock deaths to pinpoint the level of forage reduction that will cause animals to die. This program is different from all others because it does not pay clients based on the actual loss of their livestock assets, but rather on indicators that the animals are at risk of death.

“The reason this system can work is that getting compensation does not require verifying that an animal is actually dead,” said Andrew Mude, who is the project leader at ILRI. “Payments kick in when the satellite images, which are available practically in real time, show us that forage has become so scarce that animals are likely to perish.”

Droughts are frequent in the region—there have been 28 in the last 100 years and four in the past decade alone—and the losses they inflict on herders can quickly push pastoralist families into poverty. For example, the drought of 2000 was blamed for major animal losses in the district.

“Insurance is something of the Holy Grail for those of us who work with African livestock, particularly for pastoralists who could use insurance both as a hedge against drought—a threat that will become more common in some regions as the climate changes—and to increase their earning potential,” said ILRI Director General Carlos Seré.

The cost of the plans offered will vary depending on the number of animals and the area of coverage. The policies contain a clause akin to a deductible, in which a family would buy coverage that would pay-out when livestock losses are expected to exceed a certain level.

“We believe this program has potential because it has the elements insurers need to operate, which is a well-known risk (drought), and an external indicator that is verifiable and can’t be manipulated, which in this case is satellite images of the vegetation,” said James Wambugu, Managing Director of UAP Insurance.

The data on forage availability are derived from satellite images of plant growth in the region that are part of a global survey known as the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, or NDVI, a database regularly updated by scientists at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

To develop the livestock insurance program, ILRI used NDVI data collected since 1981 estimating forage availability vegetation in the Marsabit District. This information was combined with data on livestock deaths that have been collected monthly since 2000 by the Kenya Arid Lands Resource Management Project (ALRMP) and USAID’s Pastoral Risk Management Project. The result is a statistical model that reliably predicts when and to what degree forage reductions will result in drought-related livestock deaths.

Given the complexity of index-based livestock insurance, ILRI and its partners have developed an insurance simulation game for local communities to explain the key features of the insurance policy and tested it across the Marsabit District. ILRI’s Mude said many of the herders who played the game became intensely involved in the simulation.

“It helps them understand how insurance can protect them against losses. They also appear to simply enjoy playing the game itself, which generates a lot of animated discussion,” said Mude.

Mude said there is a potential for livestock insurance to be valuable even without a drought that triggers payments. For example, a policy could prevent stock losses by providing pastoralists the means to obtain credit for purchasing feed and drugs that would allow animals to survive the tough conditions. Similarly, pastoralists who want to expand their herds to take advantage of Africa’s rising demand for livestock products are likely to find it easier to obtain capital from private creditors now unwilling to lend due to the risks associated with droughts.

But more fundamentally, ILRI believes insurance can help avert an all too common catastrophe, and one that could occur with more regularity if climate change alters rainfall patterns in the region: droughts pushing pastoralist families into chronic impoverishment by inflicting losses from which the people cannot recover.

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For more information, please contact:
Jeff Haskins at +254 729 871 422; jhaskins@burnesscommunications.com or
Muthoni Njiru at +254 722 798 321; m.njiru@cgiar.org

About International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI)
The Africa-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) works at the crossroads of livestock and poverty, bringing high-quality science and capacity building to bear on poverty reduction and sustainable development. ILRI is one of 15 centers supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). It has its headquarters in Kenya and a principal campus in Ethiopia. It also has teams working out of offices in Nigeria, Mali, Mozambique, India, Thailand, Indonesia, Laos, Vietnam and China. For more information, please visit: www.ilri.org.

For further background information on project details visit the IBLI website and associates ILRI stories

ILRI, Equity Bank, and UAP Insurance Launch First-ever Project to Insure Cows, Camels, and Goats in Kenya’s Arid North

Thousands of herders in arid areas of northern Kenya will be able to purchase insurance policies for their livestock, based on a first-of-its-kind program in Africa that uses satellite images of grass and other vegetation that indicate whether drought will put their camels, cows, goats, and sheep at risk of starvation. The project was announced today in northern Kenya’s arid Marsabit District by the Nairobi-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), microfinance pioneer Equity Bank and African insurance provider UAP Insurance Ltd.

