Participatory Livestock Research

1 Introduction 1
1.1 Why livestock are important to resource-poor people 3
1.2 Livestock constraints and failure of conventional research 5
1.3 The advantages of participatory research 12
PART I PARTICIPATORY SITUATION ANALYSIS 15
2 General aspects of participatory situation analysis 17
2.1 Introduction 17
2.2 The use of statistics in PSA 22
2.3 Social groups, livelihood systems and livestock 28
3 Getting an overview of livestock-keeping 39
3.1 Reasons and benefits 39
3.2 Describing the livestock production system 41
3.3 Collecting more detailed information about animal
productivity 43
4 Feeding systems and resources 51
4.1 Spatial distribution of forage and water resources 51
4.2 Identifying preference for fodder tree/shrub species 51
4.3 Feeding systems and seasonality 52
5 Animal health 57
5.1 Introduction 57
5.2 Veterinary diagnosis and participatory research methods 58
5.3 Uses of participatory methods in research 60
5.4 Conclusions 72
6 Analysis of constraints, problems and opportunities 73
6.1 Preliminary identification and ranking of constraints 73
6.2 Scratching below the surface 74
6.3 Participatory problem tree analysis 75
PART II PARTICIPATORY TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT 79
7 When to do participatory trials 81
7.1 Types of agricultural research 81
7.2 Project and institutional objectives 85
7.3 Essential conditions for PTD with livestock-keepers 91
8 Getting started 97
8.1 Needs assessment 97
8.2 Scheduling 98
8.3 Identifying where to work and with whom 98
8.4 Identifying interventions 103
8.5 When to experiment 109
9 Designing trials and experiments 111
9.1 Identifying experimental hypotheses 111
9.2 How many livestock-keepers and animals should be
involved? 111
9.3 How many treatments? 113
9.4 Experimental design 114
9.5 Conclusions 117
10 Monitoring and evaluation of experiments 119
10.1 What data, why and how often? 119
10.2 Collecting baseline data 122
10.3 Who monitors and how? 123
10.4 Processing monitoring data 123
10.5 Physicallying distinguishing animals to be monitored 124
10.6 Methods for measuring treatments and performance
indicators 125
10.7 Evaluation: assessing the effect of interventions 127
11 Achieving wider impact 131
11.1 Disseminating technologies developed by the PTD project 132
11.2 Building livestock-keepers’ capacity for participation 144
11.3 Sustaining and promoting PTD within lead R&D agencies 144
11.4 Promoting PTD outside lead R&D agencies 146
11.5 Improving the enabling environment 149
PART III CASE STUDIES 151
12 Case study A: Learning about the control of Newcastle
disease with village chicken farmers in Mozambique 153
12.1 Background 154
12.2 Overview of ND control activities to date 155
12.3 ND control activities in Mozambique 155
12.4 Results and discussion of Mozambican field trials 159
12.5 ND control activities in Tanzania and Ghana 161
12.6 Conclusions 161
13 Case study B: Participatory development of mange
treatment technology in Kenya 165
13.1 Historical background to DAREP 165
13.2 Livestock production and constraints in Tharaka and
Mbeere 166
13.3 The technology development process 168
13.4 Dissemination of technology 172
13.5 Concluding observations 174
14 Case study C: Participatory validation of medicinal plants
for livestock diseases of pastoralists in Kenya 175
14.1 Background and approach 175
14.2 Validation 178
14.3 Achieving wider impact 181
15 Case study D: Improving the efficacy of concentrate usage
by smallholder dairy farmers in Kenya 185
15.1 Background 186
15.2 Constraint identification 186
15.3 On-station development of intervention 187
15.4 Methodology to adapt and evaluate intervention in the field 187
15.5 Results 190
15.6 Conclusions 193
16 Case study E: Tree pods as a supplement to improve the
productivity of female goats in India 197
16.1 Background 198
16.2 Participatory situation analysis 199
16.3 Methods and materials 200
16.4 Results 202
16.5 Discussion 203
16.6 Dissemination 205
16.7 Key points arising from project experiences 206
17 Case study F: Women, livestock and innovation:
campesino experimentation in Mexico 207
17.1 Background 208
17.2 Who, where, when and what 208
17.3 How 208
17.4 Results 218
17.5 Recommendations for livestock PTD processes 221
18 Case study G: Adoption and scaling up – experiences of
the Forages for Smallholders Project in South-east Asia 225
18.1 Introduction 226
18.2 Developing technologies with farmers, and adoption 226
18.3 Some FSP research highlights 232
18.4 Scaling up 233
18.5 Benefits 235
18.6 Conclusions 236
19 Case study H: Development of herbaceous forage legume
technologies in central Kenya 237
19.1 Introduction 238
19.2 Constraints 239
19.3 Legume characteristics and the production system 241
19.4 Combining on-station and on-farm experiments in
technology development 242
19.5 Scaling up and scaling out 243
19.6 Implications and lessons learned 244
20 Case study I: Development of the Kebkabiya donkey
plough in Western Sudan 247
20.1 Introduction 248
20.2 History of plough development 248
20.3 Distribution of ploughs 253
20.4 Capacity building 254
20.5 Benefits of the mouldboard donkey plough 254
20.6 Conclusions and lessons learned 255
21 Case study J: Tzotzil shepherdesses and Chiapas wool
sheep, Mexico 257
21.1 Intoduction 258
21.2 A sustainable alternative approach 259
21.3 Benefits of the programme 263
21.4 Final reflections and thoughts 263
PART IV CONCLUSIONS 265
22 Maximizing the contribution of participatory livestock
research 267
22.1 Benefits of participatory approaches 267
22.2 Potential for horizontal scaling up 270
22.3 Barriers to horizontal scaling up 270
22.4 The institutional revolution: increasing the use of
participatory approaches 274
22.5 The information revolution 278
22.6 Final comments 279
Appendix: Internet-based livestock and development information sources 281
List of contributors 283
References 287
Index 297