How Crop–livestock clinics are advancing One Health

In low-income countries, farmer advisory services are in short supply, leaving smallholder farmers under-served. CABI’s work with plant clinics revealed potential ‘One Health’ benefits of broadening the scope of plant clinics to better meet farmers’ demands for advice. To explore this potential, ‘crop-livestock clinics’ were established in six districts in Uganda in 2021. These ‘joint clinics’ add value to the One Health offer in several ways: 1) crop and livestock staff share operational costs, knowledge and insights in a way that they are normally not able to do; 2) plant and livestock consultations in the same place save time for farmers and provide opportunities for cross-learning among farmers and clinic staff; 3) joint clinics are an entry point to improving referral systems and targeting delivery of technology such as animal vaccines and clean cassava cuttings; and 4) they provide a novel avenue for finding out what farmers know and don’t know about One Health issues – crucial information to design solutions.