7.1 Livestock Productivity under Disease Risk (Project 18)
7.2 Smallholder Dairy Systems (Project 19)
7.3 Crop-Livestock Research in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Latin America, and West Asia, North Africa and the Central Asian Republics
7.4 Systems Analysis and Impact Assessment (Project 11)
7.5 Assessment of the Direction and Quality of the Programme
This programme builds on the portfolio of factor interactions considered in the Biosciences Programme, and further develops it to facilitate favourable impacts on farms, families and communities, and the landscape. Through information and research collaboration it also facilitates the programmes of NARS and government and non-governmental organizations. Foci include improving productivity and economic opportunities for families managing crop-livestock systems, especially smallholders, improving food security, and reducing natural resource degradation. Common biophysical themes include better utilisation of animal, feed and health resources, animal nutrition management, and nutrient cycling, transfers and management on the crop-livestock nexus. Key bioeconomic themes include increasing net economic returns with adaptable technologies that alleviate constraints, improving market opportunity, quantifying benefits from systematic use of available resources, and identifying policy options for households and communities and for national, regional and international audiences.
The programme is complex; its 9 primary projects currently comprise 40 operational ones (hereafter called sub-projects), of which 5 are nearly complete. The large number of sub-projects reflects restricted-fund investments in recognition of the value of livestock in agricultural development. Refer to Appendix I for details about these projects.
Given this complexity, this chapter examines crop-livestock production and systems analysis research, including ex ante analysis. Chapter 8 jointly examines ex post impact assessment and livestock policy research. The first section of this chapter begins by assessing two headquarters-based projects that are directly linked with several components of the Biosciences Programme. These projects address issues of livestock productivity under disease risk and smallholder dairy systems (Project 18, comprising 3 sub-projects and Project 19, comprising 8 sub-projects). Regional projects (Projects 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17) are assessed briefly in the next section with emphasis on complementarity and the value they add to the Institute's core work on crop-livestock systems, especially in light of productivity in priority areas and the existing tight financial situation. These five ecoregional efforts contain many common themes among their 14 sub-projects. The final section is devoted to systems analysis and ex ante assessment (Project 11, comprising 7 sub-projects).
7.1.1 Current Strategy
7.1.2 Achievements
7.1.3 Future Plans
7.1.4 Assessment
This multi-component effort focuses on increasing productivity and net economic returns in the large region of under-exploited grasslands of the sub-humid zone of sub-Saharan Africa, especially through greater use of trypanotolerant ruminants, improved vector control, and less drug use. In addition to integrated activities and partnerships in several countries, long-standing international partners with common goals are also involved. Research foci include determining constraints and opportunities for effective, and more widespread use of trypanotolerant livestock, enhancing disease resistance, assessing alternative control strategies in tsetse infested areas, and identifying preferred control measures using decision support tools. Besides partnerships in several countries, research linkages within ILRI are with projects in ruminant genetics and health (especially Projects 1, 2 and 7 in the Biosciences Programme) and dairy systems, ecoregional projects, systems (and impact) and policy analyses (especially Projects 11,12, 13, 14, and 19).
Project 18 works closely with the International Trypanotolerance Centre (ITC) in The Gambia, and is part of the successful African Trypanotolerant Livestock Network (ATLN). A major achievement by ATLN members and its farmer collaborators was to measure and document productivity of trypanotolerant N'Dama cattle under varying amounts of tsetse (disease) challenge. Contrary to general expectations, results showed that
1) productivity of N'Dama cattle was comparable to other breeds in low-input production systems elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa,2) productivity varies with trypanosomosis challenge, and
3) poor nutrition is a key limitation where tsetse challenge is low.
These salient findings, published jointly by ILRI and ITC, documented that this breed is valuable, not only for its inherent ability to survive under the threat of disease, but also for its comparable productive ability and responsiveness to increased inputs of feed (Agyemang et al. 1997. Village N'Dama Cattle Production in West Africa: Six years of Research in The Gambia 131 pp).
This project adds evidence of opportunities to increase farm productivity by managing disease-tolerant animals. Large differential responses in N'Dama cattle to the two major trypanosomes implied potential genetic control of them. Mean packed red blood cell volume and parasitaemia were verified as useful measurements in predicting cattle performance; they were also found to have a genetic basis, which portends increased trypanotolerance by selection.
