Lessons From Nepal: Partnerships to Scale Crop Residue-Based Feed for Food Security and Climate

August 5, 2026 — Livestock is central to income and food security for many rural households across South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. But in many places, the feed available for livestock remains scarce, seasonal and low in quality. That limits how much milk and meat animals can produce, affecting livelihoods and food security.  

Crop residues are a major feed resource and are widely available after harvest. But in their untreated form they are fibrous, poorly digestible and low in energy. When animals eat feed that is not very digestible, they produce less milk and meat than they otherwise could. They also belch methane during digestion, and poor-quality feed leads to higher methane emissions per unit of milk or meat produced. Better-quality feed can improve productivity while reducing methane emissions associated with producing food. The challenge is making these improved feeds available, affordable and reliable beyond project pilots.

Our previous project update, “Developing Business Models to Scale Crop Residue Use for High-Quality Cattle Feed in Ethiopia and Nepal,” explored what is needed to improve the use of crop residues such as rice straw, wheat straw and maize stover to support livestock productivity while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This update focuses on the partnerships needed to turn that vision into practice, drawing on a partners meeting in Nepal convened by WRI, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and Nepal’s Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development.  

Lessons Learned on Partnership-Led Adoption Pathways

In April 2026, WRI, ILRI and Nepal's Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development co-convened a three-day partners meeting and field visits in Kathmandu as part of the Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC) funded project, “Crop Residue Improvement to Improve Productivity and Reduce Emissions from Livestock in Ethiopia and Nepal.” The event brought together around 60 participants from Nepal, Ethiopia, India and Kenya, including feed enterprises, cooperatives, national research institutions, government agencies, universities and project partners.

Discussions focused on the practical steps needed to ensure improved feed actually reaches farmers, from reliable production and quality verification to sales channels, early-stage finance and policy support. The project’s theory of change is: Crop residue upgrading is most likely to scale through enterprise- or cooperative-led feed business models supported by breeding systems, enabling policies and credible evidence on productivity and emissions outcomes.

Crop residue improvement was the starting point, but participants placed it within the broader goal of transforming the livestock feed sector. This means shifting from poor- to high-quality feed, from manual to more mechanized systems and from relying on a narrow range of conventional feed resources to a more diversified and reliable local feed supply. Achieving that will require progress on multiple fronts, including improved forages, insect-based proteins, dual-purpose crop varieties, forest-based feed resources and supportive policy.

The meeting’s six working groups were designed around that broader goal and helped refine three questions that now guide the project’s theory of change.  

• How can the burden of processing crop residues shift from individual farmers to agribusinesses and agricultural cooperatives?
• How can the feed sector reduce its reliance on imports while making better use of locally available wastes and byproducts such as crop residues?
• How can delivery systems turn proven feed technologies into products and services that reach farmers?

Most partners identified the same constraints: inconsistent feed quality, weak quality regulation, dependence on imported feed ingredients, limited mechanization, high transport costs and weak business models for improved feed. Any feed technology introduced in Nepal must operate within these constraints, especially in a country with an estimated 17% feed deficit, where feed and nutrition account for more than 60% of livestock production costs. Similar challenges exist across South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Feed Technologies Need to Earn Farmers' Trust  

The technical sessions linked evidence on digestibility, productivity and methane reduction with the practical question: Will farmers accept and adopt improved feed? Nutritional improvements matter only if the final product is something farmers are willing to buy, store and feed to their animals regularly.

One important lesson came from Fertile Green Industries in India, a large-scale producer of crop residue-based Total Mixed Ration — a complete cattle feed that combines residues with other nutritious ingredients. Its experience, spanning more than a decade, showed that nutritional improvement alone does not guarantee adoption. Farmers also respond to the appearance, smell, and texture of the final feed. If a feed product does not look or feel acceptable, it may not reach the cattle feed trough, even when the nutritional case is strong.

For Nepal and Ethiopia, this means that farmers' perceptions and trust need to be treated as adoption factors from the start, alongside nutrition and cost. Farmers are more likely to trust improved feed when it is consistently high quality, easy to handle, and supplied by businesses or cooperatives they know.

