Working document No. 17
by Michael Mortimore*
July 1991
* Current Address: Cutters' Cottage Glovers' Close, MILBORNE PORT, SHERBORNE DT9 5E, ENGLAND
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This working document has not been prepared in accordance with the formal publication procedures of ILCA. Data, interpretations and conclusions are those of the authors and subject to revision. |
LED
In 1982 the International Livestock Centre for Africa (ILCA) established a Livestock Policy Unit (LPU). Later it was given additional functions and changed its title to Livestock Economic Division (LED).
The objectives of the LED are:
1. To heighten the awareness in African governments and in other organisations of the importance of livestock policy issues.2. To collate in an easily assimilable form what is already known about policy issues and to present it to policy makers.
3. To carry out research of its own (including that commissioned from consultants) on priority livestock policy issues and to present the results to policy makers.
4. To encourage others to carry out similar research and to assist in presenting their results to policy makers.
LED Working Documents
Staff members and consultants of the LED write working papers at several stages during their research on a topic. Publication of the final results of the research may not occur until several years after the research started. The LED, therefor, makes its working documents available to anyone requesting them in order to provide access to data and ideas on African livestock policy issues as early as possible to those with a need for them.
This is a LED working document. It has not been prepared in accordance with procedures appropriate to formal printed texts, and ILCA accepts no responsibility for errors. Both data and ideas are subject to revision. The views and interpretations in this document are those of the author and should not be attributed to ILCA. ILCA however retains copyright and reserves all other rights.
A list of all LED working documents is given at the end of this document, together with the address from which they may be ordered. Numbers 1-10 appear, under the ILCA/LPU working paper series, which has now been renamed as the LED working documents series.
Livestock Economics Division (LED)
International Livestock Center for Africa
P O Box 5689, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
This electronic document has been scanned using optical character recognition (OCR) software and careful manual recorrection. Even if the quality of digitalisation is high, the FAO declines all responsibility for any discrepancies that may exist between the present document and its original printed version.
1. The problem
2. Objectives of the study
3. The semi-arid zoneDefinition and scope
The value of the livestock component
Livestock and intensification
Household viabilityIntensification vs degradation
Land - Physical
Land - Institutional
Chapter 2. Typologies of mixed farming systems
1. Levels of analysis
2. The need for a typology
3. Functional farming systems
4. Economic specialisation, or livestock dependency
5. Patterns of movement
6. Livestock ratios
7. Animal traction
8. Crop-livestock integration
9. Farming intensity
Chapter 3. Regionalisation of the semi-arid zone
1. First order subdivision: Geographical regions
2. Second order subdivision: LGP sub-zones
3. Third or subdivision: Agroglimatic sub-regionsMoisture regimes
Unimodal and bimodal regimes
Monthly patterns of peak rainfall
Functional definition of the SAZ
The sub-regions4. Fourth order subdivision: Environmental units
Chapter 4. Review of mixed farming systems
1. Review of the literature
2. Limitations of the literature
3. Scope and method
4. Output
Chapter 5. Conclusion: Mixed farming systems and environmental management
1. Environmental degradation, livestock and environmental management
Functional vs ecological degradation
Diagnostic vs longitudinal evidence
Stocking rates and degradation
Density, integration and sustainability2. Results of the present study
Summary of chapters 2-4
Linking the systems typology to environmental management
Suggestions for further work
Appendix 1. Case studies - Mixed farming systems
Appendix 2. Environmental units
Appendix 4. Ethiopia: Estimate of livestock in the SAZ
Appendix 5. Livestock on irrigation schemes