“The reason this system can work is that getting compensation does not require verifying that an animal is actually dead,” said Andrew Mude, who is the project leader at ILRI. “Payments kick in when the satellite images, which are available practically in real time, show us that forage has become so scarce that animals are likely to perish.”

Droughts are frequent in the region—there have been 28 in the last 100 years and four in the past decade alone—and the losses they inflict on herders can quickly push pastoralist families into poverty. For example, the drought of 2000 was blamed for major animal losses in the district.

“Insurance is something of the Holy Grail for those of us who work with African livestock, particularly for pastoralists who could use insurance both as a hedge against drought—a threat that will become more common in some regions as the climate changes—and to increase their earning potential,” said ILRI Director General Carlos Seré.

For more information, please contact:
Jeff Haskins at +254 729 871 422 or +254 770 617 481;
jhaskins@burnesscommunications.com
or Muthoni Njiru at +254 722 789 321 or m.njiru@cgiar.org

Background Materials

Project Summary

Media Coverage
Satellites to help Kenyans secure against drought (Reuters)

Kenyan herders to be offered livestock insurance against drought (The Guardian)

Equity Bank and UAP will insure Kenyan herders against drought (Bloomberg)

For further informative news clippings on ILRI in the news, visit ILRI clippings

Film
Index Based Livestock Insurance film (2.49mins) View

Arusha—East Africa has some 63 out of the total number of 100 species of Acacia trees found in Africa. Acacias, the poor-man’s fuel and forage, have developed highly specialised characteristics that make them superbly adapted to the challenges of living in Africa—a continent with all its variability and year-on-year extremes of climate change. The temperate world worries when it gets a few inches of rain. The African world worries when, for three successive years it gets none. If the world at large is really concerned about man’s impact on climate change, it does not need grant-dependant scientists in East Anglia to fiddle with its data; it just needs to see what man is doing to Africa by counting the dwindling numbers and varieties of Acacias.

Drive the Makayuni to Mtu wa Mbu stretch of road in northern Tanzania, a wonderfully smooth length of 30 kms of Japanese-laid tarmac and compare this with the Meserani to Makayuni road, a somewhat longer stretch of Italian-laid tarmac. In the former there are still some different species of Acacia trees to count, in the latter there are whistling thorn (Acacia drepanolobium). The latter stretch had a variety of trees, according to residents of the area. The rapidly thinning stands in the former suggest that it will not be long before it joins the latter, as yet another man-made arid and relatively unproductive bit of mismanaged African rangeland. Does anyone care? Not really, as it is those funny, red-robed peoples, along with their progressively emaciated cattle, who are the immediate apparent losers. That we are ultimately all going to be losers has not yet penetrated the policy-making classes peering out of their air-conditioned offices in the commercial capital city of Dar es Salaam at the immaculate and well-watered green surroundings.

Acacias are characterised by having thorns—in fact their name comes from the Greek “akis” and means “barb” or “sharp point” (See Najma Dharani’s book – “Field Guide to the Acacias of East Africa”). Their thorns take on quite impressive features, as dramatically portrayed in the film, “The Gods must be Crazy” when one notoriously hooked thorned variety, the “Wait a bit” thorn (Acacia mellifera) catches the leading lady’s underwear, requiring the leading man—playing the part of an accident-prone elephant dung expert—to untangle the situation. The Acacia’s thorns have a survival purpose, by restricting how much they are browsed by livestock and wildlife, and when the barbs are braved, swarms of biting ants and rapidly rising levels of toxic leaf sap, as second and third lines of defence, further deter the browser’s attention. Left alone to themselves, and despite the animals and the odd bush fire, the Acacias generally do ok—it’s just man that they are defenceless against. The cut of the hard steel axe and the subsequent rising column of smoke from the charcoal burners mound spell a rapidly increasing doom for the species—especially the better hard wooded more productive varieties such as Abyssinica, Gerrardii, Hockii, Nilotica, Tortillis and Xanthoplea. It is the mature, pod-bearing trees that go first, providing more bucks for the effort of cutting them down, and pod bearers provide the seeds for the next generation. No pod bearers, no next generation.

