Système d’Innovation en Production Animale (SIPA)

Introduction

Haiti is one of the countries most exposed to environmental shocks and stressors, including natural disasters and climate change. In fact, food insecurity, exacerbated by the negative impact of climate change and political and economic instability, remains one of the biggest challenges that Haiti faces today. Low livestock productivity in Haiti results from factors like poor indigenous breed performance, insufficient feed, animal health issues, and ineffective management practices. Sustainable solutions involve enhancing research, education, extension, and infrastructure. Simultaneously, improving breeding and feeding practices, along with deploying technologies for health and management and strengthening the local capacity of Haitian university partners, can more effectively improve the livestock sector in Haiti. This will lead to the long-term benefits of increased income and resilience of smallholder farmers.

Project Objectives

Objectives of the project are to:

• Improve the genetic profile of key livestock species (small ruminants, dairy and beef cattle) through breeding and dissemination of quality genetic stock in Haiti
• Increase the performance of livestock through transformative forage and feed interventions
• Strengthen the academic, vocational and research capacity of key local universities and partners, and support dissemination of research findings from Objectives 1 and 2

Research Approach

The Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Livestock Systems at the University of Florida is proposing innovative and integrated interventions to improve the genetic merit of key livestock species, enhance the availability and supply of quality livestock feed, improve key management practices, and to strengthen the capacity of local Haitian institutions to lead SIPA initiatives in each of these areas.

This “systems” multidisciplinary approach targets the four pillars of improving livestock production nutrition, breeding, health and management. Each pillar can also be considered one of the four legs of the stool that supports livestock production. Consequently, interventions that focus on one of these and ignore the others often fail. For instance, the animal industry in developing countries is replete with numerous examples of failed attempts to improve productivity by importing improved livestock breeds or genetics without adequately catering for their nutrition, health and management needs. The overarching local capacity development component is integral to ensure that the technologies and management strategies introduced and localized by the project are sustained long after the project ends.