As we all know, the availability of sufficient and adequate feed is one of the most significant constraints to livestock productivity in the tropics. It is an enormous challenge that requires innovation and concerted action towards agreed priority outcomes. This is an important part of ILRI’s strategy: to achieve better lives through livestock. It is also an important element of the CGIAR Research Program on Livestock.

Given the significant and growing demands for animal-source foods and products, the challenges of land availability for feed and livestock, advances in biosciences and genetics, and an emerging private sector for feed, we see this as an opportune time for ILRI to take stock of its priorities and capabilities in this area and to produce an institute-wide strategy for our feed and forage development (FFD) research.

To this end, we have developed a consultation exercise to assess the challenges through dialogue with ILRI staff, the wider community and an expert group. We would greatly appreciate your help in contributing to this process. We recognize that many ILRI staff encounter feed issues and questions in their projects and we want to tap into this knowledge – you don’t need to be a feed expert! You can contribute to this dialogue in a couple of ways:

1.       Take this short survey so we can benefit from your views on the challenges and opportunities for feed and forage development. We need responses please by 10^th July.

2.       Following the survey, join an email discussion where we want you to respond to and challenge FFD team members as they share different strategic options for ILRI. This will most likely take place in the second half of July. The survey will ask you to sign up!

Alongside this discussion, we are soliciting similar inputs from the wider community. We will bring these various inputs together in late August for critical review with a small expert group from outside ILRI leading to a face to face meeting in Addis to produce a near-final product.

YOUR inputs are really important to us so please take the survey – and don’t underestimate your knowledge in this area!

The survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/ffd-strategy-ilri

Many thanks