But surely open treeless rangeland is much better than being “invaded” by all that spikey useless bushy Acacia stuff. Where the species are of predominately of the less useful varieties this might to some extent be true—but in reality the arid and semi-arid rangelands need Acacias for all the multitudinous benefits they confer. Being leguminous, their number one value is in improving soil fertility supporting rangeland productivity and providing a critically needed dry season reserve of digestible protein for livestock and wildlife alike. They are also highly valuable for their root systems, which counter soil erosion and create water catchments whilst their foliage provides life-saving shade. Lopped branches and fallen trees for fuel wood, honey production from twice-yearly flowering gums and traditional medicinal products from roots and bark infusions are sustainable uses that man has practised for generations. In many traditional societies the value of the Acacias is well recognised and there are strictly applied controls on what and how much is harvested and by whom.

The advent of the urbanisation and dramatic increases in predominately impoverished populations have created an ever upwards spiralling demand for low-cost fuel for cooking the daily diet of maize meal and, if lucky, beans. Much of this fuel comes from charcoal produced largely from the seemingly infinite tracts of Acacia once found growing freely throughout African rangeland. Now, as the Meserani to Mto wa Mbu road is telling, that infinity has a horizon which is rapidly being approached.

I will leave it to the better-informed scientists to tell us how much carbon is captured by well-managed and productive rangeland as compared to the rapidly evolving treeless wastelands. I just know that it is a lot and stated to be significantly in excess of the carbon captured by rain forests. So why do we not have any “Save the Rangeland” appeals? Do East Anglians prefer to take their holidays in the Amazon? I will also leave it to the scientists at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Nairobi to tell us that African rangeland-reared cattle contribute less than 3% of all methane emissions attributable to livestock production, whilst at the same time supporting the livelihoods of some several million pastoralists and providing Nairobi, and much of the rest of Africa, with an affordable, organic and renewable source of high quality animal protein. Just to put one in the eye of Paul and his fellow advocates for a meat free world it has been shown (not, I hasten to add, by scientists from East Anglia) that just 3 grams of meat, or equivalent livestock product, a day in the diet of a growing African child has a significant and readily measurable benefit in terms of cognitive development and ultimate success in developing a fully functioning intelligence. I am not one for denying them this chance but I need to remember that this time, I am talking trees.

So what to do? Grow trees, the right varieties of Acacia, and plant them, in the right places. Simple really, except for one small problem—the seeds do not readily germinate. It’s just another Acacia thing. In order for its seeds to survive the long periods of insufficient rain and not infrequent droughts, the seeds are coat hardened to withstand the strongly desiccant environment. It is said by many that the seeds need to be tenderised in order to germinate either by passing through the stomach of a ruminant and/or be subject to the heat of a bush fire. The latter may be true, though more die than survive, but the former not so true— though those seeds that receive just enough but not too much grinding by the ruminant’s molars are more likely to germinate than those fully ground or not ground at all. The Acacia hard wood species tend to have fleshy pods which are highly edible and nutritious for ruminants, providing a particularly protein-rich food source in the dry season. Their ingestion and passage through the ruminant’s gut leads, ultimately, to the seeds being distributed far and wide, as testified by my friend’s Acacias, which have largely derived from the cow manure they have used on their well-watered lawn!

