Maintaining the availability of adequate feed for livestock is crucial to small holders who depend on their animals for their livelihood. Traditionally, efforts to improve the quality and availability of fodder have focused on technology, but the Fodder Innovation Project is revealing that streghtening interactions among the various actors involved brings even better results.
Goats are increasingly seen as a threat to the ecology as they feed on any type of plant species. But goat keeping continues to be an important livelihood activity for the resource poor people. BAIF has promoted a number of initiatives with twin goals of helping small farmers in rearing goats and also protecting the environment.
Livestock is a very important component for profitable farming as most of the agricultural by-products can be used to feed them converting them into manure immediately. Other economical gains are in the form of wool, milk, egg, meat and skin. In India, very good draught animals like bullocks and he
buffaloes can be freely obtained for cultivation.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) has released a document entitled Health, United States, 2009. Prepared for the US President and Congress from data gathered by state and federal agencies and continuing national surveys, the report provides an annual picture of the health status of the American nation.
What is it like being a climate scientist at the moment? Not much fun. It's a bit like your next-door neighbour being accused of a crime and everyone in the city you live in, including yourself, being told they are under suspicion as well. Accusations about lack of integrity, deceit and bias are flying thick and fast.
Every winter the Arctic ice cap is penned in by curved barriers of ice spanning the straits that lead out of the Arctic Ocean. Now it seems that some of these ice arches are failing to form. The resulting exodus of sea ice into the Atlantic and Pacific could affect ocean circulation and marine life.
Ever since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2007 report on the impacts of climate change was discovered to contain a major error - that the Himalayan glaciers will be largely gone by 2035 - there has been a media feeding frenzy to find other mistakes. But it misses the point to focus on individual errors sprinkled through the report's 1000 or so pages.
