I have blogged a number of times about our project in Bolivia “Small Animals, Big Changes” in which we are promoting improved animal husbandry practices as a means towards increasing the production of animal-source foods and the consumption of these foods (links to previous blogs: 23, Lambs, ASF, Cuye, Flow, Snow, Veg, Bolivia). We started in 2012 with funding from CIDA, now DFATD, for three and a half years. We have now carried out preliminary analyses of baseline data (2013) and midterm (2014) and endline data (2015)… and there has been measurable changes in the diet. In communities where poultry rearing was promoted there has been an increase in egg consumption from 5 g to 30 g per person per day. In communities where improved sheep husbandry was promoted there was an increase in meat consumption from 90 g to 220 g per person per day. We are very pleased to see these changes.

We continue to analyse the data to see what other changes there have been, both positive and negative. One striking change has been the almost complete disappreance of milk and milk products from the diet of the “sheep communities”, and this is an interesting lesson in unintended consequences. Materials and training were provide to participating households to improve the sheep corrals, including putting in a roof to protect ewes and lambs from rain, snow and cold. It was expected that this would improve lamb survival. And it did, with lamb mortality plummeting. Normal practice has been to let ewes with surviving lambs give all their milk to the lamb. It is only the ewes who lost their lambs who are milked for human consumption. So when the lambs survived, there was no milk for the humans. This was unintended, but not considered a bad outcome by the farmers. They would rather their lambs survived and forego the milk. Strictly from a nutrient intake perspective, the decrease of 50 g of milk per day was more than compensated by an increase of 130 g of meat.

Tempering our excitement about these positive changes has been our failure to secure additional funding. We want to spread this intervention to additional communities so more can benefit, and we want to continue working with the current participants to help sustain the positive changes. We have had six proposals rejected to date and there are no bright prospects for additional funding in our sights.

We are pleased that little guys like this one can look forward to a little richer diet than he may otherwise have had, and we will continue to seek funding to help spread the success.