Variation in trypanotolerance was quantified using validated antigen detection techniques. Methodologies were developed and tested for predicting spatially geo-referenced variations in trypanosomosis risk using tsetse information. Relationships were determined between vector reduction, degree of trypanosomosis infection, and productivity in cattle and goats.
Widespread resistance to trypanocidal drugs was quantified. Study showed that decisions based on information about trypanosomosis risk can reduce drug expenditure, drug resistance and mortality, thus improving net income to farmers. A reduced risk of human trypanosomosis and broader distribution of benefits from livestock production are expected spin-offs. Work at benchmark sites found economic benefit in disease control, and revealed incentives for collective action and policy making. As a result, regional control strategies have been designed in East and West Africa, and they have ramifications in national policy-making.
· Evaluate methodologies and develop strategies to evaluate trypanotolerance and performance traits, including effects of infection on post-partum anoestrus, conception, embryo mortality and abortion in N'Dama cattle.· Estimate genetic parameters for trypanotolerance measurements. Quantify associations between indicators of trypanotolerance in juvenile animals and their subsequent performance.
· Evaluate animals for resistance to dermatophilosis, ticks and internal parasites the better to match genetic resources to constraints in low-input systems, and to evaluate breeding opportunities.
· Evaluate interaction effects of trypanosomosis resistance, tick infestation, helminth infection, and other health problems on productivity. Study fly-host interactions and resistance in sheep in high-risk environments.
· Evaluate constraints and economic returns from alternative control techniques and strategies (e.g., animal nutrition and management, drug use, vector control, chemotherapy, acaricide treatment) for targeted production systems. Estimate the spatial and farming system distribution of benefits and costs of tsetse control. Design and test approaches to improve productivity under high-risk conditions.
· Evaluate factors affecting livestock prices in selected countries, including market infrastructure. Collect data for estimating the effects of economic policy reforms on low-input and market-oriented systems in tsetse-affected areas of West Africa
Project 18 is a highly productive, focused, and well-integrated effort, with excellent multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional partnerships, that help to ensure significant gain at multiple scales. The Panel commends collaborations with numerous projects in both of ILRI's research programmes and encourages the continued maturation of such collaboration, especially with Projects 1, 2, 7, 14 and 19. The Panel also commends the recognition of important biological and economic interactions among component technologies and variable management environments. Focusing on these factors portends substantial increases in livestock productivity in the sub-humid zone. If plans are not already underway, quantitative genetics analysis of existing data should be explored with an able collaborator. It is further suggested that project collaborators plan to summarise additional data on N'Dama from other countries, and maybe other trypanotolerant cattle, for another publication that would add to and complement the one published with ITC. Information about disease (and parasite) tolerant livestock is needed by all layers of decision-makers in disease risk regions, from policy makers to farmers.
The co-ordinators of this project and Project 1 (Characterisation, conservation and use of animal genetic resources) were asked why N'Dama cattle are not more widely used throughout countries in the sub-humid region. Reasons given were that many farmers and other decision-makers lacked information about this "exotic" breed, and that farmers in the region encounter infrastructural bottlenecks and high transaction costs in marketing their livestock. Thus, lack of information and limited access to market opportunities appear to be important constraints to productivity and farmer income in the sub-humid region as well as in East Africa (see section 7.2.4 for parallel findings).
The Panel strongly supports continuation of this project with the above encouragement and suggestions.
7.2.1 Current Strategy
7.2.2 Achievements
7.2.3 Future plans
7.2.4 Assessment
The demand for dairy products exceeds domestic supply throughout the tropics, thus making milk production an important cash crop for farm families. Using a production-to-consumption, food system approach, this research is aimed at developing and testing technologies (e.g., nutrition, disease control), tools, and methods with broad applicability to improve economic opportunities for farmers. The focus involves better understanding the evolution of dairy systems, identifying their constraints and the opportunities for improving smallholder systems, and developing policies that foster efficient resource use through improved input and output markets. Close collaborations involve a linked array of national and international institutions and NGOs.
