The big event of the month of March was the completion and submission of the full proposals for the second phase of the CRPs. This was a herculean effort on the part of many, many people.  We led with our partners the Livestock proposal but were heavily involved in A4NH, CCAFS, Dryland Cereals and Legumes, and Genebanks as well as contributed ideas to how we would work as Tier 2 partners in PIM and WLE.  We also had varying levels of input to the Genetic Gain and Big Data platform proposals.  I want to say a huge THANK YOU to everyone who led, contributed to or supported these proposals. This was teamwork at it best. We expect to get feedback from the ISPC in June and will have to respond to their comments by the end of July.

I attended a workshop organized by the Global Alliance for the Future of Food in Washington DC on 23-24 March. The alliance was formed by a number of philanthropic foundations who wish to work together to help shift food and agriculture systems towards greater sustainability, security, and equity. The focus of the workshop was Animal Agriculture. A lot of the discussion was from a developed country perspective – concern about overconsumption of animal-source foods, environmental and other externalities of large scale industrial systems etc. I along with a couple of other participants were active in balancing the debate with a developing country perspective which was well appreciated.  The workshop was part of a process to help the foundations identify where and how they might invest in improving the sustainability of animal agriculture so it will be interesting to see what emerges as their strategy.

Some of you may have seen a familiar face around the Nairobi and Addis campuses in the last couple of weeks.  John McIntire, our former DDG Integrated Sciences, is working with Jimmy and me as a consultant to help us on a number of initiatives. These include:

• Editing a book on impact stories – this will describe the impact of research at ILRI (and ILRAD and ILCA) over the past years.
• Assisting in developing the Climate Change and Sustainable Intensification initiative in Ethiopia
• Assisting in developing a long term strategy for ILRI in Ethiopia
• Supporting the site integration agenda in Ethiopia

John will do some of the work from his base in the US but also spend some time in Addis and Nairobi.