Students'+Research+Concept+Note

**  Introduction   ** Rain fed agriculture covers 80% of the world’s cropland and produces >60% cereals grain. To attain the 2015 hunger reduction target of the Millennium Development Goal (MDG), 75% of increased water requirement will have to come from rain (Rockström et al., 2008). In Highlands of the Blue Nile Basin, >95% of crop land and even higher share of grazing land is under rain fed system. Given slow growth, higher investment need and limited potentials in irrigated agriculture, rain fed crop production in this region can be argued to contribute more than 75% of water requirement to achieve the MDG. But the sheer magnitude of this contribution depends on how system components, (e.g. livestock and tree), are integrated into the overall rain water management strategies of a system and how these integrations bring complementarities and synergies among competitive uses and users and result in productive uses of rain water. The fact that livestock are one of the major users of land and water urges to give emphasis to improve livestock water uses. In this regard, Peden et al., (2007) suggested three major strategies: i) improving livestock management ii) changing or improving feeding regime iii) conserving land and water. By taking this idea further, Haileslassie et al., (2009); Gebreselassie et al., (2009) and Desheemaeker et al., (2010) suggested that improving veterinary services, selective and cross breeding, increasing percent of productive herd and supply of quality drinking water can improve livestock water productivity. Generally this means also that savings in water and land area, as the result of intervention, can be allocated for ecosystem services or alternative livelihood activities.    Different livestock management interventions are specific to a system and farmers’ access to livelihood capital and thus need a closer look and understanding on how a system is currently operating and what it implies in terms of water use efficiencies, ecosystem services and livelihood capital of smallholder farmers. In view of this and ultimately integrating system components (e.g. livestock and tree) into the overall rainwater management strategies, the CGIAR Challenge Program Water and Food (CPWF) is financing a rain water management strategy project as part of the Nile Basin Development Challenge Program (NBDC). The overall objectives of this assignment are to investigate how livestock management across the system varies and how it affects rain water use efficiencies, ecosystem services and livelihood capital. **  Objectives   ** Specific objectives of this assignment are:  ** i) ** To explore current livestock management practices and production objectives: similarity and differences across landscape and farmscape: including livestock holding, herd structure and dynamics, productivity performance, extent and quality of veterinary and AI services and resulting health status of herd, watering distances and practices, processing and marketing of selected livestock products and services etc…  ** ii) ** Analyze and contextualize implications of current livestock management on rain water use efficiencies, ecosystem services and livelihood capital  ** iii) ** Identify landscape specific intervention options that could improve rainwater use efficiencies, livelihood and ecosystem services  **   Methodologies and tools   **   To achieve these objectives combinations of the following methodologies can be implemented   ** i) ** Critically reviewing of secondary information from previous works, particularly, on the implications of the current livestock management system on water use efficiencies and livelihood capitals  ** ii) ** Stratifying the study systems into landscapes and use those strata as sample frame and draw sufficient size of samples for a household survey  ** iii) ** Undertaking key informant interviews and field observations to triangulate information collected through structured questionnaire  ** iv) ** Clustering the sample farmers into livelihood typology (can be participatory wealth ranking, or can be GDP approaches) for the analysis   ** v) ** Selected case study farms and explore how different hypothetical livestock management interventions would impact livestock water productivity, environment and livelihoods **  References   **  Gebreselassie, S., Peden, D., Haileslassie, A. 2009. The Factors affecting livestock water productivity: animal scale analysis using previous cattle feeding trials in Ethiopia. Range land Journal 31: 251-258  Haileslassie, A., Peden, D., Gebreselassie, S., Amede, T., Descheemaeker, D. (2009a), Livestock water productivity in mixed crop–livestock farming systems of the Blue Nile Basin: Assessing variability and prospects for improvement. //Agricultural system//, Vol. 102 No. 1-3, pp. 33-40.  Haileslassie, A., Peden, D., Gebreselassie, S Amede, T., Wagnew, A., Taddesse, G. (2009b), Livestock water productivity in the Blue Nile Basin: Assessment of farm scale heterogeneity. //The Range Land Journal//, Vol. 31 No. 2, pp. 213-222  Peden, D., Tadesse, G., A.K., Misra. (2007). Water and livestock for human development. In water for food, water for life: a comprehensive assessment of water management in agriculture, D.. Molden ( ed). London, Earthscane. Pp 485-514.
 * Livestock management practices and production objectives and its implications on rain water use efficiencies in mixed crop-livestock systems in the highlands of Blue Nile Basin  **