Livestock and sustainable food
and nutrition security
Group report on the ILRI@40 workshop
Addis Ababa, 7 November 2014

Greatest gains
Technological efficiency (at Farm Gate and Beyond the Farm Gate)
• Making better use of available resources (management practices, land, water, waste
• Improved feeds, breeds (adaptive and disease resistance traits) , health (diagnostics
prevention and treatment)
• Landless / small land livestock production systems with high value in Africa;
• Intensification and specialization (milk, chickens, pigs/ specialized feeds included
new processes for breaking-down complex carbohyrdates).
Social level
• Rapid movement in information with better prediction and real-time rapid response
• Greater networking for just-in-time inputs into production processes
• Economies of scale (smallholder organized groups and governance)
• Knowledge sharing and learning
• Use of ICT to deliver information and link to markets
• Family farming and job creation for youth
Business
• A few larger firms – strong interest from multinationals;
• Opportunities and rapidly growing number of smaller and innovative firms with
diverse goals (new products)
• Much more value addition beyond the farm –storage, processing, marketing and
utilization

Opportunities for innovative research
Social
• Faster innovation coming from unexpected sources (Crowd sourcing)
Technical
• More precise bio-technical interventions – smaller scale product
development / niche products for different environments (bio-engineering;
genetic manipulation, climate smart innovations)
• More diverse storage, and processing with locally adapted and niche
products
• New livestock species including insects and rodents.
• Rapid diagnostics, analysis tools – get analysis from anywhere
(agricultural version of tele-medicine)
Business
• “Markets” (including taxes) for externalities built into input costs and
prices – environmental services; e-markets
• Risk management critical – much more volatility; innovative insurance
tools

Complementarity with other key issues
• Environmental issues
• The smart identification of options for increasing
productivity should result in sustainable
nutritional security and economic well-being.
• Improved nutritional security will contribute to
healthy lives
• Intensification could increase the risk of
introduction and susceptibility for infectious
diseases