Themes
Areas of Inquiry
Livestock Production & Disease Management
Supports, strengthens and expands existing One-Health research and training platforms and relevant projects to improve surveillance, reduce disease burdens, and increase ASF safety. This AOI employs a multidisciplinary, integrated approach to develop location-appropriate nutrition, genetic, lactation, reproduction, management, health, and ASF processing or preservation technologies that will enhance livestock productivity and ASF consumption.
Human Health, Food Safety, Diets & Nutrition
Livestock production affects nutrition by contributing to food production, income generation, and women’s empowerment. All activities of the Livestock Systems Innovation Lab should emphasize improving human health and nutrition via increased consumption of animal-source foods.
Markets & Innovation Translation
The expansion of markets within developing countries and regions brings vital opportunities to increase income, trade and market access. This new area of inquiry, Markets and Innovation Translation, builds on livestock market innovations generated by Phase I research. Existing innovations will be improved and scaled up, and livestock markets will be emphasized as a research priority. Research areas include marketing and pricing of animal-source foods, market diagnostics, market-based solutions, and scaling of innovations.
Cross-Cutting Themes
Local Capacity Development
LCD efforts in Phase 2 will focus on strengthening participating partners' organizational performance and institutional relationships through the application of collaborating, learning and adapting approaches. We combine previous efforts with collaboration and create social value through organizational and institutional strengthening. We apply Local Capacity Development systems-wide approaches to engage stakeholders to support and sustain changes in the research system.
Gender & Youth
Gender is a multi-dimensional issue in livestock systems, involving roles and relationships that may seem fixed and unchangeable. Women are often concentrated in the lower ends of the livestock value chains, frequently without access to the resources needed to be highly productive. Youth unemployment, underemployment, informal employment, and working poverty are concerns in virtually every part of the world, but especially in developing countries. The Gender and Youth cross-cutting theme seeks to increase equity and access across livestock value chains through research and capacity development.
Enabling Environment
This theme facilitates research, capacity-building and participatory activities that support developing and implementing policies at any level that enhance the production, marketing and consumption of animal-source foods, especially among smallholders. Efforts focus on encouraging stakeholders’ dialogues, promoting research uptake and addressing institutional constraints that contribute to improving the availability of quality livestock inputs, services, and markets and introducing innovative solutions for risk management, disease surveillance, and food safety.
Future Livestock Systems & Resilience
This cross-cutting theme uses mechanistic models and analytical tools to examine how animal-source foods production systems may be affected by emerging challenges or improved by introducing innovations. It particularly examines livestock system responses to proposed interventions in the context of changes in climate, demographics, agriculture, markets, and infrastructure.
Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Livestock Systems is part of Feed the Future
