User:Tigoni21/sandbox

Donkeys need Rangeland Too!

It can be argued that Africa has a competitive advantage, compared to much of the rest of the world, in possessing an abundance of forage for ruminant production. I haven’t done the sums but would it be accurate to argue that the majority of the forage in Africa comes from rangeland, pasture and forage crops, such as napier, lucerne and other legumes? If this is the case should we not be concentrating more time and effort to seeking support for the management, inclusive of drought resilience measures, and  conversion of this massive and freely available resource into edible protein rather than to improving  on existing technologies to further enhance the digestibility of crop residues and bi-products?

The rangelands of Africa, and all its patches of pasture and forage, urgently require a continental master management plan. We need a “United Nations of the Range” to argue and win the case for equitable policies and to initiate management practices that protect and promote the productivity of the resource – for the benefit of both livestock producers and consumers alike. Such policies need to be inclusive of the promotion of “good practices” such as the integration of the feedstock productive capacity of the range with the stock finishing potential of the higher rainfall crop residue and bi-product rich areas - for sustainable and cost effective quality organic animal protein production. Such policies also need to provide for effective counter-arguments to the populist press that condemns all livestock production as a green house gas emitting disaster zone. A platform is needed to promote the reality of the low carbon, eco-friendly footprint of Africa’s extensive and semi intensive livestock systems.

It can be seen that in any argument concerning the utilisation of the range or pasture, the interests of the livestock sector invariably faire worst. Tragically there is a short term financial /political gain to be made by ploughing up the marginally productive areas, fencing off the essential dry season grazing and water reserves, cutting grazing/wildlife corridors and replacing grass with concrete. In the absence of the larger and more compelling longer term ecosystem argument, all that livestock producers are being left with are large waterless tracts of land that are unable to sustainably support either man or beast.

There are beacons of hope - practices of the Conservancies of Northern Kenya, the advocacy of the African Union's Pastoralist Initiative, the work of IGAD’s Livestock Policy Initiative, IIED, IDS  and IUCN’s World Initiative for Sustainable Pastoralism, to name but a few. But when you see the level of support for “Food Aid” as seemingly the only “solution” to drought the question has to be asked: “Why such limited thought / investment in concurrent and effective drought resilience measures - such as water catchment protection, sand river dams, traditional management of dry season forage reserves, and riverside/ deep well irrigated forage production systems?” Such initiatives could ensure the survival of valuable breeding and milking stock, as well as provide employment and food. Could such measures not bring a steadying hand on the one-way procession into the feeding camps and a reversion to the ongoing and tragic drain on the pastoralist way of life, the loss of which we all in Africa, and the world at large, risk being markedly the poorer for?