Project Portfolio

Improving livelihoods of smallholder upland farmers through improved and integrated cassava-based cropping and livestock systems

Countries: Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Vietnam 
Donor: Nippon Foundation
Contact: Tin Maung Aye (Profile)

This project aims to develop, together with farmers, technologies that will increase the income and improve the livelihoods of small farmers living in the uplands of South-East Asia. This will be achieved by disseminating the selected technologies for improved cassava livestock production systems to many farmers, supporting national institutions in conducting strategic and applied research and developing procedures for monitoring the impact of new technologies on farmers' livelihoods and the environment.

Enhancing livelihoods of poor livestock keepers through increasing use of fodder

Countries: Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam
Donors: AusAID, ADB, ACIAR
Contact: Rod Lefroy (Profile)

Working with partners and farmers, this project aims to strengthen poor livestock keepers’ capacities for selecting and adopting fodder options and accessing market opportunities to enable them to improve their livelihoods and the sustainability of their farming systems.

Forage legumes for supplementing village pigs in Lao PDR

Country: Lao PDR
Donor: ACIAR
Contact: Tassilo Tiemann (Profile)

Stylosanthes guianensis (Stylo 184) is a forage legume proven to have two-fold growth rates, greater nutritional quality, and reduced labor requirements. This project seeks to scale-out the adoption of Stylo 184 to farmer-families through alliances with other development projects and in doing so will determine on-farm constraints to adoption of forage legumes for pig feeding, and develop guidelines for scaling out legume supplementation for village pigs. In addition it will investigate the reasons for the high impact of Stylo 184 and identify other forage legumes with similar traits.

Improved feeding systems for more efficient beef cattle production in Cambodia

Country: Cambodia
Donor: ACIAR
Contact: Tassilo Tiemann (Profile)

This project aims to improve profitability of cattle production and reduce labor demand for feeding cattle in smallholder farming communities in Cambodia. Objectives include:

• Increasing adoption of forage fodder banks, which should reduce time associated with feeding cattle.
• Increasing small farmer income from cattle production by improving feed quality, availability, and feed use efficiency.

Country: Thailand
Donor: ACIAR
Contact: Tassilo Tiemann (Profile)

The overall aim of the project is to improve the reliability of achieving profitable returns at the household level from rice and cattle production in rain-fed, rice-based farming ecosystems in the Mahasarakham Province of Northeast Thailand. This will be achieved by:

• Optimizing and maintaining rice yields by addressing constraints.
• Improving the profitability of the beef cattle component of the farming system through a combination of improvements in nutrition, cattle management, and breeds.
• Development of the capacity of key collaborators in the project.

Small-scale agro-enterprise development in the uplands (SADU) of Lao PDR 

Country: Lao PDR
Donor: SDC
Contact: Rod Lefroy (Profile)

The project development goal of SADU III is to improve the livelihoods of marginalized smallholder farming households, especially ethnic minority groups, women and the poor, in upland areas of northern Lao PDR through increased market chain efficiency of local agriculture-based production markets.

Linking smallholder livelihoods to emerging environmentally progressive agro-industrial markets

Countries: Cambodia, Lao PDR, Vietnam
Donor: IFAD
Contact: Keith Fahrney (Profile)

This project aims to improve livelihoods of resource-poor upland small farmers, especially ethnic minorities and women, through integrated crop/livestock systems and sustainable production and utilization of food, feed, fiber, and energy crops, with facilitative market linkages to agroindustrial processors in Cambodia, Lao PDR, and Vietnam. This will be achieved through:

• Increase sustainable production of food, feed, fiber, and energy crops.
• Identify market opportunities and develop linkages between smallholders and agroindustrial processors.
• Facilitate the exchange of knowledge and information among stakeholders.
• Improve production and utilization of locally grown livestock feed resources, including by-products and waste from agroindustries.
• Improve waste management practices of agroindustrial processors.

Countries: Colombia, Thailand
Donors: TTDI 
Contact: Hernán Ceballos (Profile), Nelson Morante

This is a 5-year project which aims to develop commercial cassava cultivars carrying the high-value trait of amylose-free (waxy) starch. The origin of this project was the discovery of a spontaneous mutation discovered in 2006 and reported in 2007. A key partner in this project is Kasetsart University of Thailand.

Donor: ICRISAT
Contact: Rod Lefroy (Profile), Hernán Ceballos (Profile)

This project involves a wide range of activities working for the improvement of varieties, production systems, and waste management, in order to improve smallholder livelihoods in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Some activities include the development of high-biomass cassava, the fine-tuning of production packages, and the facilitation of the development of mechanisms to allow effective production of biofuels from agroindustrial waste.