milkit_learning


 * Learnings from the MilkIT project**

For the past 3 years, ILRI, CIAT and national partners have worked in the MilkIT project - a research for development project funded by IFAD and working in India and Tanzania. The overall goal of the project was to improve dairy-derived livelihoods in India and Tanzania via intensification of smallholder production focusing on enhancement of feeds and feeding using innovation and value chain approaches.

The team worked on three objectives:
 * **Institutional strengthening**: To strengthen use of value chain and innovation approaches among dairy stakeholders to improve feeding strategies for dairy cows.
 * **Productivity enhancement:** To develop options for improved feeding strategies leading to yield enhancement with potential income benefits.
 * **Knowledge sharing:** To strengthen knowledge sharing mechanisms on feed development strategies at local, regional and international levels

The project comes to a close at the end of 2014 and the project consortium is synthesizing learning from the project to inform ongoing work on dairy development in the two project locations.

The various emerging lessons are relevant for technical livestock development experts, dairy and livestock development practitioners, government officials in regional and national positions, rural development project designers, researchers, investors in rural development projects, and private organizations working in the dairy and feed value chains.

As a starting point in this process we have noted the following:

- The use of **innovation platforms (IP’s)** at various levels is a very useful approach to identify promising solutions to dairy development constraints. IP’s have had a strong empowering effect on local communities and opened up previously stagnant communication lines leading to technical innovation in feeding methods but also organizational innovation at the level of the value chain. This has been most pronounced in India where market channels for milk have been revitalized and key decision makers are now working to bring together relevant stakeholders to sort out dairy value chain blockages at wide scale. Local level platforms in Tanzania have been shown to empower local communities.

- Technical feed interventions with marketing interventions need to go hand in hand since they feed off each other’s success. However, the **phasing of focus on these two areas is important**. Sometimes there are institutional issues that need to be dealt with before feed interventions stand a chance of working. We found this to be the case when introducing improved forages into Tanzanian traditional livestock exclosures (ololili). Our experience was that work on introducing local bylaws was first needed to ensure agreement and enforcement of exclusion of livestock at community level before any pasture improvement was possible. We also found it was important to prioritize interventions with quick returns. When thinking about feed interventions, processing of existing material through chopping, introducing feed troughs to reduce wastage, and working on improving supply of concentrate feeds were all good ways to build confidence among farmers and stakeholders. This paved the way for some of the more institutionally complex marketing interventions such as establishment of cooperatives and milk collection centres

- Feed interventions are highly context specific. The success of particular interventions depends strongly on the context in which they are applied. **Feed assessment and prioritization tools such as FEAST and Techfit** have a very useful role to play in helping to understand the context and indicating appropriate technologies that have a strong chance of being adopted. These feed assessment tools help to stimulate discussion and reflection among users and they also help to standardize documentation around feed issues.

- We found **capacity development** at a range of levels to be extremely important. We realised that there were basic capacity gaps around forage establishment, storage and conservation that required close follow up. However, we also found that we needed a strong focus on building communication and stakeholder engagement capacity. Those stakeholders we worked with learned a lot about these aspects via experiential learning through involvement in innovation platforms. These capacities can usefully be taken up and outscaled in educational and training programs in the livestock sector.