Improving forage and feeding management options for smallholders : recent lessons from Eastern Indonesia

Introduction Improving forage and feeding management options for smallholders: recent lessons from Eastern Indonesia J . Corfietd ", S . Bahar2, S . Lisson3 , R. Rachman2 'CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, Townsville, Queensland, Australia 2BPTP Sulsel, Makassar, Indonesia . 3CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia *Corresponding author Jeff. Corfield@csiro. au The lack of a reliable, high-quality forage supply, especially during the dry season, is a major constraint to improving Bali cattle performance, throughout much of the mixed crop-livestock farming systems of eastern Indonesia . Limited access to knowledge about cattle nutritional requirements and the potential use and proper management of existing and introduced forages are important factors contributing to this situation . Attempts to improve smallholder forage resources using introduced species have often failed due to insufficient consideration of broader farming system implications and/or inadequate practical instruction in their management and use . A recent AGAR funded project in eastern Indonesia employed a participatory-adaptive farming systems R, D & E approach to identify existing constraints and opportunities ; test and evaluate "bestbet" forage and cattle feeding and management options on-farm and examine key drivers of technology adoption with 40 farmers in 7 villages across 2 provinces . This paper describes the approaches used to address identified feed constraints and the outcomes achieved in terms of forage supply and use and animal performance . The paper gives particular focus to results from South Sulawesi, using specific case study examples . The impact on farmer adoption is examined, as are the lessons learned for current and future scaling out of such forage technologies within small-holder croplivestock farming communities throughout eastern Indonesia and beyond .