Several inter-connected avenues of research were explored to obtain recommendations and methods for improving the productivity of smallholder dairy systems. This endeavour was duly recognised with the CGIAR Chairman's Prize for Outstanding Scientific Partnership, which was jointly awarded to ILRI and KARI in 1997. Some of the project successes are summarised below.
The biological factors inhibiting farmer adoption, the interdependence of subsystems, the importance of policy and institutional constraints, and potentials for technical improvements in productivity were documented. Systematic analysis revealed the need also to address biological constraints and input supply issues through market (demand) and policy information, which helped foster a consensus on national priorities for research and development.
Feeding and cropping options that integrate forages, crops, manure, and nutrient transfers between crops and livestock were developed and tested in lowland and highland ecozones. Improving year-round supplies of feed provided farmers with greater technological options; benefits in productivity and net income came from integrating nutrient management with food and forage crops. Results stimulated formation of a consortium of institutions focusing on better ways to manage nutrient transfers to intensify crop-dairy farms. Based on epidemiological studies, targeted delivery of animal health management practices stimulated similar initiatives in the East African lowlands.
A holistic, methodological framework was developed to evaluate production, marketing and consumption subsystems, especially in East and West Africa. Rapid appraisals in four countries revealed many issues in common, including predominant informal markets and the sensitivity of farm income to market opportunities.
· Test nutrition, disease control and marketing options and identify policy options. Evaluate the ex ante impacts of technological options for regions geo-referenced by disease prevalence and feed resource availability.· Establish the effects of alternative diets on the nutrient composition of excreta, and quantify the consequences of its storage and composting. Evaluate the use of excreta as the sole fertiliser or in association with inorganic fertiliser.
· Determine the complementarity between crop-livestock activities and their effects - on farmer decision-making.
· Further identify policy, institutional and technical constraints on farm productivity (e.g., feed, health, nutrient transfers via excreta).
· Carry out multi-location testing of dairy systems in inland valleys of three West African countries.
· Conduct longitudinal surveys of farm groups in Kenya with emphasis on feed resources, nutrient cycling, labour, and markets. Evaluate public health hazards in the marketing of milk.
· Develop transregional. geo-referenced databases of factors affecting dairy system development, including market linkages.
· Identify regions where demand for dairy products is likely to stimulate the adoption or intensification of dairy production, and where market opportunities are likely to emerge.
· Extend to Latin America and Asia methods and results from transregional analysis of smallholder dairy systems in sub-Saharan Africa
Smallholder Dairy Systems is an outstanding multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional project focusing on key biological and economic components and their interactions. It has been effective in increasing the productivity and net incomes for farmers, and in facilitating research and outreach programmes in participating countries, especially Kenya. Central bioeconomic mechanisms that are under study include better managed feed supplies for sustained nutrition, improving efficiencies of nutrient transfer and cycling between livestock and crops, disease control, economic assessment of technology options and market opportunities, and policy issues concerning resource use efficiency and relationships with input and output markets.
The complexity of interdependencies along the production-to-consumption continuum came to the fore through project findings. Substantial, even prohibitive, rural infrastructure bottlenecks were revealed in the form of transaction costs for smallholder dairy producers in East Africa (Staal et al. 1997. Smallholder dairying under transactions costs in East Africa. World Development). These costs increased with distance more than those for transportation because of the high cost of information risk of spoilage before sales could be made. Consequently, producers were "willing to accept lower prices in exchange for a reliable (milk sale) outlet."
The Panel was impressed with this project's productivity and impact through systematic research efforts that focus on key factor interactions. Plans and activities for transregional, or cross-location, synthesis of findings and the diffusion of more widely applicable methodologies and information are sensible ways to contribute meaningfully to a worldwide agenda. Such a plan concentrates available resources on the priority productive outcomes. Research supplying technical change options, which are readily translated into economic growth (and incentives) for producers, signify multiplier benefits in commodity and input markets. Thus, connecting producers to consumer purchasing power is essential for development, as emphasised in Chapter 1.
The Panel strongly supports continuation of Project 19, and suggests that linkages be expanded with Project 18 to apply and test methods under conditions where disease risk is manageable.
