Livestock production is central to the livelihoods of smallholder farmers in low- and middle-income countries, but livestock are often poorly fed which limits their potential for reducing poverty. Efforts to improve livestock nutrition are often driven by supply-push thinking and fail to engage meaningfully with farmers and the realities they face. The Feed Assessment Tool (FEAST) was developed as a way of involving farmers more closely in decision making on livestock feed improvement. FEAST is a participatory tool which uses focus group discussions and individual farmer interviews to develop a broad overview of the livestock farming system. FEAST has been applied in many countries in the last 10 years. Examples of intensive use come from the Accelerated Value Chain Development Project in Kenya and the Rwanda Dairy Development Project in Rwanda. In both cases the tool was used to inform feed options with strong input from farmers. Although the primary purpose of FEAST is to support improved feed strategies at farm level, the data collected through the FEAST app and published in FEAST reports are a rich information resource that can be useful for developing broader system-level understanding of livestock feed issues. FEAST data can be uploaded into a global data repository where they are available for researchers. These data are also used to generate visualizations of key feed metrics further extending the use of secondary data. FEAST is an example of a participatory tool that moves decision making in the direction of farmers, while providing insights to researchers working across farming systems. Its widespread use across many countries is an indication that it fills a gap in in the livestock feed development space. Its novelty lies in bridging the knowledge gap (both ways) between livestock researchers and small-scale livestock keepers.

畜牧业生产是低收入和中等收入国家小农生计的核心，但牲畜往往饲养不当，这限制了它们减贫的潜力。改善牲畜营养的努力往往受到供应推动思维的驱动，未能与农民和他们面临的现实进行有意义的接触。饲料评估工具 (FEAST) 的开发是为了让农民更密切地参与牲畜饲料改进决策。FEAST 是一种参与式工具，它使用焦点小组讨论和个别农民访谈来开发对畜牧业系统的广泛概述。FEAST 在过去 10 年已在许多国家得到应用。密集使用的例子来自肯尼亚的加速价值链开发项目和卢旺达的卢旺达乳制品开发项目。在这两种情况下，该工具都被用于在农民的大力投入下为饲料选择提供信息。虽然 FEAST 的主要目的是支持改进农场层面的饲料策略，但通过 FEAST 应用程序收集并在 FEAST 报告中发布的数据是丰富的信息资源，可用于在更广泛的系统层面上了解牲畜饲料问题。FEAST 数据可以上传到全球数据存储库，供研究人员使用。这些数据还用于生成关键提要指标的可视化，进一步扩展二级数据的使用。FEAST 是参与式工具的一个例子，它使决策朝着农民的方向发展，同时为跨农业系统工作的研究人员提供见解。它在许多国家的广泛使用表明它填补了牲畜饲料发展空间的空白。它的新颖之处在于弥合了家畜研究人员和小规模家畜饲养者之间的知识鸿沟（双向）。