Ethiopia has experienced impressive agricultural growth and poverty reduction, stemming in part from substantial public investments in agriculture. Yet, the agriculture sector now faces increasing land and water constraints along with other challenges to growth. Ethiopia’s Agrifood System: Past Trends, Present Challenges, and Future Scenarios presents a forward-looking analysis of Ethiopia’s agrifood system in the context of a rapidly changing economy. Growth in the agriculture sector remains essential to continued poverty reduction in Ethiopia and will depend on sustained investment in the agrifood system, especially private sector investment. Many of the policies for a successful agricultural and rural development strategy for Ethiopia are relevant for other African countries, as well. Ethiopia’s Agrifood System should be a valuable resource for policymakers, development specialists, and others concerned with economic development in Africa south of the Sahara.

This book is a social—ecological system description and feedback analysis of the Lake Tana Basin, the headwater catchment of the Upper Blue Nile River. This basin is an important local, national, and international resource, and concern about its sustainable development is growing at many levels. Lake Tana Basin outflows of water, sediments, nutrients, and contaminants affect water that flows downstream in the Blue Nile across international boundaries into the Nile River; the lake and surrounding land have recently been proposed as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve; the basin has been designated as a key national economic growth corridor in the Ethiopian Growth and Transformation Plan. In spite of the Lake Tana Basin’s importance, there is no comprehensive, integrated, system-wide description of its characteristics and dynamics that can serve as a basis for its sustainable development. This book presents both the social and ecological characteristics of the region and an integrated, system-wide perspective of the feedback links that shape social and ecological change in the basin. Finally, it summarizes key research needs for sustainable development.

The book provides critical information and knowledge on the importance of livestock in the global effort to alleviate poverty and promote human health. It describes and evaluates case studies, examines theoretical frameworks, and discusses key global policy development issues, challenges and constraints related to smallholder livestock-production systems around the globe. The book is written for academic professionals, industry experts, government officials and other scholars interested in the facts and issues concerning the contribution of livestock to the social and economic progress of developing countries.

Focusing on mixed crop-livestock farming systems of sub-Saharan Africa, this review brings together the available knowledge in the various components of the livestock and water sectors. Through an analysis of livestock-water interactions, promising strategies and interventions to improve Livestock Water Productivity are proposed. In the biophysical domain, the numerous interventions relate to feed, water and animal management. These are interlinked with interventions in the socio-political-economic domain. The paper identifies critical research and development gaps in terms of methodologies for quantifying water productivity and integrating different scales, and also in terms of institutions and policies.