[Improving productivity and sustainability of crop-livestock systems:
... in the highlands of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA, Project 13);
... in sub-humid SSA (Project 14);
... in semiarid zones of SSA (Project 15)]
... in fragile environments in Latin America and the Caribbean (Project 16);
... in West Asia, North Africa and Central Asian Republics (WANA & CAR; Project 17)]
The Medium-Term Plan for 1998-2000 identifies a "holistic production-to-market" focus for ILRI's research agenda, which includes developing and testing outputs with partners at selected locations. The regional dimension of ILRI's crop-livestock systems research involves work in "agroecological zones to facilitate transregional analysis and to broaden the recommendation domains for the application of the research outputs" (page 15). The Panel found this to be a useful guideline for assessing the regional dimension of ILRI's portfolio of crop-livestock research in light of the current scarce-resource environment.
Against this backdrop, the headquarters-based Projects 18 and 19 should be viewed as primary contributors to ILRI's regional and global agendas and objectives in highland and lowland agroecozones. The multi-disciplinary research in each of these projects involves effective linkages with many institutions and collaborators, transregional analyses are underway or planned, and foci include the market-oriented priority that was identified in Chapter 1 (especially in Project 19). Given these priority attributes and achievements by these research teams, the Panel views these projects as the central core of ILRI's global or ecoregional work, which constitutes a strong foundation on which to evaluate how additional resources may best be invested.
Therefore, 14 sub-projects in five regional research projects were scrutinised for their contributions to core research in crop-livestock systems. The Panel considered that the priority projects to retain should be the ones that add significantly to the multi-disciplinary, transregional work that is already underway. It is essential that ILRI's financial and human resources be invested in important thematic research areas (or platforms) that are broadly relevant, and that critical mass of scientists be established, serving multiple geographic locations. An analogy from art and science illustrates the Panel's approach in evaluating the regional projects - just as the sculptor creates by discarding unwanted pieces (the sculpture), so too does the livestock breeder, or geneticist, achieve improvement goals.
These five regional projects are aimed at improving productivity and sustainability of crop-livestock systems in highland, sub-humid and semi-arid regions, where ruminants are an integral part of farming systems. As in Project 18, common project components involve biophysical and socio-politico-economic factors: animal nutrition and productivity, feed supply, nutrient transfer and cycling between crops, livestock and the landscape, net economic returns, farmer decision making, and policy influences on farm families, resource use and the environment.
Understandably, claims of achievement are unequal because projects vary greatly in their tenure, productivity and financial support. Project 14 (which collaborates with Project 19) and Project 15 have characterised their respective production systems, determining parameters, nutrient flows between crops, animals and the landscape, and opportunities for productivity gains. The scientist team for Project 15 has distinguished itself with published research on the utilisation, cycling and transfers of nutrients among ruminants, crops and a semi-arid rangeland. This team also was a primary contributor and leader in producing ILRI's two-volume Livestock and Sustainable Nutrient Cycling in Mixed Farming Systems of sub-Saharan Africa (1995), which is an invaluable compendium publication in research planning.
Inter-cropping a forage legume with cereals in a highland system (with milking cows) was predicted to improve resilience of the farming enterprise with greater profits than systems without legumes, even with severe fluctuation in output prices (Project 13). This finding was consistent with other research in the East African highlands (Project 19). Previous achievements in developing technology for better managing vertisols, especially development of the animal drawn broad-bed maker, significantly increased grain yields on waterlogged highland soils. Building on this ILCA success, other attachments developed for use with the minimum tillage broad-bed maker further increased grain and straw yields of wheat by 30-35% while reducing animal traction requirements.
Project 16 focuses on the management of feed resources and nutrition, especially to improve milk income in highland and lowland Latin America. Research activities planned for 1999 include data collection, evaluation of feed resources, development of bio-mathematical models, and development of research proposals and concept notes for adaptive systems research.
Project 17 is aimed at crop-livestock interactions involving small ruminants and related issues in desert, rangeland, cropping areas and highland ecoregions of WANA and CAR. Activities planned for 1999 include a consultation in the Central Asian Republics and the selection of benchmark sites.
Important learning and impacts have come from the vertisol and watershed management works in Project 13. The Government of Ethiopia has decided to integrate vertisol management technology into its agricultural extension programme, and NGOs like Global 2000 are incorporating them into their outreach programmes. Also, ILRI is currently completing an ex post impact assessment of broadbed maker technology. Crop-livestock research in this project overlaps with other ILRI work in the highland ecozone. Resources currently used for continuing study of cows for traction services probably would be more effectively invested in research of higher priority. Therefore, given these successes, it would be timely and prudent to strategically redirect these resources.