The challenge “boils down” to how to grow Acacias, what varieties and where to plant them. It is a lot to do with caring for an environment where climate challenge [change to challenge is easily done] is an established fact of life, whilst it is the actions of uncaring fellow citizens and the misinformed/weakly applied policies allowing them, that seem to me to be the real change of concern. Just count the trees and see each day their number dwindling. Ruminant guts and bush fires apart, by application of the appropriate technique, Acacias can be induced to germinate and that magic moment of life, its reproduction, follows. Such a technique is likely to include the physical collection, storage with insecticide, preconditioning [soaking Acacia seeds in hot water works for some species but not the harder tougher ones—more physical abuse, otherwise known as scarification, is needed] and sowing of the seeds in long-range weather forecasted periods of prolonged rains. Maybe someone should ask Copenhagen to allocate a proportion of the carbon funds for the management of rangelands inclusive of the planting of Acacias—a present for the earth that will last longer than Xmas.

A South-South Symposium to Improve Safety and Distribution in the Dairy Sector
1 – 4 December 2009, Nairobi, Kenya

In both India and East Africa some 80-90% of milk is handled by the informal, un-organized dairy sector. We usually associate milk with cattle, but domesticated ungulates such as sheep, goats, yaks, water buffalo, horses, and camels are other primary milk producers in developing countries. The largest producer and consumer of cattle's milk in the world is India.

Milk provides the primary source of nutrition for young mammals before they are able to digest other types of food, and carries the mother's antibodies to the baby. It can reduce the risk of many diseases in the baby. The exact components of raw milk varies by species, but it contains significant amounts of saturated fat, protein and calcium as well as vitamin C.

The food value of an animal killed for meat can be matched by perhaps one year's worth of milk from the same animal, which will keep producing milk—in convenient daily portions—for years.

Despite the importance of this simple, opaque liquid, there has been little education in the handling of such an important nutritional substance nor to the organization of its distribution.

In Kenya, which has the largest dairy herd in Africa, including South Africa, about 1.6 million rural smallholder households depend on dairy production for their main livelihood, and dairy is the largest agricultural subsector by contribution to GDP, larger than horticulture, tea or coffee. Again, the large majority of these producers depend on the informal sector market, which employs over 30,000 people along the supply chain. Despite their immense contribution to livelihoods, informal milk marketing systems have historically suffered neglect and opposition from decision-makers and development agents, often because of concerns over quality and safety.

In East Africa, key players have been meeting regularly over the last three years to share lessons on these issues under an association formed to facilitate exchange of new approaches and to harmonize policies, the East Africa Dairy Regulators Association Council (EADRAC). With the nascent development of awareness in India of possibilities for upgrading informal markets, an event to allow the sharing of lessons with key players in East Africa engaged in similar milk marketing systems would be of immense benefit to both sides and the researchers involved.

To this end, a symposium is proposed that would bring together the key researchers and decision-makers from East Africa and northeast India concerning the informal dairy sector. Key outputs will be shared experiences and demonstrations of innovation through structured field visits and presentations of approaches and evidence. This will support the dissemination of new approaches for managing the informal sector that will improve the livelihoods of millions working in the informal dairy sectors of both regions, as well as consumers of milk and dairy products.

Case studies on these topics will be presented and specific strategies and recommendations developed. Participants will be dairy decision-makers and researchers from India and East Africa. The symposium will be linked to a regional EADRAC meeting to be held in East Africa and is provisionally planned for 1 – 4 Dec 2009 in Nairobi, Kenya. The symposium is being organized by the International Livestock Research Institute and the Association (ILRI) for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa.

Programme:
Days 1-2: Representatives from EADRAC, India, ASARECA and ILRI will share and discuss case study presentations.
Day 3: Synthesis of lessons
Day 4: Field tour

Principal investigators undertaking research on livestock use of water in the Nile River Basin met at ILRI in Ethiopia on 11 and 12 November 2009.

Representatives from Sudan’s Agricultural Economics and Policy Research Center, Makerere University in Kampala, and the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research shared experiences of promising technologies and policy innovations that can enable millions of poor livestock keepers and farmers to enhance food production and livelihoods and reverse land degradation throughout vast Nile region.

Ethiopia, Sudan, and Uganda are very different countries but together they exemplify the major and diverse cropping and livestock keeping practices found in the Nile region. Rainfed crop and livestock production are dominant, but irrigation is locally important.

In all cases, the researchers concluded that there are huge opportunities to use water resources more effectively and productive for agricultural production. The key appears to be integrated inter-institutional collaboration with coherent policy aimed at increasing livestock water productivity through use of water efficient animal feeds, water conservation, adoption of state-of-the-art and available animal science knowledge.

Application of off-the-shelf science based outputs potentially enables environmentally sustainable increases in food production, improved domestic water, and better livelihoods. Much of the water required to achieve these benefits can come from rainfall that currently does not enter the Nile’s lakes and water course and does not sustain the natural environment. In other words, this is water for which there is often relatively little competition among diverse water users.

The researchers are synthesizing results from investigation undertaken in the basin.

It was supported by the CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food (www.waterandfood.org).

Report by Don Peden, ILRI

On 12 November 2009, Prof Gebisa Ejeta, winner of the 2009 World Food Prize, contributed to a 'Dialogue on Agricultural Development in Ethiopia'.

Organized in his honor by the Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Dialogue was opened by H.E. Ato Girma Woldegiorgis, President of Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, with a welcome address from H.E. Ato Teferra Derebew, Minister for Agriculture and Rural Development.

The program included the following presentations.

• 'Enhancing Science-based Development in Africa: Where Does Ethiopia Stand? – Prof Gebisa Ejeta
• 'Achievements and Challenges in Ethiopian Agriculture' – H.E. Dr. Abera Deresa, State Minister, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development
• 'The Role of Agricultural Institutions of Higher Learning in Producing the Next Generation Agricultural Leaders in Ethiopia – Dr Solomon Assefa, Director General, Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research
• 'The Role of Agricultural Universities in Creating the Next Generation of Agricultural Leaders in Ethiopia' – Prof Belay Kassa, President, Haramaya University

These presentations were followed by a panel discussion with contributions from H. E. Tumusiime Rhoda Peace (African Union Commission), Dr. Mata Chipeta (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations); Dr. Carlos Seré (International Livestock Research Institute); and Dr. Yilma Kebede (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation).

The Dialogue closed with remarks by Dr. Connie Freeman (International Development Research Centre), Dr. Bashir Jama (Alliance for a Green Revolution for Africa), and Dr. Berhane Gebre Kidan.

Support for the Dialogue honouring Prof Ejeta was provided by the Ethiopian Government as well as the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, the Canadian International Development Agency, the International Development Research Centre (Canada), the International Livestock Research Institute, the Japanese International Cooperation Agency, OXFAM America, OXFAM Great Britain and the United States Agency for International Development.

For more information about Prof Gebisa Ejeta, this year's World Food Prize Laureate, please go to: World Food Prize Laureate.

See presentations and photos from the dialogue.

As African leaders prepare to present an ambitious proposal to industrialized countries for coping with climate change in the part of the world that is most vulnerable to its impacts, a new study points to where and how some of this money should be spent. Published in the peer-reviewed journal Agricultural Systems, the study projects that climate change will have highly variable impacts on East Africa’s vital maize and bean harvests over the next two to four decades, presenting growers and livestock keepers with both threats and opportunities.

Previous estimates by the study’s authors projected moderate declines in the production of staple foods by 2050 for the region as a whole but also suggested that the overall picture disguises large differences within and between countries. The new findings provide a more detailed picture than before of variable climate change impacts in East Africa, assessing them according to broadly defined agricultural areas.

 “Even though these types of projections involve much uncertainty, they leave no room for complacency about East Africa’s food security in the coming decades," said the lead author of the new study, Philip Thornton of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), which is supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). “Countries need to act boldly if they’re to seize opportunities for intensified farming in favored locations, while cushioning the blow that will fall on rural people in more vulnerable areas.”

