Livestock Services and the Poor: A global initiative - IFAD

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LIVESTOCK SERVICES AND THE POOR
lessons learned and the field testing of novel approaches within existing
programmes and through new pilot projects to be established across different
livestock production systems.
Implementation of the recommended approaches
A fund should be established to implement the global network. It should be
managed by a small secretariat under the supervision of a steering committee.
The Global Pro-Poor Livestock Services Fund would be the primary source of
support for the proposed learning and knowledge management system and
would coordinate the information supplied by a wide variety of livestock
development agencies and practitioners. The secretariat would act as a
repository of specialist knowledge for livestock practitioners and the
development community at large. Small or resource-poor institutions,
producer organizations, NGOs and governments would be able to access key
information and avoid a duplication of effort. The secretariat would prepare
innovative pilot proposals for pro-poor service delivery and supervise and
monitor the impact of the schemes, but would work through partner
institutions for the actual implementation.
In this way, the secretariat would act as an innovative means both to
generate and to share new knowledge about livestock development and
poverty. The secretariat would inform policy-makers, strengthen institutions,
develop an expert system for information management and support
innovative research about livestock services and the poor.
The secretariat would be overseen by a steering committee composed of
the contributing agencies, a representative of a regional or global producer
organization and a small number of eminent scientists from the South who
work in livestock service delivery.
The secretariat would have a small staff, including a network coordinator
supported by information technology experts when required. The emphasis of
the network would be on producer organizations and farmer empowerment,
and the responsibility for execution could be entrusted to an international or
national farmer organization in the country of one of the contributing donors.
As a first step, a feasibility study would need to be carried out to provide an
inventory of other relevant initiatives and establish the eventual location and
functions of the Global Pro-Poor Livestock Services Fund within the broader
environment of other pro-poor livestock activities (such as FAO’s Pro-Poor
Livestock Policy Facility, the Livestock, Environment and Development