Traction has an important role in fanning systems. However, research on using cows for traction in feed-limited environments of the Ethiopian highlands (Project 13) is unlikely to be successful because unfavourable trade-offs in milk yield and reproduction are unacceptably risky, particularly in low-income households. By increasing the maintenance requirement of animals, traction reduces the nutrients available for milk synthesis and reproduction, which is especially important when nutrients are limiting. Crossing native breeds with larger exotic breeds also increases the maintenance requirement through larger body size in the crossbred. Providing a consistently secure and significant increase in dietary nutrient intake is required to obtain the same performance in milk and reproduction when crossbred cows are worked. This is a risky proposition for farmers concerned about providing enough feed to their cows. Besides the issue of farmer objectives for increasing income from milk sales and trade-offs in milk yield or reproduction, they are asked to implement a chain of innovations carrying compound risk factors. Substituting improved forages for current grasses and fodder and maintaining the supply of higher quality forage carries risk. Management to assure consistently improved diets to support harvesting more milk from larger crossbred cows further heightens risk. (An associated question is whether farmers are successful in maintaining body weight, milk yield and reproductive rate from recently introduced crossbred cows and forages.) Finally, how willing are farmers to accept the trade-off of forgoing milk income for service in traction? Evidence from many developing countries supports an inherent farmer preference for cash income compared to benefits that are less convertible in meeting short term needs.
Projects 14 and 15 have been productive and effective at determining best-bet forages, feeding strategies, and at quantifying the stocks, flows and balance of nutrients between livestock and crop components of farming systems and the landscape at their respective field sites. This expertise could be effectively combined to build critical mass for greater achievement in these important research themes. Given ICRAF's collaboration with ICRISAT in Mali, and ILRI's mutual interest in utilising trees for forage, it is prudent for ILRI to establish closer ties with ICRAF, possibly at their Mali site, and to focus on market-oriented opportunities in the sub-humid ecozone.
The Panel considers that two half-time staff with small operating budgets at separate locations in Latin America constitutes an inefficient use of resources (Project 16). Meaningful research output is unlikely unless the efforts of a full-time staff member can be combined with a primary ILRI effort. Dairy or dual-purpose systems in Latin America constitute a logical interface with Project 19, and a viable basis for collaboration with ICRAF and CIAT.
Project 17 is barely underway in WANA and CAR. The Panel encourages collaboration with ICARDA to acquire the additional necessary resources for a productive and successful project. Efforts by the recently hired Senior Small Ruminant Scientist at ICARDA are heading in this direction.
The Institute needs to rethink its focal research themes for crop-livestock systems. Such an exercise is likely to result in a modified strategic plan of work probably centring on the primary bioeconomic mechanisms governing economic and environmental successes in crop-livestock systems, which would supply key information to subsequent systems science, impact, and policy research. These priority themes, or "platforms of essential capacity", will probably involve:
· Nutrient dynamics in crop-livestock systems, especially the efficiency of transfers and the cycling of nutrients involving ruminants;· Bioeconomic relationships on the nexus between these nutrient transfers, natural resources, and their joint management;
· Animal nutrition and management;
· Technology options and associated market opportunities, especially those influencing cash income to farm households; and
· Policy issues that constrain input and output markets and resource-use decision making by farmers.
A thematic research approach is required, not a commodity one. Although the title of Project 19 implies a commodity emphasis, it is much, much more than milk. It is strategic work that is aimed at better delivering income growth to farm families, regardless of the livestock species or configuration of the crop-livestock system; it aggressively searches out better market opportunities and technologies that should be developed especially for that context. Furthermore, the transregional activities already underway in this project make it a logical vehicle from which to establish a global consortium for market-oriented crop-livestock systems with collaborating NARS and IARCs in East and West Africa, Asia and Latin America.
