This corporate report looks ‘back to the future’—to the thousand million farmers practicing small-scale mixed crop-and-livestock agriculture in poor countries—the kind of seemingly old-fashioned family farming systems that have become so fashionable in recent years among those wanting to reform the industrial food systems of rich countries.

This annual report takes as its theme the central challenge facing the institute and its partners at the start of the new millennium: making the livestock revolution work for the poor. It is a companion report to the institutes new strategic plan, which takes the revolution as its basis in determining how ILRI's programme should evolve in the first decade of the 21st century. The report begins and ends on a farm in central Ethiopia, whose mixed crop-livestock producers are just beginning to participate in the expanding dairy market of the country's capital, Addis Ababa.

This annual report and programme highlights presents highlights of ILCA's work in 1992 under the seven programme themes in the medium-term plan for 1994-1998. The highlight for the theme mixed crop-livestock systems focuses on ILCA's work on nutrient cycling in mixed crop-livestock systems in the Sahelian region. Market-oriented smallholder dairying carries a report of results from ILCA's work at the Kenya coast, and outlines a framework for research on smallholder dairying that was developed during 1992.

Presents and discusses ILCA's research on smallholder farming in the highlands, village sheep and goat production in the humid zone, cattle production in the subhumid zone, pastoral production in the arid zones of West Africa, range livestock production in eastern and southern Africa, and breed evaluation and herd modelling.

This report highlights ILCA's work in the past, and discusses current activities and future plans with particular reference to mixed crop-livestock systems, market-oriented smallholder dairying, conservation of biodiversity, biological efficiency of livestock, livestock production under trypanosomiasis risk, livestock and resource management policy, and strengthening national research capacities.

This publication provides sharper focus on reducing poverty where it is most absolute and most wide spread. This review outlines a new strategic goal, collaborative ways in which the institute is enhancing its responsiveness to the fast - changing global environment; and five new research themes, viz, Targeting opportunities, Enabling Innovations, Market opportunities, Biotechnology and people, and Livestock and the Environment. The review also identifies three broad pathways, viz security assets, improving productivity, and accessing markets.

This report presents some of the highlights of ILCA's research and training and information programme. The highlight described for the Cattle Milk and Meat Thrust focuses on helping national agricultural research systems (NARS) make better use of their livestock production data. The highlights of both the Small Ruminant Meat and Milk Thrust and the Animal Traction Thrust center on crop-livestock integration, integrating forage legumes into the farming systems of the Sahel and the subhumid zone of West Africa. The traction thrust focuses on ILCA's work in the Ethiopian highlands.