Visiting Tanzanian dairy farms
Our LiveGAPS 2 work will identify ways to sustainably increase yield in livestock farming systems in Tanzania and Nigeria. But these farms are different to the Indian and Ethiopian farms that we worked with for LiveGAPS 1. So we went to Tanzania to meet farmers and find out more about more their farms. In February 2018 members of the LiveGAPS team, Andrew Ash, Di Mayberry and Jeda Palmer, visited multiple Tanzanian dairy farms.
To begin the trip, we met with representatives from the Tanzania Livestock Research Institute (TALIRI), HEIFER International and East Africa Dairy Development (EADD) to gain an overview of Tanzanian dairy systems.
HEIFER International kindly facilitated our visit to three dairy farms in the southern highlands region of Tanzania. We interviewed farmers about their farms, their animals and their farming practices to obtain data to better inform our modelling.
With the data gathered from this trip to Tanzania, we can now use farming system models to estimate the impacts of best-bet packages of interventions provided by key informants (genetics, nutrition, health) on livestock productivity, and farmers’ incomes and nutrition.
See below for photos from our trip.
-
- Upendo and his wife with their dairy cows in Mbeya, Tanzania. Photo credit: Jeda Palmer.
Photo credit: Jeda Palmer and Israel Mwakilasa.