To stimulate income growth and food security for farm families, to help alleviate poverty, and to conserve natural resources, the Panel recommends that ILRI strategically orient the production systems research programme, and establish an ecoregional or global consortium for market-oriented crop-livestock systems. To accomplish this:i) Project 19 (Market-oriented smallholder dairy systems) should be broadened to constitute a transregional or global research project that is especially aimed at enhancing economic growth of rural households by developing more profitable and sustainable market-oriented crop-livestock systems.
ii) Scientific staff in Project 13 (Crop-livestock systems in the highlands of SSA and Asia) should be reassigned, possibly to Project 19, to increase the critical mass of scientists focusing on transregional research objectives and market-oriented systems.
iii) The expertise of Project 14 (Crop-livestock systems in sub-humid SSA and Asia) and Project 15 (Crop-livestock systems in semi-arid zones of SSA and Asia) could be consolidated to form one project having more critical mass to focus on market-oriented systems in the sub-humid zone, co-ordinated with Project 19, although not restricted to dairy.
iv) If Project 16 (Crop-livestock systems in fragile environments in LAC) is to be continued, it should become part of the transregional smallholder livestock system's efforts of the re-designed project 19 with a full-time ILRI staff member.
The Panel also urges establishing a close working relationship with ICRAF, and also with CIAT in forage development in Southeast Asia.
Collaboration is strongly encouraged with ICRAF, CIAT and CIP.
Regarding ILRI's ecoregional-cum-global research, and its SLP convenor role, the Panel suggests close consultation with ICRAF to seriously evaluate collaborative opportunities at ICRAF's benchmark sites (e.g., African Highlands Initiative, Alternatives to Slash and Bum Programme). This could be an excellent opportunity to join forces on issues of nutrient cycling and feed-use of trees and shrubs, which have been research themes of Project 19.
7.4.1 Current Strategy
7.4.2 Achievements
7.4.3 Future Plans
7.4.4 Assessment
Several factors govern the relevance and output from research programmes, and the value of technologies disseminated from them, to improve livestock productivity and profitability. Research questions must be focused, the constraints to adapting or adopting technologies must be accurately specified, and technology delivery mechanisms must be suitable and in sufficient supply. Project 11 accounts for these constraints and seeks to estimate the effects of implementable technologies, to identify meritorious research issues, and to accurately quantify the contributions of livestock to agroecosystems. Selected ex ante impact assessments are aimed at identifying researchable issues that, if resolved, can enhance agricultural productivity, reduce poverty, and maintain natural resources (an ILRI example is shown in section 7.4.4). These assessments are viewed as enhancements to technology delivery, especially of animal health, feed resource and natural resource management options, leading to the subsequent quantification of socio-economic and environmental impacts.
Appropriate methodologies have been adapted and applied (e.g., section 7.4.4). Substantial effort has been invested in building needed databases since the beginning of Project 11 in July 1997. Geo-referenced databases of natural resource endowments at multiple scales across sub-Saharan Africa have been developed, which has facilitated development of new tools and methods to address the interactions between agricultural systems, natural resources and human welfare.
Ex ante prediction studies showed similar favourable net economic returns (~30%) on a 30-yr horizon from research
1) to develop vaccines against trypanosomosis (see section 7.4.4) and theileriosis and
2) to genetically improve the nutritive quality of sorghum and millet residues to feed ruminants.
Prediction studies based on the interactions among human population growth, changes in land use, and trypanosomosis suggest important shifts in the epidemiological nature and location of this disease in the next 45 yr. Environmental and socio-economic effects of trypanosomosis control in East and West African countries suggested important impacts on human welfare, crop and livestock production, and the use of land and other natural resources.
· Develop a generalisable, nutrient cycling model and framework for the bioeconomic and environmental evaluation of crop-livestock systems using data from semi-arid West Africa (with Project 15).· Develop an easy-to-use computer model for estimating the cost of tick-home disease in cattle (anaplasmosis, babesiosis, heartwater, theileriosis) in Africa and Asia
· Develop a standardised, geo-referenced livestock and natural resource management database for different scales of inference. Integrate animal health, feed resources and natural resource management information, and decision support tools to facilitate the delivery of technologies.
· Develop and apply appropriate crop-livestock, ecosystem and land-use models to decision making and monitoring frameworks.
