By David Aronson

A biweekly round-up of recent articles, blog postings and tweets about livestock, aid, and other topics that may be of interest to ILRI staff.

President Trump has nominated a new US ambassador to Kenya and a new assistant secretary of state for African affairs. This is the official announcement from the White House.

BBC reports that Kenya hopes blockchain can end fraudulent title transactions, or land grabbing. Uganda is dealing with the same problem, which they call ‘buying air.’

Bill Gates wants to stop talking about the ‘developing’ world. He explains why here.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation explains why they think transforming agriculture starts with greater investments in gender equality.  For more on the topic, here is a photo essay on women worldwide who are working to fill the gender gap in agriculture. And here is a post on how Wikipedia isn’t giving women their due for their contributions to agriculture and food production.

Just a tweet announcement, but there’s a new Africa Women for Biosciences chapter in Kenya.

I fear this will be a recurring topic. Here is an AFP multimedia piece on herder/farmer skirmishes in northern Nigeria, emphasizing the complex origins of the conflicts. Here’s a piece in The Conversation on how arms proliferation from Libya is escalating the violence. And here is an article (in French) on similar herder/farmer conflicts in northeastern Congo.

The Van Gujjars pastoralists in India’s Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh states, who keep herds of buffalo and for generations scaled the Himalayan peaks in the summer and returned to their foothill villages in winter, are being pushed off their land, in part by India’s aggressive forest and conservation policies.

An article in The Guardian on how Maasai farmers are being driven off their land to make way for luxury safaris.

In Tanzania, large-scale agribusinesses, in some cases supported by major Western donors, are taking over land that pastoralists have been using for centuries. ILRI’s Fiona Flintan explains, ‘pastoralists around the world face insecurity in terms of tenure, access to land and resources upon which they depend’.

Kenyan herders are using mobile apps to discover fresh pasturage and water sources. ILRI’s Andrew Mude is quoted extensively in the article.

Here is a long article on the future of meat in The Guardian, more thoughtful than most, but that doesn’t properly address the issues of concern to developing countries. I sent a response to the editor, in the hope of opening a dialog.

A recent study by scientists in Australia finds that adding seaweed to cow feed reduces methane emissions almost to zero. Can this possibly be true?

Is the lowly chicken finally having its moment? ILRI Ethiopia just had our event late last month on Incubated Worlds. A long article in the New York Times magazine on how the actress and model Isabella Rosellini—whose poster adorned countless college dorm rooms back in the day—has gotten into chicken breeding.  And now two Italian photographers are kickstarting a campaign for a coffee table book on show chickens. They’re quite spectacular. You can pre-order the book here.

Here’s a call for abstracts: Livestock, Environment and People Conference | Future of Food Oxford Martin program. Most of you have probably seen this already, but I thought I’d circulate just in case.

This is an excellent long-form article in Guernica Magazine by a Kenyan writer on the drought in northern Kenya. Strongly recommended.

Also just a tweet, but with a nice photo: The Kuri cattle breed found near Lake Chad is dying out.

Hassan Roba at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations describes how pastoralists practice agro-ecology–A three and a half minute YouTube video.

You may have already seen this, but here is International Fund for Agricultural Development’s take on livestock and rangeland.

An interesting article by an anthropologist about how NOT to photograph pastoralists. (Hint: Don’t exoticize them.)

A long multimedia Devex piece on the fall armyworm. And here’s an article in the Economist on maize and African governments’ efforts to diversify into other staple crops.

‘If you’re anti-GMO, then you’re anti-science‘—this article is important chiefly because it’s written by columnist Michael Gerson, a Christian conservative, who speaks to and for a constituency that is often skeptical of science, at least in the US.

Michael Gove, the UK Environment secretary, says meat is essential to a balanced diet.

An interesting academic article about how to address misperceptions about development aid.

How can scientists have an impact? Here are three articles, one from Nature, one from the London School of Economics, and one from the World Bank, this last with a particular focus on development.

Here are two words you probably didn’t expect to see side-by-side: Goat pilates. An article on how one farmer is combining her love of livestock and exercise.

And finally, here’s a video from Reuters of some happy Swedish cows.