Key messages and solutions

• Growing food crop varieties which combine

both superior grain and straw traits could
address the needs of humans for food and
livestock for feed.
• Planting legume cultivars with superior feed
traits has immense implication for the
overall productivity of mixed crop-livestock
systems.
• Anecdotal evidence suggests that cultivars
superior in grain yield and straw yield and
straw fodder quality create higher farmer
demand and have higher adoption rates than Benefits
cultivars improved solely for grain yield. • Meeting the food and feed requirements
of farmers is likely to enhance the
Problem statement adoption of these varieties.
• Optimizing the use of food crop residues
• Crop residues are the single most important for feed purposes does not need
fodder resource in mixed farming systems. additional water and land, because the
• The fodder quality of crop residues is crops are already grown for food.
generally low and efforts are continuously
being made to upgrade their feeding value
through physical, chemical, and biological
treatments. However, these approaches
have seen little adoption by farming
communities, perhaps due to high cost and
labour requirements.
• In mixed crop-livestock systems, lower
livestock feeding values of crop residues
from improved food crop varieties has often
resulted in low adoption of new varieties
• Finding crops with high food and feed values
could meet multiple goals of farmers.

SmaRT Ethiopia intervention factsheet 12, May 2017

Evidence Suitability
• Research shows significant genotypic and • The intervention is suitable for mixed crop-
location variations for grain yield and straw livestock systems in mid to high altitudes
traits in lentil, chickpea, faba bean and field where free grazing is a Natural Resource
pea. Genotype x location interactions had Management challenge and where backyard
significant effects (P<005). This implies that fodder development interventions can be
genotypes can be selected combining superior suitable entry points to tackle the problem of
grain yield and straw traits. land degradation and animal feed shortage
• Correlations between grain and straw yields • The intervention contributes especially to
were positive, moderate and significant in employment and livelihoods (better quality
lentil (r=0.52, P<0.001) and faba bean (r=0.66, fodder for feed and sale) and natural
p<0.001) and significantly and weak in resource base (use of well adapted dual
chickpea (r=0.37, p<0.001). Strong and purpose crops).
negative correlations were found between
crude protein and grain yield in lentil (r=-0.73,
Resource requirements (low to high)
P<0.001) and faba bean (-0.12, P=0.042) and
Land
weak and significant in chickpea (r=0.06,
Water
P<0.05). Correlations between grain yield and
metabolizable energy content (ME) were weak Labour
in lentil (r=-0.03; P= 0.491), chickpea (r=0.061, Cash
P=0.021) and faba bean (r=0.164, P=0.050). Access to inputs
This implies that improving nutritive value and Knowledge and skills
biomass of straw can be improved without any
detriment to grain yield. Impact areas (low to high)
• Live animal trials of Arsi-Bale rams fed on crop Food security
residues of 4 varieties of faba bean (Mosisa,
Human nutrition/ food safety
Walki, Degaga, Shallo and a local variety)
Employment and livelihoods
showed significant (P<0.05) varietal
differences on dry matter intake and fattening Natural resources base
performance. Rams fed on Walki straw Gender empowerment
showed the best average daily gain compared Market linkages
to other varieties and Shallo showed the
lowest fattening performance.

Value chain focus

Input & services Production Processing Marketing Consumption

Contacts
Jane Wamatu, ICARDA, j.wamatu@cgiar.org; Ashraf Alkhtib, ICARDA, a.s.alkhtib@gmail.com; Barbara Rischkowsky, ICARDA,
b.rischkowsky@cgiar.org

Acknowledgements
This is a product of the CGIAR research programs on Livestock and Fish (2012-2016) and LIVESTOCK (2017-2022) as well as the
International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)-funded SmaRT Ethiopia Project - Improving the Performance of Pro-Poor Sheep
and Goat Value Chains for Enhanced Livelihoods, Food and Nutrition Security in Ethiopia. The project is led by ICARDA in collaboration
with ILRI, national and other international partners. The Project thanks all donors and organizations who globally support its work
through their contributions to the CGIAR system. Organizations contributing to this work are: ICARDA, Hawassa University, Jimma
University, DebreZeit ARC.
This product is licensed for use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence. May 2017