India dairy value chain planning meeting, May 2012

Livestock and Fish India Dairy Value Chain Team Meeting

Heritage Village Hotel, Manesar (near New Delhi)

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Objectives:

• Develop a common understanding of the CRP objectives for the value chain and the proposed approach
• Review and refine the implementation plan, including individual roles and responsibilities, project sites and agree on the timetable for 2012
• Identify resource mobilization priorities and agree on responsibilities

Participants:

Name	Center	Coming from
Purvi Mehta	ILRI	Delhi
Nils Teufil	ILRI	Delhi
Rameswar Deka	ILRI	Delhi
Michael Blummel	ILRI	Hyderabad
Ramana Reddy	ILRI	Hyderabad
Arindam Samaddar	ILRI	Delhi
Paolo Pier Ficarelli	ILRI	Delhi
Lucy Lapar	ILRI	Hanoi
Delia Grace	ILRI	Nairobi
Amos Omore	ILRI	Nairobi
Alan Duncan	ILRI	Addis Ababa
Isabelle Baltenweck	ILRI	Nairobi
Tom Randolph	ILRI	Nairobi
Phil Toye	ILRI	Nairobi
Mwai Okeyo	ILRI	Nairobi
Ben Lukuyu	ILRI	Nairobi
Ayele Gelan	ILRI	Nairobi
James Rao	ILRI	Nairobi
Kess Swaans	ILRI	Nairobi
Kara Brown	ILRI	Delhi
Meeta Punjabi Mehta	Creative Agri Solutions, Pvt. Ltd.	Delhi

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Day One: Tuesday 2 April 2012

Introduction by Tom Randolph, ILRI

The two-day meeting started with Tom welcoming the participants and outlining the objectives of the meeting, before providing a brief overview of CRP3.7.

View the presentation

Introduction by Purvi Mehta

• This is a very important meeting – it marks the start of the 3.7 journey in India.
• Many in this room have extensive experience in Indian dairy sector. We’re aware of the paradoxes that exist here (e.g. India is anyway the world’s largest producer of milk, yet lowest in productivity) Through this planning process, we must keep those various paradoxes in mind.
• Keeping both the value chain approach and small-scale farmers in mind too.
• 50 million people affected by large-scale program EADD -- What can we learn from not only this, but also the other millions of people whose lives were not touched by this program?

Overview of the dairy sector in India by Meeta Punjabi Mehta, Creative Agri Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

View the presentation

• Taking Livestock and Fish (LAF) CRP approach – you can upgrade the whole chain, and this is the way forward.

Team strategy and work plan development, facilitated by Peter Ballantyne, ILRI

Group exercise on the value chain team's role, vision for development of the value chain and expected outcomes

• Team excited about Livestock and Fish India Dairy Value Chain
• Continuing to work on feed issues, continuing to work with institutions, strengthening links (Nils)

Small groups: What capacities, expertise, added value does ILRI bring to this Indian project?

• Other country experiences (South-South)
• Mobile technologies
• Informal sector
• Support of small businesses along the value chain
• Smallholder traditional dairy markets
• Addressing 'threats' to informal VC
• Systematic approach to VC
• Inter-disciplinarity
• Tools and approaches for viability of technology
• Bringing in different actors to a problem (non-traditional method)
• Bringing together VC actors
• Scaling out learning across India and beyond
• Feeds and feed/forage science
• Feed processing
• Animal genetics for productivity
• The whole vision
• Pragmatic and evidence-based approaches to food safety & hygiene

What is missing from this list? What inputs do we need from our partners?

• Development implementation (linkages)
• Best practices / lessons from experiences
• Everything
• Plug into organizational innovation in India
• But, prioritization

The planning process, by Tom Randolph, ILRI

• Let's remain pragmatic, but outline what we would like to do.
• Engagement / assessment
• Piloting / validating

Major Site Selection Criteria

1. Dairy development context
2. Donor interest
3. Political will
4. Poverty

View the proposed India site selection plan

Work plan and identifying priorities for resource mobilization by Nils Teufel & Tom Randolph

Situational Analysis

The situational analysis will build upon existing work completed in India, whilst also drawing upon new research which will be completed with the assistance of partners and consultants in areas where ILRI have expertise gaps.

View the Situational Analysis basic outline

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Day Two: Wednesday 3 April 2012

SESSION 1

Work plan cont.

View the India work plan here.

• Toolkit needs further development.

Communications - to what extent does everyone want/need to be involved in correspondance?

1. "It is important that my supervisor is copied on all email exchanges I have about LAF CRP activities/issues." To what extent do you agree/disagree?

strongly agree |-----------(8)--------(3)---(1)------------------------------------(7)-----------| strongly disagree

2. I would like to receive news/updates about the LAF CRP every:

1 week (2) 2 weeks (9) 3 weeks (3) 1 month (5)

3. "It is important for me to keep the ILRI Regional Rep. (Purvi) informed about my plans/activities."

'agree |-(8)---------(4)---(2)------(2)--------------(2)--'-----| disagree

4. Working as an integrated value chain team will not be very efficient (added planning time, communication time, etc.)

'disagree |-----(4)--(3)---(1)------(5)------------(5)--'-----| agree

CLOSING REMARKS

Reminder RE:communications by Peter Ballantyne

• Sign up for the email alerts for the Livestock, Fish & Feed blog - so that you are notified when a new story is added
• Blog is public, this wiki is more internal
• Use wiki, use yammer, read the blog for the latest news and updates

Reflections by Steve Staal

• We are still struggling with a whole range of scattered ideas. Hopefully we will continue to try and harmonize our views on value-chain assessment
• Re-emphasized that we should continue to attempt to integrate research into biophysical sciences and other technologies. And that we shouldn't get caught up with being solely focused on value-chain improvement.
• We shouldn't become obsessed with being development practitioners
• Next time we meet, we should have a more clearer, and simplified understanding of the LaF and where it is going