As part of the development of a new CGIAR research program on Livestock, ILRI and partners held a face to face event with stakeholders and partners in Ethiopia ton 9 February 2016 o discuss, validate and improve elements of the draft proposal. The format was informal, with group discussion of questions following a general introductory presentation. The rough points and notes from the discussions are posted below.

Does the focus on smallholders make sense? Is anything crucial missing?

• Fear that pastoralists could be excluded
• Focus on smallholder more likely to generate employment than focus on large holders
• Look at smallholders from a consumer perspective
• Market aspect crucial
• Environmental issues with smallholders – preservation of products
• Definition of smallholders? Should consider many aspects, consider context – livelihood
• The role of cooperatives and micro finance is crucial
• Government priorities – Harmonization of the program
• Link smallholders with private sectors / large scale farmers
• Smallholders versus large scale farmers eg, dairy processing needs to be considered
• Income generating activities for women in Ethiopia
• Graduate smallholders to large scale system should be designed over the years
• Some level of support medium/large attach weight – 80%
• Livestock service delivery needs to be focused , develop model , should be context specific, pastor mixed
• How to make smallholder market oriented should be areas of research

Does the organization of research for development priorities around trajectories of change miss anything?

• Strong structure with externalities
• Strong growth trajectories may start having externalities links needed (ex. Discard outbreaks)
• Missed out urban poor (poor urban livestock systems)
• More shouldn’t not only to have ruminants focus (don’t forget camels)
• Trajectories couldn’t be looked out independently

What are the top issues driving research on enhanced resilience for livestock-based livelihoods

• Improve adaptive capacity?
• Need institutional arrangement
• Improve proactive risk models and early warning systems
• Markets, increase off – take
• Linking different production systems
• AH service delivery
• Markets (temporal fluctuations)
• Market problems (Camels + SR)
• Commercially viable resilience strategies
  • Public private partnerships
• Unpredictability , bio –physical , socio-economics

What are the top issues driving research on sustainable intensification of livestock-based systems?

• Overlap strong growth + fragile growth trajectories (ex. Pastoralist system)
• Role of livestock in x-systems?
• Productivity is key
• Adaptation environmental
• Markets (temporal fluctuations)
• Technologies (ex. Dairy) – Value chain development needs to have long term perspective
• Environmental resources
• Social systems
• Biophysical intensification (surface + underground)
• Economic activities

Are there any categories of partners missing?

• Research
  • NARS, Regional Agricultural research institutes
  • CGIAR center, international research institutes
• Development partners (including NGOs)
  • Ministries, Livestock +fish, environmental , water and Energy , customs revenue, ATA
  • FAO, Action AID, GIZ , USAID, Farm Africa, World Bank, APDB
  • Universities, local government
  • National and international facility of agriculture

What are key roles for the private sector for livestock? And public sector

• Policy support (land allocation to youth)
• Attaching + relating issue in Asia emerging issue in Africa
• Private sectors
  • Seed industry, entrepreneurs , gender + youth
• Current weakness
  • Financial situations
  • Market institutions
• Opportunity
  • Export abattoirs
  • Meat quality, darkening, etc.
  • Link to enablers, ministries, agencies for support
• Farmer associations
  • Crop see, fertilizers, livestock health, meat producers
  • Milk processor association (quality + adulteration)
  • Cooperative agencies
  • Microfinance
  • Feed processing
• New ministry, partners are key to bring all together

Do we have the right ingredients for stepwise, transformative changes leading to sustainable, resilient livestock systems?

• Transformation is beyond incremental changes
• Address the issues for smallholders farmers holistically.
• Considered
  • Income is only one component
  • Demand driven
  • Smallholder basics context specific – mixed pastoralist
  • Environmental issues
• To be considered
  • How the whole effort is linked to market
  • Need to look into market requirement
  • Export market requirements

• Focus added
  • Medium and large scale farmers especially for dairy?
  • Smallholders can still be competitive – right investment CSR & Dairy
  • The comprehensiveness did not come out clearly
  • What is the value added by the research?
  • How much do we depend on partners
• Market did not come out clearly
• What does the farmers do with the increased quantity of production?
• Are the markets big and responsive enough
• Livestock extension
  • Lack the packages
  • Human power
  • Crop focused
  • Well-designed packages
  • Capacity building

How best can we integrate capacity development, gender, and communications?

• Capacity
  • Human + material – the emphasis is vital (research facilities)
  • The emphasis needs to be increased
• Effectiveness of capacity development efforts
• Need for community controlled processes linking capacity development and communication agenda
• Clarity of the gender component
• Integrating the gender component at the outset of planning
• Gender
  • Capacity to undertake gender research
  • Capacity – human + material
• Communications
  • Needs to be part and parcel of the TOC/IP
• Using the information generated
• Communication and gender
  • Preference elicitation and communication to and within the community
  • Communication shall be multi-dimensional

Notes by Tsehay Gashaw (ILRI, Ethiopia)