The researchers simulated likely shifts in cropping, using a combination of two climate change models and two scenarios for greenhouse gas emissions, together with state-of-the-art models for maize and beans, two of the region’s primary staple foods. 
In the mixed crop-livestock systems of the tropical highlands, the study shows that rising temperatures may actually favor food crops, helping boost output of maize by about half in highland “breadbasket” areas of Kenya and beans to much the same degree in similar parts of Tanzania. Meanwhile, harvests of maize and beans could decrease in some of the more humid areas, under the climate scenarios used in the study. Across the entire region, production of both crops is projected to decline significantly in drylands, particularly in Tanzania.

“The emerging scenario of climate-change winners and losers is not inevitable,” said ILRI director general Carlos Seré. “Despite an expected three-fold increase in food demand by 2050, East Africa can still deliver food security for all through a smart approach that carefully matches policies and technologies to the needs and opportunities of particular farming areas.”

At the Seventh World Forum on Sustainable Development, held recently in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, African leaders announced a plan to ask the industrialized world to pay developing countries US$67 billion a year as part of the continent's common negotiating position for December’s climate talks in Copenhagen.

The ILRI study analyzes various means by which governments and rural households can respond to climate change impacts at different locations. In Kenya, for example, the authors suggest that shifting bean production more to the cooler highland areas might offset some of the losses expected in other systems. 

Similarly, Tanzania and Uganda could compensate for projected deficits in both maize and beans through increased regional trade. In the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), maize trade is already worth more than US$1 billion, but only 10 percent of it occurs within the region. As grain prices continue to rise in global markets, several East African countries will be well positioned to expand output of maize and beans for regional markets, thus reducing reliance on imports and boosting rural incomes.

Where crop yields are expected to decline only moderately because of climate change, past experience suggests that rural households can respond effectively by adopting new technologies to intensify crop and livestock production, many of which are being developed by various CGIAR-supported centers and their national partners. 

Drought-tolerant maize varieties, for example, have the potential to generate benefits for farmers estimated at $863 million or more in 13 African countries over the next 6 years, according to a new study carried out by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA). Meanwhile, new heat-tolerant varieties of productive climbing beans, which are traditionally grown in highlands, are permitting their adoption at lower elevations, where they yield more than twice as much grain as the bush-type beans grown currently, according to Robin Buruchara of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT).

In areas that face drastic reductions in maize and bean yields, farmers may need to resort to more radical options, such as changing the types of crops they grow (replacing maize, for example, with sorghum or millet), keeping more livestock or abandoning crops altogether to embrace new alternatives, such as the provision of  environmental services, including carbon sequestration. 

This latter option could become a reality under COMESA’s Africa Biocarbon Initiative, which is designed to tap the huge potential of the region’s diverse farmlands and other rural landscapes – ranging from dry grasslands to humid tropical forests – for storing millions of tons of carbon. The initiative offers African negotiators an appealing option in their efforts to influence a future climate change agreement.

“If included in emissions payment schemes, this initiative could create new sources of income for African farmers and enhance their resilience to climate change,” said Peter Akong Minang, global coordinator of the Alternatives to Slash-and-Burn (ASB) Programme at the World Agroforestry Centre. “Its broad landscape approach would open the door for many African countries to actively participate in – and benefit from – global carbon markets.”

“Rural people manage their livelihoods and land in an integrated way that encompasses many activities,” said Bruce Campbell, director of the CGIAR’s Challenge Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security. “That’s why they need integrated options to cope with climate change, consisting of diverse innovations, such as drought-tolerant crops, better management of livestock, provision of environmental services and so forth.”

How rapidly and successfully East African nations and rural households can take advantage of such measures will depend on aggressive new investments in agriculture, CGIAR researchers argue. According to a recent study by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), it will take about $7 billion annually, invested mainly in rural roads, better water management and increased agricultural research, to avert the dire implications of climate change for child nutrition worldwide.

