Enhancing livelihoods of livestock-dependent poor people through increasing use of fodder: India and Nigeria (Fodder Innovation Project)

It was also premised that scaling up would take place through farmer-to-farmer exchanges and through the dissemination activities of development organisations partnering with the project. However, findings from the initial key project activities in Phase I showed that the issue of addressing fodder scarcity was much more complex than simply providing technologies such as improved germplasm. Accordingly the project changed its learning approach from technology to a partnership mode for alliance building and finally towards a facilitated multiple-actor and institutional perspective. 

Phase II, which started from January 2007, commonly known as the Fodder Innovation Project (FIP), will continue to address issues relating to fodder scarcity, a major constraint to enhancing the livelihoods of the poor. However, it will do this through experimenting with ways of building capacity required to innovate in order to address issues of fodder scarcity in equitable and sustainable ways.

This initiative in the context of the System-wide Livestock Program is implemented by ILRI in collaboration with the United Nations University (UNU-MERIT), the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA).