Mixed farming is defined as agricultural production systems with the integration of crops, agroforestry, fisheries, and livestock in a system approach. Crops and livestock are critical components of the mixed farming system.

After crop production, livestock is one of the most important income generation sources for the village people, and 84% of village households in Bangladesh are involved with livestock production (animals or poultry or both). In Bangladesh, the livestock sector contributes about 2% of the national GDP. Despite the huge number of people involved with livestock production, the country suffers from an acute shortage of livestock products such as milk, meat, and eggs. In Bangladesh, the present milk, meat, and eggs production can meet only 50%, 87%, and 63% of the national demand.

Mixed farming is defined as agricultural production systems with the integration of crops, agroforestry, fisheries, and livestock in a system approach. Crops and livestock are critical components of the mixed farming system.

The SI-MFS initiative in Bangladesh working on different innovations such as intensifying and diversifying cropping systems for better crop-livestock integration, intensifying and diversifying homestead gardens for improved nutrition, and sustainable intensification of livestock production within MFS. Under these initiatives, SI-MFS has done several scaling activities in 2023.

The objectives of the training were as follows:

Developed following the Women Empowerment in livestock Index (WELI) and aligned to the Pro-WEAI for value chains by researchers from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), the WELBI module is a new standardised tool that measures the empowerment of women involved in the livestock-related businesses. This guide offers step-by-step instructions on how to implement the WELBI survey.

Under Sustainable Animal Productivity, one of the CGIAR initiatives, use of improved forages is key towards increased ruminant productivity. Given the diverse ecologies, matching species/cultivars with suitable agroecological zone is better done through multilocational trials. In addition to increasing productivity, forages confer additional co-benefits including ecosystem services e.g. soil erosion control, sequestering carbon and providing business opportunities along the forages and livestock value chains.