Development of smallholder dairying in Eastern Africa with particular reference to Kenya

Large increases in demand for milk and dairy products projected for the next 25 years represent exciting market opportunities for smallholders in eastern Africa. With the exception of Kenya, traditional cattle production systems based on indigenous breeds dominate milk production in the region, yet they contribute relatively little to marketed production, mainly because of poor access to major urban markets. Kenya, which has over 85% of the dairy cattle population, dominates dairy production and marketing in the region. Its per capita milk availability is four to seven times higher than the other countries in the region. The widespread adoption of dairy cattle in Kenya was stimulated by several interacting factors: the conducive policy and institutional environments provided by successive Governments; the presence of significant dairy populations (owned by settler farmers); a sub-tropical geography suitable for dairy cattle; and, smallholder communities who kept cattle and who had milk as an important part of their diet. Today most of Kenya’s 3 million dairy cattle are kept by smallholders in crop-livestock systems in areas of high and medium cropping potential. Generally 1-2 dairy cows (mostly Holstein Friesian or Ayrshire) comprise 50% of the herd, the other half consisting of female calves and heifers. In the high potential areas feeding is mainly cut-and-carry with planted Napier grass (Pennisetum purpureum) and crop residues, especially from maize and bananas, supplemented by forage gathered from common properties around the farm. On average total daily milk output is 10 kg per farm, of which a quarter is for home consumption and the rest sold. In the late 1980s, sales were mainly through local dairy co-operative societies, with some to neighbours. However, following market liberalisation in 1992, marketing channels have diversified. It is estimated that approximately 80% of marketed milk is not processed or packaged, but instead is bought by the consumer in raw form. The factors driving the continued importance of the informal market are traditional preferences for fresh raw milk, which is boiled before consumption, and unwillingness to pay the costs of processing and packaging. Raw milk markets offer both higher prices to producers and lower prices to consumers. In Kenya, therefore, as elsewhere in the tropics, market-oriented smallholder dairy farms are concentrated close to urban consumption centres because the effects of the market over-ride many production factors. Less proximate production occurs only in those regions where there is an efficient market infrastructure. As infrastructure develops, markets become more efficient and urban consumers develop stronger preferences for pasteurised milk, the advantages of proximity will be reduced and production may well move away from intensive peri-urban systems and shift to more extensive systems (as the New Zealand dairy industry illustrates on a global scale). Until these infra-structural improvements occur, and because of the ready availability of cheap human capital (labour) and the relative expense of financial capital, smallholder dairy production and informal raw milk marketing are likely to predominate for the foreseeable future. Consequently it is anticipated that the industrialised model of dairy production, processing and marketing will remain a minor contributor in Kenya and elsewhere in the region

Dairy development in Kenya: the past, the present and the future

Large increases in demand for milk and dairy products in developing countries are projected for the next 25 years. These represent exciting market opportunities for smallholders, such as those in Kenya, which has over 85% of the dairy cattle population in eastern Africa. Currently Kenya’s per capita availability of milk is four to seven times higher than the other countries in the region. The widespread adoption of dairy cattle by smallholders in Kenya was stimulated by several interacting factors: smallholder communities who kept cattle and who had milk as an important part of their diet; a sub-tropical geography suitable for dairy cattle; the presence of significant dairy populations (owned by settler farmers); and the conducive policy and institutional environments provided by successive Governments. Today most of Kenya’s 3 million dairy cattle are kept by smallholders in crop-livestock systems in areas of high and medium cropping potential. Generally 1-2 dairy cows (mostly Holstein Friesian or Ayrshire) comprise 50% of the herd, the other half consisting of female calves and heifers. In the high potential areas feeding is mainly cut-and-carry with planted Napier grass (Pennisetum purpureum) and crop residues, especially from maize and bananas, supplemented by forages gathered from common properties around the farm or purchased from neighbours. On average total daily milk output is 10 kg per farm, of which a quarter is for home consumption and the rest sold. In the late 1980s, milk sales were mainly through local dairy co-operative societies, with some to neighbours. However, following market liberalisation in 1992, marketing channels have diversified. It is estimated that approximately 85-90% of marketed milk is not processed or packaged, but instead is bought by the consumer in raw form. The factors driving the continued importance of the informal market are traditional preferences for fresh raw milk (which is boiled before consumption), and consumers’ unwillingness to pay the costs of processing and packaging. Raw milk markets offer both higher prices to producers and lower prices to consumers. These markets also provide valuable opportunities for rural and urban employment. In Kenya, therefore, as elsewhere in the tropics, market-oriented smallholder dairy farms are concentrated close to urban consumption centres because the effects of the market over-ride many production factors. Less proximate production occurs only in those regions where there is an efficient market infrastructure. As infrastructure develops, markets become more efficient and urban consumers develop stronger preferences for pasteurised milk, the advantages of proximity will be reduced and production may well move away from intensive peri-urban systems and shift to more extensive systems (as the New Zealand dairy industry illustrates on a global scale). Until these infra-structural improvements occur, and because of the ready availability of cheap human capital (labour) and the relative expense of financial capital, smallholder dairy production and informal raw milk marketing are likely to predominate for the foreseeable future. Consequently it is anticipated in the medium term (10-15 years) that the industrialised model of dairy production, processing and marketing will remain a minor contributor to the dairy sub-sector in Kenya and elsewhere in the region

