Livestock Feed Baskets Solutions Group

Photo: Georgina Smith (CIAT)

Themes

Contributors

Addressing data challenges in livestock feed baskets to improve GHG emissions estimations and support productivity gains through enhanced ruminant nutrition in low- and middle-income countries.

Why livestock feed basket data?

Understanding what animals eat—both in terms of quantity and nutritional quality—is fundamental to calculating accurate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from livestock. In low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), a lack of reliable feed basket data creates significant barriers to effectively estimating emissions, limiting opportunities for the livestock sector to access climate finance and implement effective mitigation strategies while improving food security.

Feed basket data describes both what animals are eating (quantity in kg DM/day) and the nutritional characteristics of feed (energy digestibility, nitrogen content). This information is crucial for various stakeholders, from livestock producers making feeding decisions to national governments developing livestock sector policies. However, the current data landscape faces critical challenges around integration, access, and consistency that prevent effective use of available information.

Building on Previous Work

This Solutions Group builds on scoping work undertaken in 2024 with LD4D members and Cornell University's Food Systems and Global Change programme. Through a landscaping analysis and consultation process conducted in May 2024, key stakeholders were mapped as the first step towards understanding data needs and gaps.

The Solutions Group

To address these data challenges, Livestock Data for Decisions (LD4D) has convened a multi-disciplinary Solutions Group in partnership with the World Bank and Cornell University. The goal is to develop comprehensive feed basket data collection guidelines that will improve GHG emission estimations and support better decision-making across the livestock sector.

The group will:

Engage with and understand existing global datasets (e.g., GLEAM and GLOBIOM/IMPACT) to identify data gaps and opportunities for improved integration
Co-develop standardized feed basket data collection guidelines that promote wider use of existing survey tools
Create frameworks to support varying levels of feed basket data quality for GHG calculations

The Data Collection Guidelines

The Guidelines will provide practical guidance for researchers, development practitioners, and policymakers, focusing on:

Promoting consistency in feed basket data collection to enable better data integration across farms, projects, and geographies
Improving interoperability between survey tools and global datasets
Supporting those making GHG calculations when faced with varying levels of feed basket data quality
Identifying opportunities to incorporate feed basket data collection into existing data gathering efforts
Connecting novel data solutions to traditional livestock data collection approaches

Solutions Group Members

LD4D Secretariat - Convening and coordination
World Bank - User of feed-basket data for GHG modeling and producer of primary data through field projects
Cornell University - Data holders and model curators with extensive feed basket datasets
SEBI-Livestock (University of Edinburgh) - Supporting evidence-based interventions in livestock systems

Additional members will bring diverse expertise from across the feed basket data landscape to create solutions for shared challenges. Stay tuned for more details

What are LD4D Solutions Groups?

Solutions Groups are a collaboration platform bringing together decision makers and experts from the LD4D network. Solutions Groups work on a specific data challenge and together produce a tailored data tool or knowledge product that can support decision making. These groups are designed to deliver measurable outputs within 6-12 months.

We have created Solutions Groups to address the gaps between data producers and decision makers. Available livestock data does not always address decision making needs. Our motivation is to promote ongoing dialogue and collaboration between LD4D members and decision makers. We want to harness the wide range of expertise we have in the network to try to bridge the gap between data and decisions.

The first LD4D Solutions Group was launched in 2024, focused on Livestock and Climate Finance. In developing this new model for collaboration focused on decision maker needs, we will measure its impacts and generate learning to inform similar work in other contexts and scale up.