Susan's Tumblr Scraps

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Making gender equality in food systems the 'new normal'. For a more equal, and better, world. For all.

Making gender equality in food systems the ‘new normal’. For a more equal, and better, world. For all.

Meet Amina.

She’s a farmer.

She sows and harvests. She feeds and tends her family’s animals, collects fuelwood, carries water. She sells crops she grows. She shops and cooks. She funds her children’s education, cleans house, takes care of the sick and elderly.

Despite all of this, Amina has less access to assets, opportunities…

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Chicken intervention in Ethiopian households improved the nutrition and growth of young children

Chicken intervention in Ethiopian households improved the nutrition and growth of young children

Ethiopian chicken farmer with her children (photo credit: ILRI).

ILRI animal geneticist/breeder Tadelle Dessie is one of many authors of a new paper in the Journal of Nutritionwith partners from Harvard and Purdue universities and Boston College, in the US; the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN) in South Africa; and the Addis Continental Institute of Public…

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New alliance for better dairy animal nutrition in Kenya will work to advance 'human nutrition, success and progress'

New alliance for better dairy animal nutrition in Kenya will work to advance ‘human nutrition, success and progress’

Lilian Satia, a young dairy entrepreneur in Nakuru, Kenya (photo credit: ILRI/Georgina Smith).

Yesterday (7 Sep 2020) the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and four partners—Bidco Land O’Lakes, Corteva Agriscience, Forage Genetics International (FGI) and Land O’Lakes Venture37—announced their new alliance in a project to strengthen dairy production in central Kenya. The project…

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Improving animal health in southern Africa—Why it matters and what to do

Improving animal health in southern Africa—Why it matters and what to do

Cattle being herded towards green pasture on the flood plain in western Zambia (photo credit: WorldFish/Felix Clay/Duckrabbit).

In a new book chapter (Ch. 15, Technologies for agricultural transformation: Animal health), Delia Grace, a veterinary epidemiologist and food safety expert at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), in Nairobi, Kenya, and the Natural Resources Institute,…

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Millions of new social groups are delivering better agricultural and land management

Millions of new social groups are delivering better agricultural and land management

Etching by Clint Fulkerson.

Millions of geographically based new social groups are leading to more sustainable agriculture A new paper in the scientific journal Global Sustainabilitypresents some interesting findings on the rise over the past 20 years in social movements around sustainability management. Jules Pretty, professor of environment and society at the Unversity of Essex, UK, is the…

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Laughter, the universal language

Laughter, the universal language

Author Zöe Campbell at a community meeting with Fulani pastoralists in Senegal (photo credit: Guy Ilboudo, ILRI-Burkina Faso).

Written by ILRI gender and socioeconomic researcher Zöe Campbell.

If there were no language barriers, what would research be like, I wonder?

I’m a gender researcher working on a project to control peste des petits ruminants (PPR), a disease that afflicts sheep and goats…

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Building gender sensitivity into the next generation of livestock scientists

Building gender sensitivity into the next generation of livestock scientists

A group of ILRI CapDev Grand Challenge Fellows co-creating a research concept note integrating climate science, livestock improvement, economics, policy and gender (photo credit: ILRI/Wellington Ekaya).

Written by Zoë Campbell

About 20 research and graduate fellows attended a virtual training entitled ‘Integrating gender into livestock research’ which took place 16–17 Jul 2020. This two-day…

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A One-Health approach is needed to protect both people and the planet—ILRI and UNEP leaders

A One-Health approach is needed to protect both people and the planet—ILRI and UNEP leaders

Graphic by Annabel Slater, of ILRI communications.

