Workshop on livestock systems in urbanizing environments at Ultuna

A workshop with four sessions on urban livestock

Carl-Johan Lagerkvist, Head of the Department of Economics at SLU opened the workshop by welcoming the participants and giving an overview of the program. Sofia Boqvist, Programme Director of AgriFoSe2030 gave an overview of the AgriFoSe2030 Program. The first research talk was given by Pablo Alarcon-Lopez from the Royal Veterinary College in London, United Kingdom. He talked about the importance of food system approach to tackle urban livestock and gave examples from Nairobi. After that the workshop was divided into two sessions 1.) Livestock production and urban food and nutrition security and 2.)

Constraints and opportunities for urban livestock production among smallholder farmers and households. The first day of the conference was concluded with dinner at the restaurant Domtrappkällaren in central Uppsala.

The second workshop day container the sessions “Livestock production in urban and peri-urban environments in developing countries” and “Policy and governance prospects for sustainable urban and peri-urban livestock production”. The workshop ended with a plenary session that was lead by Carl-Johan Lagerkvist.

– The literature has customarily concentrated extensively on livestock production and consumption and has widely ignored other elements and actors along the livestock value chain. However, the livestock value chain in low-income countries is rather complex and characterized by long marketing chains featuring large distances, many levels of traders and transactions, multiple steps and stages of processing, and a variety of employment-creating services and inputs. Particularly due to urbanization processes, traditional livestock supply chains are lengthening and becoming more complex. Thus, there is a need for research to address the “missing middle” in livestock value chains by considering the full continuum of the chain from production to consumption, including interlinkages, distributional benefits, and institutional arrangements across different production and marketing channels, says Assem Abouhatab, the organizer of this workshop.

Bringing researchers and stakeholders together

The workshop brought together researchers and stakeholders from diverse disciplines and sectors that are working in areas related to livestock, urban planning, agricultural systems and food security in developing countries. During the workshop research priorities for building more sustainable livestock production systems were defined and discussed.

– Future research aiming to understand livestock systems in the context of rapid urbanization in low-income countries should put more emphasis on addressing the full continuum of the livestock value chain and the four dimensions that drive food security in developing countries and how they possibly interrelate, says Assem Abouhatab.

– This workshop provided a platform for participants to exchange ideas, present current research and discuss challenges. I really hope that this will be a start of a research community with new research collaborations within urbanizing livestock systems, concludes Sofia Boqvist.