In January and February 2024, Jameel Observatory for Food Security Early Action PhD student John Mutua travelled to Meru County in Kenya as part of his research on quantifying livestock diets and their impact on GHG emissions in Kenya. His work has been mainly done in Edinburgh using computer models, but earlier this year he set out to ‘field-truth’ the analysis, gaining first-hand insights from producers and collecting data on spatial and temporal variability in livestock diet composition across farms in Kenya.
Here, he reflects on his visit. "These meaningful dialogues not only enriched my understanding but also yielded valuable qualitative data that complements the quantitative findings, enriching my understanding of the local social and economic factors that shape livestock production in Meru County," writes John.
مقتطفات
Livestock diets and their nutritional quality play a crucial role in determining both livestock productivity and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in livestock systems. However, since current estimates of livestock diet composition primarily rely on expert knowledge, we face many uncertainties and challenges to empirically estimate diet composition due to data gaps and assumptions of constant annual distributions of diet composition.
We need better data on livestock diets to:
- Enable modelling of improved estimates of current emissions to inform strategies for greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction.
- Enhance the prediction of livestock feed requirements to facilitate the design of strategies for improved livestock feeding.
- Help guide interventions to support communities facing risks to their livestock from droughts and other shocks.
For the last two years, I have been studying how changes in livestock diet composition and quality influence GHG emissions. Results so far indicate that livestock diets in Kenya vary from location to location and during different seasons, and this variability impacts both productivity and GHG emissions from livestock.
This work has been mainly done in Edinburgh using computer models. Early this year, I set out to ‘field-truth’ the analysis, gaining first-hand insights from producers, and collecting data on spatial and temporal variability in livestock diet composition across farms in Kenya. This data collection process involved capturing information on land access and use, livestock holdings, crop cultivation and feeding practices. The data will be used to validate livestock diet composition maps generated using earth observation (EO) data.