Knowledge Management Portal

The livestock sector represents an important agricultural activity in Tunisia and generates significant additional income, in particular, for small farmers and the landless. Red meat is the main livestock product produced in Tunisia and is extremely diverse, with 47% derived from cattle, 45% from sheep and 8% from goats. The quality and quantity of forage produced coupled with the unbalanced feeding of livestock in rural Tunisia are not sufficient and stable enough to ensure high-quality red meat production. The adoption of diversified feeding regimes that are based on locally produced feeds and by-products can address this issue. The project offers an integrated package of successfully tested proven technologies of locally adapted feed and forage supply, combined with extension services and organizational support for smallholder farmers as well as business development support for local manufacturers. These interventions have been shown to have an immediate impact on livestock production, and on rural livelihood. The project was implemented under two agro-ecological systems:(I) the agropastoral system: Sidi Bouzid, Kairouan and Kasserine (less favourable) and (2) the livestock-cereal-based system Beja, Jendouba and El Kef (more favourable zones).

The project organizes a series of training with the objective to enhance capacity development about modern agricultural techniques. The target group of the training are government officials and researchers, mainly in Afghanistan.

Lentil is an important crop for the Canadian economy, and has been well recognized for its nutritional values and its potential to serve as part of the solution in combating global food insecurity issues. For this reason the project purpose is to study in deep the genetic potential of lentils and develop new tools to improve the agility of the breeding program and breeders to use germplasm in their crosses and incorporate desirable traits with greater precision.

Although Jordan is a water-poor country with a harsh climate, it has considerable biodiversity, 90% of Jordan is an arid rangeland, or Badia, and faces substantial degradation due to overgrazing and low-beneficial barley agriculture. USFS and ICARDA will establish a pilot-scale project to restore a degraded Jordanian rangeland watershed, both upland and gully area, and to evaluate the restoration impacts on the development of the ecosystem services particularly targeting soil and vegetation.

In order to further agricultural development and improve the livelihoods of small farmers in Palestine, the Ministry of Agriculture decided to update the National Agricultural Research Strategy established in 1999 to achieve the main objectives of national social and economic plans and to serve agricultural and rural development.

The project is an initiative of the Government of Sudan with the aim of contributing to the CGIAR research and technology and at the same time be able to benefit from it. The research on agricultural dryland systems has the the highest potential of benefiting to Sudan’s agriculture. The main focus of the project is that of identifying and disseminating improved crops varieties, range, livestock and sustainable farming practices. The ultimate goal is improved food security, nutrition and NRM.

The dairy subsector contributes around 22% to the annual production from livestock, 7.2 % to total annual production from agricultureand 7% to the supply ofthe existing agro-food industry. Milk production reaches approximately 1 billion liters annually, with around 112,000 pro ducers contributing to this national yield. The subsector is dominated by small producers; 82% keeping < 5 cows while only 11% ofthe producers have herd sizes of6 to 20 producing cows. However, unreliable milk collection networks and missing on-farm cooling facilities lead to productivity losses through erratic milking regimes and cash income losses because of uncooled storage resulting in low quality, deprival of the cooling premium and even rejection of unsuitable milk at the collection center. The proposed innovation on solar-powered milk cooling is a climate-smart, off-grid solution which may foster resource-poor dairy cattle keepers towards increased productivity, income, production and consumption of safer and more nutritious products. The on-farm solar milk cooling technology to be applied by the project was developed at the University of Hohenheim based on commercial stand-alone refrigeration kits that are commercialized by German company and project partner, Phaesun GmbH. The refrigeration units (direct-current domestic refrigerators from the German company Steca GmbH) to cool down milk, have the following characteristics: a) Conventional 20 liter milk-cans are used. b) A special milk-can cover allows the use of ice for a fast milk cooling rate to assure milk quality. c) The ice is produced and stored in a refrigeration unit which has been adapted to work as a "smart ice-maker" that produces ice during sun radiation hours. This fact highly reduces the need for batteries, hence improving system reliability and cost efficiency. d) Thermally insulated plastic milk cans allow the transport of the milk, preserving its quality. In this case, we refer to "configuration A". e) A second refrigeration unit to preserve milk

The project aims at enabling small scale sheep and goat farmers and other poor value-chain actors in Ethiopia to increase their share of the benefits from sheep and goat production and marketing. This will be achieved through developing, adapting and disseminating innovative approaches and technologies, together with enabling policies and institutions jointly with all actors along the value chains, to achieve impact at scale and to increase availability and affordability of meat and milk.