Improvement of Livestock Production in Crop-Animal Systems in ...

Project sustainabilityStrategies for ensuring the success and sustainability of future projects need to be sensitive, inter alia, to thefollowing concerns:1. Project formulation should be based on a response to ex-ante analysis to include identification ofconstraints, analysis of trends and issues, and definition of research priorities.2. Projects should involve farmers and community-based participation, where beneficiaries have a directstake in all aspects of the project from formulation through implementation to evaluation. Participationin decision-making is central to the success of any project.3. Projects should be flexible in scope and direction, and be responsive to changing circumstances.4. Project stability is ensured by institutional commitment, adequate resources, recipient contribution andstrong partnerships.Priority production systemsThe following priority production systems are identified for future research:1. Annual food crop systems integrated with ruminants and/or non-ruminants.2. Perennial tree crop systems integrated with ruminants.Annual food crop systems are found in all countries, but their integration with animals is particularlyimportant in the Mekong countries and South China. Perennial tree crop systems are also found in mostcountries, but are most important in the ASEAN sub-region.Priority researchable areasPotential research issues may be grouped into six interrelated areas (Table 13). The seventh area relates toinstitution building. With feed resources, considerable work has been undertaken on the development ofimproved forages, but there has been little emphasis on the introduction of annual forage legumes into food cropsystems. Only limited work has been conducted on forage utilisation by animals within the production systems,and little attempt has been made to synchronise the available feed options with animal requirements throughoutthe year. Nutrient cycling provides the link between the animal on the one hand and the soil and crop on theother. In most smallholder systems, manure is the only input for the maintenance of soil fertility. The productionof crop residues, AIBP and NCFR need to be integrated better into farming systems and utilised more efficientlyin feeding systems. A major effort is required to promote their wider adoption by farmers.Animal genetic resources in the region have not been characterised adequately, and traits responsiblefor environmental adaptation need to be utilised in a more concerted manner. Genetic resistance to diseases,for example, is an area where more research needs to be undertaken. Animal improvement programmes inSouth-East Asia have generally tended to place too much emphasis on crossbreeding, with variable success,mainly to improve milk and meat production in intensive systems. For crop–animal systems, on the otherhand, crossbreeding programmes are less important as small farmers are more concerned with diversifyingthe use of local resources. Thus, the use of native breeds (ruminants and non-ruminants) in crop–animalsystems assumes much more importance and, with improved nutrition, productivity can be increased.Epidemiological tools and methodologies, contributed by international research, could provideimportant improvements for disease monitoring and control. ILRI has special capacity for research in animalhealth and diseases of relevance to several countries in South-East Asia. These include disease diagnosis andepidemiology of tick-borne diseases and mechanically-transmitted trypanosomiasis in Indonesia, the LaoPDR, the Philippines and Vietnam. Vaccine delivery and diagnostics are relevant in all countries, and muchof the immunology work with Theileria could be applied to viral vector delivery mechanisms for otherdiseases such as malignant cattarrhal fever, in collaboration with other groups in that field. Helminthiasis andresearch on heliminth resistance has relevance to small ruminants in Indonesia, Thailand and, perhaps, inMyanmar.