ICARDA’s livestock-based innovation success story gets an award
ICARDA’s work on Community-Based Breeding Programs in Ethiopia is carried out as part of the CGIAR Research Program on Livestock which is supported by contributors to the CGIAR Trust Fund
ICARDA is thrilled to announce that our story on Community-Based Breeding Programs (CBBP) won first runner-up in a ‘Call for Success stories of inclusive innovations for livestock-based food systems’ led by the African Union (AU) - InterAfrican Bureau for Animal Resources.
The goal of the AU initiative is to enable the sharing of experiences and impacts of selected livestock-based innovations that are gender-sensitive, climate-smart, and environmentally friendly, with a focus on vulnerable communities, including youth, women, and pastoralists.
Modern livestock breeding approaches often fail in poorer countries because they need expensive infrastructure. ICARDA scientists and partners have developed low-cost CBBPs that target community farmers with a common interest in improving their local livestock genetic resources. The project helps farmers improve their livestock selection methods and pool genetic information about their flocks. A training element helps the farmers evaluate different breeding options and teach the groups how to monitor, collect and share performance information to identify good breeding individuals within flocks.
CBBPs focus on indigenous stock and consider farmers’ needs, views, decisions, and active participation, from inception through implementation, and therefore provide a participatory and bottom‐up approach.
Ethiopia has more than 7000 households that have benefited from CBBPs, and their incomes increased by 20 percent. Now they can consume three sheep or goats per year compared to only one when the program started.
