On March 26th2014, the National Steering Committee held its second meeting. The committee is composed of six members from the following institutions: Ministry of Agriculture – Directorate of Veterinary and Livestock Production Services; the Swaziland Water and Agriculture Development Enterprise (SWADE), the Micro Finance Unit (MFU), Faculty of Agriculture, University of Swaziland, Swaziland National Agricultural Union (SNAU) and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). A senior official from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the donor of this project, acted as observer.
The committee received an update on the project progress since September 2013 as well as detailed information on the site selection for the project interventions. While there has been some delay in project implementation, the group was confident that good progress will be made in the next months as the sites have now been identified. They were also encouraged by the potential of the Feed Assessment Tool (FEAST) developed by ILRI and that is currently used in the project. The results of this tool will feed into a report with quantitative information on overall feed availability, quality and seasonality. This is important as the project aims to introduce grass based fattening of animals by smallholders.
The next meeting is scheduled for October 2014.
Filed under: Africa, Cattle, CRP2, ILRI, Southern Africa, Swaziland, Value Chains
