Agriculture, Livestock and the Eenvironment:
A course on "Livestock - Environment Interactions"

The International Agricultural Centre (www.iac-agro.nl) conducts an International Course on Livestock - Environment Interactions. The course is designed for professionals from government departments, non-government organisations, donor agencies, private sector enterprises, and education and training organisations. Typically, participants will be engaged in policy formulation, programme design and programme implementation in the livestock or environmental sector. | The challenge The course and the topics Contacts

The challenge
Livestock is an essential part of agricultural development in many countries. It also shares the challenges of agriculture in general, e.g., livestock production has to provide food, income and labour opportunity for growing human populations, often in urban situations with rapidly changing consumer preferences. At the same time livestock production is sometimes blamed for causing damage to the environment, or for taking chances with new technologies.

The course and the topics
The international course on livestock environment interactions originates from a series of meetings and studies under the aegis of LEAD, (Livestock, Environment and Development Initiative). Several donors support the LEAD and the co-ordination lies with the World Bank and the FAO. The course focuses on emerging issues in changing livestock farming systems around the world.
Major topics are policy setting and priorities in research and education regarding livestock in rural development, food security, urban agriculture, (bio)-diversity, international markets, etc. The course uses participatory methods and recent insights from system theory to discuss new approaches in policy analysis (green accounting, criteria for system performance) in
legislation (rules and regulations) and in traditional animal production disciplines (breeding, feeding, health, etc). Above all, the course combines expertise from a major hub in agricultural development, i.e., from the International Agricultural Centre (IAC), and from the Wageningen University Research Centre (chairs of Development Economics and Animal Production
Systems). It thus provides participants with up to date concepts, with opportunities to exchange experiences, possibilities for networking and with an opportunity to see practical cases. Needless to say that the course has an interactive approach and that it includes case studies and field-visits.

Contact
The course is designed for mid-career professionals from business, consulting firms, advisory services, government and non-government organisations, from nature conservation groups, donor agencies, and education and research in agriculture. The course is held at the IAC in Wageningen.

Additional information about the course dates, fees, program, experiences of earlier participants, or other courses on the
future of agricultural development is available from training@iac.agro.nl, or a.j.nell@iac.agro.nl or www.iac-agro.nl/training, or by contacting:

Arend Jan Nell; Animal Production Section
International Agricultural Centre
P.O.Box 88; 6700 AB Wageningen; The Netherlands
phone +31-317-495495; fax +31-317-495395

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