MP3livestock

= **CGIAR Mega-Program 3.7: Sustainable staple food productivity increase for global food security: Livestock and fish** =

=[|Comment on this document] - use the 'DISCUSSION' tab above=



OUR PROPOSITION: Malnutrition is the most serious consequence of food insecurity.

Milk, meat, eggs and fish –the animal source foods (ASFs) - are indispensable in achieving nutrition security2 and enabling children to develop normally, reaching their full potential as healthy, productive adults. However, productivity of livestock and aquaculture in poor countries lags behind the rest of the world. Consumption rates of ASFs in the poorest countries remain low, exacerbated by recent upward pressure on food prices. Malnutrition therefore remains widespread amongst the poor and is implicated in the deaths of half of all children.

Women constitute a disproportionate share of the poor due to lack of access to assets, technologies and resources, and lower economic returns to labor. Moreover, gender disparities in intra‐household food distribution prioritize men in the consumption of ASFs, depriving women of essential protein, calcium and iron during critical periods such as pregnancy and nursing. Due to their roles in the household, increasing women’s access to technologies, assets and services as well as targeting them with specific interventions can have positive consequences for household nutrition.

There is a now a huge, unprecedented opportunity to mobilize livestock and aquaculture research-for-development to enable the poor to access adequate supplies of ASFs at affordable prices, at the same time as stimulating broad-based poverty reduction by involving the poor, especially women and other marginalized groups, in producing and marketing high‐value meat, milk, eggs and fish. Factors converging to create this opportunity include increasing demand for ASFs, the growth of the private sector and increased dynamism of markets in developing countries, the recognition that technology development must go hand‐in‐hand with effective targeting and uptake pathways, recent advances in both the natural and social sciences, and new institutional flexibility provided by the CGIAR change process.

Mega Program 3.7 will therefore test the hypothesis: The enduring productivity gap in poor country small‐scale livestock and aquaculture systems can be sustainably reduced through new ways of working in which partnerships between research, development and private sector actors stimulate gender‐equitable innovation in selected pro‐poor value chains; enable uptake of existing appropriate technologies; and identify and communicate demand for new priority technologies that exploit scientific advances. Reducing the productivity gap for livestock and fish will lead to increased access to ASFs by the poor and increased incomes for producers and other value chain actors, thereby improving nutrition and food security.

The over‐arching goal of MP3.7 is to sustainably increase productivity of small‐scale livestock and fish systems so as to increase availability and affordability of ASFs for poor consumers and, in doing so, to reduce poverty through greater participation by the poor along ASF value chains.

Program Objectives:
 * Increase productivity in small‐scale livestock and fish production and marketing systems.
 * Increase access to affordable ASF to enhance food and nutrition security for the poor, especially women and children.
 * Enable participation in and access to pro-poor production and marketing systems that promote uptake of productivity-enhancing technologies and increase value generation, with emphasis on addressing current gender disparities.
 * Secure household and community livestock and fish assets for sustained livelihoods, and conserve livestock, fish and forage/fodder biodiversity as public good assets that will provide genetic diversity for continued growth and adaptation.
 * Protect the natural resource base and its ability to continue providing ecosystem services.
 * Strengthen capacity to enable public and private sector actors to support and exploit appropriate research and development efforts for sustainable intensification of small‐scale livestock and fish production and marketing systems that provide equitable benefits to men and women.