The complexity of agricultural systems - multiple factors of production having spatial, temporal, social and economic dimensions - requires careful analysis to disentangle and quantify the key mechanisms and outcomes, including human and environmental welfare. Systematic frameworks of analysis help sharpen the focus of technology development and delivery programmes. The corresponding methodology should add value by testing efficacy and by estimating overall worth and impacts from technical change products (i. e., better practices, technologies, and strategies).
This livestock system science project is designed and conducted in this way. An ILRI study by Kristjanson and co-workers [Measuring the costs of African animal trypanosomosis, the potential benefits of control and returns to research. Agricultural Systems (in press)] illustrates a methodological implementation that was used to predict overall worth of a technology under certain assumptions. Expected productivity changes in the cattle subsystem, additional economic returns from cattle herds, and geographic information for continental Africa were combined to estimate the "big picture" of impact on a continental scale by achieving control of trypanosomosis with an efficacious vaccine (a product expected from Project 5). Although the estimated internal rate of return was favourable, what is especially valuable from this kind of tailored analysis is its wide application in evaluating nearly any technological change.
This kind of analysis also helps convene a forum for discussion about strategic investments in research, putting the research institution in the "driver's seat". Net returns like the ones predicted in the example above (33% internal rate of return and 34:1 ratio of benefit-to-cost) might be interpreted as evidence of under-investment in achieving the goal in the desired timeframe. Arguably, public goods result from investing sufficient resources to obtain research outcomes within a capped time period, where early achievement is preferable to deadline delivery (e.g., before chemotherapy invokes significant change in the genome of the pathogen). Therefore, private and public goods carry different objectives: instead of maximising net returns on the invested resources, acceptable goals for public goods may require only small positive net returns (e. g., £ 5%), or even negative ones (e.g., the resultant impact was less than prescribed). For these technical change scenarios, the first step by investment decision makers (research contractors like ILRI and potential investors) is to review the scientific basis of project feasibility and the benefits expected by achieving the proposed goal, comparing them to similar historical successes. Subsequent steps in reaching the investment decision are to calibrate the timeframe in which to deliver the good, to specify the minimum acceptable internal rate of return on the amount to be invested, and, finally, to calculate the concomitant investment that is merited. In this context, predicted net returns that are high may signify too little investment because of opportunity trade-offs by foregoing potential early delivery or by constraining the probability of achieving the prescribed goal.
The Panel commends the efforts in Project 11, and strongly encourages involvement on a continuing basis with other projects. This involvement obviously needs to begin at the research design stage to facilitate assessment of probable and realised impacts.
Overall, ILRI's work in productions systems contains many elements of good quality that provide the basis for rethinking its strategy to assure substantial favourable impacts on crop-livestock systems, the natural resource base and the environment. The direction of the projects on livestock productivity under disease risk (section 7.1) and smallholder dairy systems (section 7.2) is appropriate and highly focused. It is also valuable not only to NARS collaborators, but because interactions among crop-livestock, natural resources, environmental, and market access components are also priorities. The Institute has valuable opportunities to move forward by redirecting resources to intensify regional research in market-oriented crop-livestock systems, integrating this work with Project 19 to constitute a global consortium of collaborators, as discussed in section 7.3.3. Organised in this manner, systems analysis research would be empowered to evaluate better the most relevant bioeconomic and natural resource management options for animal agriculture in the developing world.
The matrix scoring method described in section 11.1 was used to obtain an approximation of overall scientific quality for each research project, and for the Sustainable Production Systems Programme as a whole. Two explanatory factors helped sift out possible reasons for quality variations. These factors were research focus (comprising relevance and implementable objectives of high priority) and critical mass of available human and other resources for maintaining or improving research quality. (Other considerations were average quality and output of publications.)
Most quality scores equalled or exceeded the Panel's minimum threshold definition of "good science", which was given in section 11.1. Scores in research focus suggested that attention is warranted in Projects 13 and 16, independent of arguments that market-oriented farming systems should be an ILRI priority research theme. Scores in critical mass pointed to a need for more attention to investments in Projects 15, 16 and 19 to maintain quality.
As shown in Chapter 5, the Panel suggests structural readjustment of ILRI's research programme. Following these suggestions Projects 11 and 12 would constitute the System Science, Impact and Policy Analysis Programme, and Projects 13 to 19, as well as Projects 8 to 10, would constitute the Production Systems and Animal Nutrition Programme.
