Enhancing livelihoods of poor livestock keepers through increased use of fodder
Livestock are an important pathway out of poverty for the rural poor. Worldwide, 50% of the world’s poor own livestock and depend on them for their livelihoods. Livestock are living assets contributing to food security and are an important source of protein and minerals for nutritional security.
The current project seeks to engage with a wide range of stakeholders to strengthen the capacity of poor livestock keepers to:
- select and adopt fodder options
- access market opportunities to enable them to improve their livelihoods
The project seeks to achieve these goals in ways that will ensure the sustainability of their farming systems. The programme is framed around four overall outputs and associated activities. The project seeks to establish:
- Mechanisms for strengthening and/or establishing consortia of players in the livestock/fodder arena to allow small-scale innovations to spread across systems.
- Options for getting research off the shelf and into practice including innovative communication strategies and strategies for making changes at farm level to sustainably improve fodder supply.
- Enhanced capacity of project partners to experiment with and use fodder technologies through effective communication, improved access to technical information and training and a better understanding of the role of diverse players and their interactions in successful fodder development.
- Generic lessons with wide applicability on innovation processes and systems, communication strategies and partnerships that provide a suitable environment for fodder innovations to spread across systems.