About 40 percent of that investment would address the needs of sub-Saharan Africa, where modest reductions projected for maize yields in the region as a whole are expected to translate into a dramatic rise in the number of malnourished children by 2050. Thornton’s projections probably underestimate the impacts on crop production, because they reflect increasing temperatures and rainfall changes only and not greater variability in the weather and growing pressure from stresses like drought and insect pests.
“Farmers and pastoralists in East Africa have a long history of dealing with the vagaries of the weather,” said Seré. “But climate change will stretch their adaptive capacity beyond its limits, as recent severe drought in the region has made abundantly clear. Let's not leave rural people to fend for themselves but rather invest significantly in helping them build a more viable future.”

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About ILRI:
The Africa-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) works at the crossroads of livestock and poverty, bringing high-quality science and capacity-building to bear on poverty reduction and sustainable development. ILRI is one of 15 centers supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). It has its headquarters in Kenya and a principal campus in Ethiopia. It also has teams working out of offices in Nigeria, Mali, Mozambique, India, Thailand, Indonesia, Laos, Vietnam and China. www.ilri.org.

About the CGIAR: The CGIAR, established in 1971, is a strategic partnership of countries, international and regional organizations and private foundations supporting the work of 15 international Centers. In collaboration with national agricultural research systems, civil society and the private sector, the CGIAR fosters sustainable agricultural growth through high-quality science aimed at benefiting the poor through stronger food security, better human nutrition and health, higher incomes and improved management of natural resources. www.cgiar.org
 

The work of ecologist Robin Reid, who spent 15 years conducting pastoral research at the Nairobi headquarters of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI)  and is now Director for Collaborative Conservation at Colorado State University, in Fort Collins, is featured in a current segment of the American television program ‘60 Minutes’, which aired last Sunday, 3 October 2009. You can view the segment on the 60 Minutes website here:
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5362301n

This story of the great annual wildebeest migration, the last such spectacle of big mammals on the move, focuses on two things—the danger that destruction of Kenya’s Mau Forest presents to the Mara River, the artery that keeps the wildlife and livestock in the Masai Mara region alive, and the hope for sustaining both wildlife populations and the Masai’s pastoral livelihoods presented by new public-private initiatives called wildlife conservancies.

Poverty reduction lies behind both the danger and the hope.

Kenyan governments have allowed poor farmers to inhabit the Mau Forest, high above the Mara Game Reserve, which provides the waters for the Mara River. These farmers fell the trees to grow crops and make a living. The current government has recently acted to evict these communities to protect this important watershed.

Downstream, meanwhile, Maasai livestock herders, who have provided stewardship for the wildlife populations they live amongst for centuries, are bearing the brunt of the declining water in the Mara River, which threatens both their livestock livelihoods and the populations of big mammals and other wildlife that have made the Mara Game Reserve famous worldwide. Robin Reid says that should the Mara River disappear entirely, some experts estimate some 400,000 animals would likely perish in the very first week.

The new wildlife conservancies being developed in the lands adjacent to the Reserve are also about poverty reduction. They are an ambitious attempt by the local Maasai and private conservation and tourist companies to serve the needs both of the local livestock herders and the many people wanting to conserve resources for the wildlife. The conservancies are paying the Maasai to leave some of their lands open for wildlife. They appear to be working well, with the full support of the local Maasai. Dickson ole Kaelo, who is leading the conservancy effort, was recently a partner in an ILRI research project called Reto-o-Reto, a Maasai term meaning ‘I help you, you help me’. Dickson was a science communicator in that 3-year project, which found ways to help both the human and wildlife populations of this region. In his new role as developer of conservancies, Dickson and his community have managed to bring nearly 300 square miles of Mara rangelands under management by the conservancies, which pay equal attention to people and animals.

The long-term participatory science behind this story is demonstrable proof that, difficult as they are to find and develop, ways to help both people and wildlife, both public and private goods, exist, if all stakeholders come together and if the political will and policy support are forthcoming.

In other, drier, rangelands of Kenya, now experiencing a great drought that is killing half the livestock herds of pastoralists, some experts are predicting an end to pastoral ways of life. Other experts are predicting the end of big game in Kenya. Both, ILRI’s research indicates, are tied to one another. It appears unlikely that either will be saved without the other.