The inception workshop of stakeholders in the new project "Increasing Livestock Productivity in Mixed Crop-Livestock Systems in South Asia" was held at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Patancheru, Andhra Pradesh, India f rom the 15-17 November, 1999. The workshop brought together natural and social scientists. Three international agricultural research centers (International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, the International Livestock Research Institute, and the Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maiz y Trigo) of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) were represented. The national agricultural research systems (NARS) of four countries in South Asia; Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka and one advanced institution - the Natural Resources Institute (NRI ) , University of Greenwich, UK - also participated in the workshop. The purpose of this project is to develop a crop-livestock typology that wi l l ultimately improve the effectiveness of technical and socio-economic interventions aimed at improving animal performance and protecting the natural resource base at farm level in South Asia. The workshop provided an overview of the project proposal, the allocation of resources for specific activities, the definition of specific milestones, a description of crop-livestock systems in the regions and the status of data available on livestock production in the four countries. The CGIAR Systemwide Livestock Program (SLP), co-ordinated by the International Livestock Research Institute ( ILRI ) , financially supported the workshop. This initiative was established in 1995 to promote the formation of ecoregional research consortia between the crop and livestock centers of the CGIAR, the NARS and advanced institutions in developed countries to address common problems. The SLP is a component of the global research program of the ILRI .