This also underscores the importance of local inputs including microorganisms and additives needed to produce high-quality feed. For example, Ilami Agro and Tech, a Nepali startup, is studying bacteria found in traditional high-altitude fermented foods to improve the quality of silage (a fermented feed made from grain crops) under Nepal’s conditions. Similar locally produced bacteria could help improve crop residue-based feed while reducing dependence on imported additives.

Agri-businesses Can Shift the Labor Burden From Individual Farmers

Four private-sector project partners from Nepal and Ethiopia — Nutri Silage Research Farm, Maharanijhoda Small and Farmer Agriculture Cooperative, ASF Feed Processing PLC and Luna Export — presented distinct business models that could shift crop residue processing from individual farmers to businesses. After the meeting, the project team visited the two Nepal collaborators to see how these models are beginning to work in practice.

Nutri Silage Research Farm offers one model: an existing feed business expanding into crop-residue-based feed. Since 2020, the company has increased annual silage production from about 400 tons to nearly 1,800 tons, supplying dairy farmers from the Terai lowlands to hill districts. With project support, it has added “strawlage” (rice straw fermented in a similar way to corn) to its product line. The company has already produced about 30 tons from dry rice straw and plans to produce another 50 tons in 2026 from rice straw collected soon after harvest.

This model shifts labor away from individual farmers by turning straw into a product that feed businesses buy, collect and process. Instead of each household collecting, chopping, treating, fermenting and storing straw on its own, Nutri Silage aggregates straw from farmers and manages the processing steps using existing machinery and staff. The result is a more efficient production system and a reliable supply of high-quality feed to its customers.

For our project, Nutri Silage is a useful test case because it:

• Builds on existing machinery and customer networks.
• Adds strawlage to an existing feed business rather than starting from scratch.
• Tests whether treated straw can become part of the regular feed supply market.  

Maharanijhoda Small Farmer Agriculture Cooperative in Jhapa shows another model: a farmer-owned rural business. The 24-year-old cooperative has more than 2,200 women members and has expanded from savings and credit to include feed production, milk collection, seed distribution and providing labor services to farmers. With support from the CCAC project, it produced and marketed about 40 tons of strawlage in its first commercial year and aims to produce more in 2026.  The cooperative buys straw from farmers at a predetermined price and sells it back after processing it into higher-quality feed.  

The Maharanijhodha model shows how a farmer-owned cooperative can make improved feed accessible to smallholders through relationships and existing services. It also creates an incentive not to burn crop residues after harvest by giving straw economic value.  

For the project, Maharanijhoda is useful as a test case because it:

• Builds on trust among existing women smallholder members.
• Links feed supply with the milk market and other rural services.
• Provides a practical way to reach fragmented smallholder farms.

Research Partnerships Make Quality and Climate Benefits Measurable

ILRI and partners presented methods for measuring methane emissions from different feed resources, linking feed improvement directly to verifiable climate outcomes. Findings showed significant variation in methane emissions across feed types, indicating that feed selection can be as important for reducing emissions as it is for improving productivity. Participants also discussed newer feed-quality analysis tools, including portable field devices, as a practical way for enterprises and cooperatives to verify feed quality without expensive laboratory infrastructure.

The meeting identified three areas where research partnerships can have the greatest impact:

• Quality testing. Faster feed analysis can help businesses and cooperatives maintain consistent feed quality, which supports more consistent animal productivity.
• Animal response and methane measurement. Feeding trials and emissions measurements can show how improved feed performs in different production contexts, especially low-production systems where evidence remains limited. 
• Longer-term crop improvement. Breeding experts highlighted the role of breeding programs in selecting crop varieties that provide both high grain yield and highly digestible residues for livestock feed.

This evidence gives governments, funders and businesses a stronger basis for deciding which feed approaches are ready for investment, policy support and replication.

