Steve Staal is an agricultural economist who has conducted research in livestock systems in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia for some 30 years. His areas of work have included: livelihoods and competitiveness of smallholder livestock producers and small scale actors in livestock product markets; the role of non-market benefits of livestock keeping; understanding technology uptake among rural producers and the associated spatial and locational determinants; pro-poor public policy in output markets serving livestock producers; the important role of the informal and traditional livestock products markets that feature in most developing country settings, and the factors underlying their continued strength. He recently retired from a long career at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Kenya, where he eventually took on a number of research management roles, leading multi-disciplinary international teams of scientists addressing livelihoods and gender, smallholder competitiveness, impact assessment, institutions, policy, trade and markets, foresight and modeling of livestock systems futures, innovation systems, food safety, and veterinary public health. The research, programs that he led were often very closely tied to major development initiatives in partnership with local and international NGOs and national governments. For several years he was ILRI’s Regional Representative in the newly established ILRI region of East and Southeast Asia,and was based in Philippines. He continues to contribute to livestock research and development as an independent consultant, and lives in the leafy neighborhood of Bukit Damansara, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
