Sustainable Intensification of small-scale agriculture: How to ensure food and nutritional

security?

Fentahun Mengistu (EIAR)

ILRI@40 Livestock and sustainable food and nutrition security

workshop

Addis Ababa, 7 November 2014

Challenges

• Human population growth represents higher demand for food

• Increase in livestock population represents greater pressure on land

• Limited land availability for agricultural production• Land fragmentation• Many of the areas are already degraded• Climate change• African governments agreed to enable smallholder

farms to continue providing a large proportion of the food required by the population.

How and where…….Potential Interventions

• Should tackle inefficiencies at farm and other nodes of the value chains

• Farm level:

– Better integration of crop/livestock / agroforestry components

– Enhanced use of the so-called “wastes”

– Check if available technologies help to increase productivity, not affecting negatively the environment.

How and where…….Potential Interventions

• Beyond the farm gate

– Promote collective action (access to technology innovations, services and markets) to increase competitiveness

– Value addition (including the development of new products)

– Role of policies and partnerships to enable the adoption and scaling up of technology innovations

– Contribute to the rehabilitation of degraded lands

Opportunities for Innovative Research

Emphasis on:– Climate smart innovations (i.e., adaptation to stress)– Better understanding of local/indigenous knowledge.– Enhancing crop livestock-interactions (i.e., more efficient

use of crop residues, manure as fertilizer, biogas production).

– Use of biotechnology options (i.e., animal genotypes, vaccines, etc.)

– Complementarity between basic and applied action research

– How to address gender issues– Options for establishing mechanisms for the valuation and

payment for environmental services

Complementarity with pother key issues

• Environmental issues clearly identified in previous slides

• The smart identification of options for increasing productivity should result not only on sustainable nutritional security, but also improve economic well-being.

• Improved nutritional security will contribute to healthy lives

• Intensification could increase the risk of introduction and susceptibility for infectious diseases