An opinion piece by Jimmy Smith, director general of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), and Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), warns that zoonotic diseases such as COVID-19 may become more prevalent in the future—and lays out what we need to do to identify and prevent future…

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Joint UN-CGIAR assessment explains how animal-to-human pandemics like COVID-19 occur and how to prevent them in future

Joint UN-CGIAR assessment explains how animal-to-human pandemics like COVID-19 occur and how to prevent them in future

Cover of the new ILRI-UNEP zoonoses report and a graphic representation of the virus causing COVID-19—SARS-CoV-2—by ILRI communications specialist Annabel Slater.

[A] scientific assessment from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) finds that unless countries take dramatic steps to curb zoonotic contagions, global outbreaks like COVID-19…

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World’s largest public agricultural research network launches COVID-19 Hub to support global scientific response

World’s largest public agricultural research network launches COVID-19 Hub to support global scientific response

Image of the full virion (complete, infective form of a virus outside a host cell) of the novel coronavirus—severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)—taken from a model of the virus developed by ILRI communications specialist Annabel Slater (photo credit: Annabel Slater). 

As the United Nations warns of an impending global food emergency, researchers in health, nutrition and…

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Happy World Environment Day!

Happy World Environment Day!

Happy World Environment Day! To celebrate World Environment Day today—5 Jun 2020—the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) is focusing on something called ‘participatory rangeland management’. As rangelands cover most of the Earth’s ice-free surface, managing them in equitable as well as sustainable ways are BIG matters—geographically, agriculturally and humanistically speaking. Fiona…

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A bridge not too far: To prevent pandemics, close the human and animal health divide

A bridge not too far: To prevent pandemics, close the human and animal health divide

Stone relief of a man holding an ibex, 713–706 BC, from Dur Sharrukin, the Palace of Assyrian King Sargon II, at Khorsabad, in present-day northern Iraq (photo credit: Louvre Museum).

Written by Lynne Peeples

Nadia began coughing on March 27. The 4-year-old Malayan tiger’s keepers at the Bronx Zoo in New York City also noticed she wasn’t finishing her daily allotment of raw meat. Concerned, they…

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The good and not-so-good news about the state of COVID-19 vaccine development: A primer from ILRI

The good and not-so-good news about the state of COVID-19 vaccine development: A primer from ILRI

Jimmy Smith, director general of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), holds a weekly town hall for the 600-plus staff of the institute as well as staff from many of ILRI partners who are hosted on ILRI campuses in Nairobi, Addis Ababa and elsewhere.

In the town hall last week, Vish Nene, co-leader of ILRI’s Animal and Human Health program, made a short presentation on the…

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East African dairy under COVID-19: How is this vibrant sub-sector faring? Join us for a webinar 28 May

East African dairy under COVID-19: How is this vibrant sub-sector faring? Join us for a webinar 28 May

Albertina is business savy. Domingos has a knack for operations— together this husband and wife are using complementary strengths to run a successful dairy business in Mozambique. Their dairy operation is supported by Land O’Lakes Venture37 through the USDA-supported MERCADO program. (Photo credit: Ashley Peterson/Land O’Lakes Venture37)

East African dairy under COVID-19 A vibrant sub-sector is…

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ILRI computing capacity made available to COVID-19 vaccine developers

ILRI’s high-performance computing platform (right), generally used by the institute’s scientists to study and develop vaccines for zoonotic diseases originating in livestock, is currently donating computing capacity to COVID-19 vaccine development. Left is a picture of ILRI’s laboratory research on vaccines; middle is a sketch of ILRI’s Alan Orth (photo credits: Paul Karaimu/ILRI/Evelyn Katingi).

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Africa’s growing risk of diseases that spread from animals to people

The outbreak of COVID-19 is a rude awakening to many who believed the era of infectious disease was over. In this post, Bernard Bett, Delia Randolph and John McDermott argue that not only are pandemics not over, they may be increasing in frequency; and while most originated in Asia in the past, Africa may be poised to become an important source of so-called ‘zoonotic pathogens’—with its…

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Celebrating the ‘WILD’ (‘Women In Livestock Development’) at ILRI on International Women’s Day Check out this video short highlighting women working at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) for…