Policy Partners Make Feed Markets Investable

For improved feed to move beyond pilots, businesses need incentives that make investment worthwhile. They need a way to show that their feed is better than lower-quality alternatives, while farmers need confidence that what they buy is safe and worth the cost. Without that, even technically sound feed options can struggle to gain a foothold in the market.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development, Department of Livestock Services and National Animal Feed and Livestock Quality Management Laboratory (NAFLQML) participated in the discussions. Participants identified three areas where policy partners can help:

• Feed quality standards and testing. Stronger regulation and laboratory capacity can verify feed quality before products reach the market, giving farmers confidence in what they buy while allowing businesses that invest in better processing to compete fairly.
• Finance for early-stage feed businesses. Seed grants, soft loans and public-private partnerships can reduce the risk of investing in machinery, storage and processing capacity.
• National coordination. A national feed and fodder strategy would benefit from a dedicated agency or formal coordination mechanism to align feed quality standards, laboratory systems, enterprise support, research priorities and public investment.

Strengthening feed quality regulation is a clear near-term policy priority. In Nepal, that includes strengthening NAFLQML’s mandate and testing capacity. More broadly, improved feed markets need public systems that make quality visible and reduce the risks associated with early investment.

Hub-and-Spoke Models Could Improve Feed Delivery

One model that emerged from the working groups was a hub-and-spoke approach. Feed enterprises would serve as the hub, aggregating crop residues, processing them into improved feed and ensuring consistent quality. Farmers would supply crop residues to the enterprise, which would handle processing, quality testing and packaging before marketing feed products back to farmers at a predetermined price.  

This model can help overcome the logistical challenges of crop residue processing. Crop residues are seasonal, bulky and scattered across many small plots, often less than an acre. These constraints, combined with labor shortages, often lead farmers to burn residues in the field, contributing to poor air quality and forest fires. A hub-and-spoke system allows enterprises to aggregate enough material to justify investing in equipment, while giving farmers access to improved feed without requiring each household to manage feed preparation on its own.

The forest utilization working group identified another opportunity to strengthen this model. Nepal's forests produce significant quantities of potential feed materials, like leaf litter and other biomass, that are currently underutilized as feed resources. Food waste and processing byproducts could also be incorporated into these feed systems. Together, these resources could be integrated into enterprise feed baskets alongside crop residues and forages, diversifying raw material supply and reducing seasonal gaps.

The model still needs testing. Production costs, farmers' willingness to pay, transport distances, storage losses, product quality and viable enterprise scale all need to be assessed to rationalize investments. But this meeting helped partners identify a plausible delivery pathway and the evidence needed to develop a proof of concept.

Ethiopia Faces Similar Constraints in a Different Context

Ethiopia's enterprise partners, ASF Feed Processing and Luna Export, brought a different perspective to the discussion. ASF highlighted challenges including volatile supplies of raw material and expensive imported inputs. Luna Export, with 25 years of agribusiness experience and a focus on producing corn silage, is exploring how to integrate maize stover and teff straw into its existing feed-supply operations to support its network of more than 7,000 pastoralist households.

Despite differences in crops, livestock systems and market structures, many challenges were common: high transport costs, inconsistent raw material supply, limited mechanization and the need to build farmers' confidence in a new product. These similarities suggest that the barriers to crop residue-based feed adoption are not country-specific. They reflect broader weaknesses in livestock feed sectors where residues are available but not yet organized into reliable feed supply chains.

The CCAC project is collaborating with ASF and Luna to begin pilot production, using Nepal's cooperative and enterprise experience and India's commercial track record as reference points while adapting to Ethiopia's specific context.

Partnerships Can Help Scale Feed Solutions

One benefit of bringing partners from Nepal, Ethiopia, Kenya and India together was the opportunity to directly compare different scaling pathways, share knowledge and shorten the learning curve. Nepal’s challenges are common across South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa: Crop residues are available but often have low nutritional quality. Feed businesses often lack the scale to invest on their own. Quality standards are too weak for buyers to verify feed value. Policy support is too fragmented to enable coordinated sector development. These are structural gaps in livestock feed systems that shape adoption across countries.

The Kathmandu meeting positioned the project as a proof of concept for transforming the livestock feed sector at scale. The CCAC project is piloting improved crop residue-based feed production and generating data on feed quality, animal productivity, enterprise economics and methane emissions. This is the kind of quantifiable evidence policymakers and funders need to assess which feed business models are most investable — and which are most likely to improve food security and livelihoods while reducing emissions.