Global Poverty and Food Security
challenges: the Equity pillar
Discussion notes from a brainstorming by
Tom Randolph, Shirley Tarawali, Steve Staal, Nancy Johnson, Mario
Herrero, Jemimah Njuki and Carlos Sere
ILRI-World Bank High Level Consultation on the Global Livestock
Agenda by 2020
Nairobi, 12 - 13 March 2012

Presentation Outline
Objective: Consider mega-trajectories and their
implications for the equity dimensions of our strategies
1. What is changing
2. Implications for the role of livestock in addressing
poverty and food insecurity
3. Implications for equity-driven investment in livestock
R&D

What is changing?
 Familiar drivers of growing demand for animal-
source food
 Population growth
 Urbanization, changing diets
 Increasing incomes
 Familiar pressures on growth of supply
 Land constraints, land grabs
 Competition for feed production (food, biofuel)
 Lagging productivity growth
 Concerns about livestock ‘bads’
 Potential for exacerbating food insecurity
 Larger fluctuations in supplies, prices
 Reversal of long-term price decline?

Potential shapers
 The rise of food-based nutritional strategies
 Limitations of single nutrient approaches (the next
binding constraint hiding behind the current one)
 Growing recognition of strategic nature of animal
source foods
 Recognition of environmental benefits of
intensification in smallholder systems (Rio 20+)
 Concerns of the well-fed dictating the options for
the underfed and constraining investment in
livestock development
 Dynamism and deepening of private sector
activity
 Opportunities offered by domestic/regional vs
international markets

Smallholder trajectories?
Will it be:
 Leap to larger-scale production and
supermarketization quickly washing away
smallholders everywhere
 Brazil model, land grabs
 Policy bias, concern for biosecurity
 Private sector takeover
OR will it be:
 Longer-term transitions for much of the
smallholder sector
 Size of smallholder sector as hidden reality
 Labor:capital cost ratios continue to favour
smallholders

Dairy farm trends
 No evidence of consolidation…
 Numbers of dairy farms in developing countries
continue to grow: annual increases of 0.5-10%
in most developing countries
 No measurable increase in dairy herd size in
developing countries
(2000-2005: IFCN)

Smallholders supply over half,
even for monogastrics
Source: ILRI estimates

Transition can still be slow --
example of pork in Vietnam
Share of large-scale modern sector in pig production
14%
Base simulation
12%
High income growth
10%
High tech growth in modern
sector
8%
No tech growth in traditional
6% No tech growth in maize
4% High income elasticity of
modern
High income elast and tech
2% growth in modern
Worst case for traditional
0% sector
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Year Source: Minot et al. 2010I

Smallholder trajectories?
Tentative conclusion:
 A large portion of developing country production
of animal source foods comes from smallholder
systems and will continue to do so in much of
Africa and South Asia
 There is and will continue to be considerable
variation across specific situations and countries
in the transition to larger-scale commercial
systems
 But this view is certainly not shared by all and
needs more evidence!
 What are the other views?

Part 2
Implications for the role of livestock in
addressing poverty and food insecurity
Consider two main scenarios:
1. Acknowledge continued major role of the
smallholder sector and enhance its potential as
a transition
 support commercialization of smallholder/
informal sector
2. Assume smallholder sector cannot compete
 promote livestock as an adaptation or exit
strategy for rural systems undergoing rapid
structural change

Support commercialization of
smallholder/informal sector
 Focusing on smallholder-based value chains
offers win-win-wins
 Sheer size for impact
 Addressing large productivity gaps could strengthen
inherent competitiveness
 Improves local availability and accessibility of strategic
animal-source foods
 Promotes broad-based employment and growth,
reducing social disruption during transition
 Intensification can reduce environmental impacts
 More natural transition to specialisation, larger-scale
production, formal-sector food systems
 But need to understand potential trade-offs
 Supply response capacity
 Cost of providing public services to support

Livestock for livelihoods and adaptation
 Where small-scale systems cannot compete, focus
on livestock as a social protection strategy
 Provides asset instrument
 As backyard, part-time activity, can bolster household
food security during exit process
 Special role in pastoral and politically sensitive hotspots
 less emphasis on productivity-enhancing
technologies driven by market incentives, but more
on protecting assets in low-input systems
 Relies largely on public investment
 Requires coordination across sectors, bundling with other
types of interventions
 Landscape approaches offer useful framework for
analysis

Is it one or the other?
 Livestock for economic empowerment or for
household economics?
 Will be a mix, depending on the context, product
 But within a given context, the main objective and
associated strategy should be clear
 Better evidence will be needed to argue for a
stronger focus on the smallholder/informal sector
vs larger-scale commercial agriculture
 Do we have this right: are these the two main
strategies for using livestock for poverty reduction?

Part 3
Implications for equity-driven investment
in livestock R&D
 Better targeting for smallholder commercial
development versus social protection
 More focus on what is needed to get producers and
value chain actors over the threshold into more efficient
market orientation
 More clarity on the social protection objective
 More focus on appropriate gender (or other target
group) strategies tailored to each approach
 Clear role for research, including generating data
to know which is appropriate and where

Involving the right partners
 Further supports strategic role of private sector,
but also NGO/CBOs
 Shift from farming systems to business solutions
 Not just technology uptake, but also stimulating micro-
small-medium enterprise business development
 Requires getting public policies right and the
appropriate public investments funded to attract
private investment
 Not just livestock --- also pro-poor infrastructure
development
 Need to work with stakeholders to generate the
appropriate livestock data

Aligned with current trends?
Growing smallholder/informal livestock
commodity value chains:
 Increasing emphasis on value chain R&D, but often as
only one component of integrated interventions
 But continued bias towards large-scale, ‘modern’
formal-sector models
 How to ensure investments are truly inclusive and pro-
poor? Bottom of the pyramid, or one step up, e.g.
target successful farmers, entrepreneurs?
Livestock for social protection:
 Interest in livestock insurance schemes
 Mitigating environmental impacts, loss of AnGR, poor
biosecurity

For discussion
 Is it useful to view the use of livestock for
poverty reduction as falling into these two basic
categories? What others need to be
considered? (e.g. trading out of poverty)
 If ‘growing smallholder value chains’ is an
appropriate paradigm, what is needed to align
investments and policies better? Is a better
business case needed?
 Would this argue for a ‘pathways out of poverty’
2.0 that highlights the two strategies?