Ugandan Emma Naluyima describes her thriving pig+crop farm at the Global Forum for Food and Agriculture

Emma Naluyima, a Ugandan veterinarian and one-acre pig and crop farmer, making a presentation at the Global Forum for Food and Agriculture (GFFA) (photo credit: ILRI/Susan MacMillan).

On 18 Jan 2018, one of ten expert panel discussions at the Global Forum for Food and Agriculture (GFFA) was held on Sustainable solutions to the livestock sector: The time is ripe! This two-hour session was organized jointly by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the German Corporation for International Cooperation (GIZ), the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), the Global Agenda for Sustainable Livestock (GASL) and the Livestock Global Alliance (LGA).

This session was moderated by ILRI Assistant Director General Shirley Tarawali. Following a welcome by ILRI Director General Jimmy Smith, Stefan Schmitz, head of BMZ’s division of rural development and food security and commissioner for BMZ’s special initiative on One World–No Hunger, gave an opening speech. Fritz Schneider, chair of the Global Agenda for Sustainable Livestock (GASL), then gave a short overview of livestock and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, followed by a presentation by Kenyan Robin Mbae on livestock and climate change and a presentation by nutrition scientist Lora Iannotti on livestock and animal-source foods.

Shirley Tarawali then introduced the final speaker of this GFFA expert panel session. Emma Naluyima is a smallholder farmer and private veterinarian in Uganda who has integrated crop growing and livestock raising to build a thriving, profitable and environmentally friendly farm enterprise for her and her family.

‘I’m a smallholder farmer. It’s important that smallholder farmers integrate livestock into their farming. It’s feasible, productive and profitable. It’s made a difference to my life and family.

‘I did my master’s degree paying the tuition for my studies from the pigs that I reared. I’ve been able to take my children to very good schools. And I have a stable income. I own a car—a German car—made possible by livestock. And I was able to set up a school to continue passing on information to young children.

‘The founder of the Buganda kingdom, called Kintu, where I come from, kept livestock. Of all things in the world, he kept a cow. That cow enabled him to do integrated farming.

‘Today in Uganda and elsewhere, people use livestock not only for food and income, but also as a bank account and as insurance. They can sell their cattle to take their children to school. They can sell their cattle to get medical attention. And in the eastern part of the country, if you don’t have cattle you cannot marry a girl. So cattle, and livestock in general, are very, very important. . . . Read the whole article on the ILRI News blog.