The Case for Reform of Scientific Publishing

The publication and dissemination of the results of scientific inquiry are essential processes by which scientific knowledge and ideas are circulated and exchanged, scrutinized and tested. The efficient circulation of scientific output through a global network is vital to the production and use of knowledge. It has been, and will continue to be, the means by which distant minds interact to create new understanding and develop solutions to many of the problems confronting society. Humanity has benefitted greatly from the development of scientific publishing, which enabled the open science of recent centuries. A new era of open science, enabled by the digital revolution, now beckons. A globally effective publication system is indispensable to this new era. It is for these reasons that the International Science Council (ISC) has published its eight principles for scientific publishing shown in the companion piece to this paper, ‘Key Principles of Scientific Publishing’. The first and foremost principle stresses the central role of publishing as the enabler of the efficient and effective global network of ideas and information. The digital revolution of recent decades should have been a timely moment for step change in network functionality, providing the interactive communications system needed to satisfy the increasing demands placed on science. While some progress has been made (for example, the use of digital object identifiers for persistent reference linking across publishers), science publishing has so far failed to harness the full potential of digital functionality. Fully adopting the tools of this revolution could have vastly improved the efficiency and effectiveness of knowledge dissemination; created discriminatory navigation tools that gathered all new knowledge relevant to any researcher’s interests; ensured that data relevant to a published claims could be readily accessed and scrutinized; greatly improved the highly inefficient and ad hoc processes of peer review; more effectively opened the process of publication to innovation and greater bibliodiversity; maximized the extent to which the results of science are made available as a global public good; and made publication systems more accountable to the scientific community. Instead, we have a system where the dominant commercial players allow the interests of investors to take precedence over the needs of science. Excessive prices and profits fracture the international science community based on the ability to pay. Moreover, too much scientific output is unreproducible or shown to be fraudulent, damaging trust in the scientific enterprise. A major cause of these and other problems has been the way that scientists and their institutions use bibliometric indices to evaluate scientific careers. This has incentivized a ‘publish or perish’ culture, enabled large profits to be made, spawned a vast predatory publishing industry which adds little of value to the record of science1 , and deflected scientists from other scientific roles that will be vital to a new era of open science. The urgent need for reform has been recognized by many stakeholders in the scientific process, including governments. Such reforms must include the abandonment of bibliometric indices as sole indicators of excellence and the creation of a comprehensive index of the record of science. We should work towards a new cultural norm in which publishing, as an integral part of the scientific process, is accountable to the scientific community and to those that fund its work. The ISC will work with other stakeholders to achieve this, ensuring that scientific output is treated as a global public good, that scientific papers are freely accessible to all through a variety of open-access models, that a full index of the scientific record is created, that the peer review process is reformed, and that all of the ISC’s eight principles are observed. Digital advances will continue to change the publication and dissemination of scientific knowledge. If the ISC does not take an active role in leading and structuring this transformation, we risk having a system imposed on us which does not prioritize the interests of science, the very issue that caused this crisis in the first place