International Livestock Research Institute
In close collaboration with pastoralists and farmers, ILRI is advancing climate innovations that can transform livestock systems across Africa and Asia—improving productivity, strengthening resilience, and reducing environmental impacts.
Improving livestock health boosts productivity, livelihoods, and food security—and it reduces greenhouse gas emissions per unit of milk or meat produced. That's why ILRI's efforts to prevent and treat common livestock diseases, such as mastitis, emerge as promising climate solutions. New research shows that eliminating mastitis in dairy herds could increase total milk production by 9.1% and reduce emissions per liter of milk by 4.8%.
Along the same lines, via advances in livestock genetics, ILRI scientists have identified strong, resilient cows and bulls with the best chance of converting the least amount of feed into the most milk. Using these superior animals for breeding, farmers have already seen improved milk yields of 60 percent—again reducing net emissions. “Nobody thought that this was feasible in a smallholder system... but we have actually seen that it works,” said ILRI principal scientist Raphael Mrode.
Providing animals with more nutritious feed is another way to increase productivity and lower emissions. ILRI and its partners are testing, validating, and scaling climate-smart feed and forage innovations with community participation. Radio programs and mobile voice messages in local languages have reached more than 130,000 farmers in Ethiopia, with timely information on what, when, and how to feed their livestock. Drought-tolerant, highly nutritious, and low-methane forages are particularly helpful—Burchell's clover, for example, has been demonstrated to lower cows’ methane emissions by around 80 percent compared with most other forages.
Finally, ILRI is working with and learning from those on the frontlines of climate change: farmers and adaptation pioneers who share locally developed climate solutions with their peers, showing the way to resilient livestock livelihoods as the climate changes.