Technical interventions
Institutional interventions
10. Water development has been probably the most effective single intervention, though not leading to the hoped for commercialization of the system. It can consist of seasonal ponds ('hafirs'), shallow wells (if technically feasible), or deep wells ('boreholes'). Problems have been the rapid buildup of livestock numbers around a water supply point, the alienation of land to crop farming or outsiders, high water losses and siltation, and the inability to keep pumps operating. In ponds, protection of the catchment is especially important. There are also human health risks from contamination, and the need to protect physical structures.
11. Breed improvement is often thought to provide rapid increases in productivity; in reality, outside breeds often perform poorly under the severe constraints seen in dry lands. The usual approach has been to introduce males from other areas, e.g. Boran bulls to the Kenya Maasai - sometimes accompanied by the formal organization of a "bull station" to serve the community. Communal care of breeding animals requires close supervision, and is best left to areas with a strong communal tradition. A major policy issue is whether to aim at upgrading of local breeds, crossbreeding with external types (to retain disease resistance but increase output), or replacement by external breeds (e.g. imported dairy stock). The latter policy usually requires major improvements to nutrition and health care.
12. High technology options also exist, either fetal implants to speed up introduction, or artificial insemination. The latter requires that farmers notify insemination staff quickly, and that staff have access to liquid nitrogen storage of semen and adequate transport.
13. Grazing blocks have been instituted many times, often in combination with restrictions on herd movement and even forced destocking. One common system was to lay down 5 blocks, 4 used in each year (for 3 months each) and one rested and then burned. The regulatory focus of such grazing schemes has made them highly unpopular with pastoralists. In some cases rich owners have been able to control access while keeping extra animals outside the scheme. Few grazing schemes have succeeded in the long run, but they remain a common government approach to the problem of livestock numbers on common range.
14. Range management has been mostly a post-colonial approach, adopted once the earlier attention to veterinary measures was broadened to include concern for animal production. Range management projects typically begin with measurement of pasture resources, using thus resulting data to design a management plan for a particular area. Recommended stocking rates are then established, and a system of rotational grazing between blocks worked out. Range management projects usually include provision for water supplies, firebreaks, and marketing facilities; sometimes they hire marketing specialists and sociologists. In some countries, a range management division has been set up at Ministry headquarters, and perhaps specialized training in range management established within the country. A few range management projects have also included an extension component, or provision for herders' associations. Range management in the past was strongly top-down in its approach, since technicians make the key decisions and people were often told that they were destroying their resources. Recent experimentation has been with more participatory approaches, the establishment of associations, mapping of people's traditional rights and movements, and introduction of short duration grazing.
15. Veterinary campaigns constitute one of the oldest approaches, often implemented by mass innoculations in an attempt to clear entire areas of an endemic disease (e.g. rinderpest campaigns). In addition to mass innoculations, most countries try to diagnose disease outbreaks and institute quarantine measures while also controlling stock movements. Foot and mouth disease has been an especial problem in Africa since European countries will not import meat from FMD areas.
16. Tick control is usually obtained by either communal acaricide 'baths' ('dips') through which livestock are driven once a week, or by issue of portable spraying equipment to individual owners. Dips require a water supply and backup organization to deliver acaricide drums; they constitute fairly large and expensive structures. To be effective, dipping must be adopted by all categories of stock and all herds in an area. The acaricide must be checked and renewed to keep it to strength. Usually this means having a salaried 'dip attendant', supported either by the community or, more commonly, by the veterinary department. It is useful to have also a 'dip committee'. The days for 'dipping' provide an excellent occasion for extension work and for monitoring herd structure. The financing of acaricide supply remains very problematic, especially because it requires foreign exchange.
17. Fodder banks consist of a centrally located and fenced area which a herd owner establishes as a forage reserve. When fenced, the area is used for keeping animals at night until the rains begin, at which time it is seeded to a legume which is theoretically reserved for use by the calves and milking animals during the dry season. In the succeeding season, the area may be planted to a grain crop to tap the build-up of nutrients which will have occurred. This innovation (pioneered by ILCA near Kaduna in Nigeria) tried to encourage owners to identify the key livestock with greatest nutritional need in the dry season. It also encourages an individuation of holdings, since the physical investment in fencing reinforces the herd owner's continued claim to the land so improved, which can be gradually extended as new fodder banks are established.
18. Grazing cells based on the 'Savory system' for short duration grazing have been set up in parts of southern Africa. Initial capital costs are high, since the idea is to have a set of fenced paddocks (looking like the segments of an orange in cross-section) arranged in a circle around a water point. The gate to each paddock is at its narrow end opposite the water point. The animals graze in one paddock at a time, but use the grass for only a short period before being rotated into the next adjoining paddock. They are also herded in the traditional way, with stock being forced to graze as they move to and from the water point (thus minimizing the overgrazing of the more palatable species). Savory has claimed that regularized use of short duration grazing can allow higher stocking densities than is permitted under uncontrolled grazing.
19. Stockroutes, holding grounds and field abattoirs are all measures which may be instituted to improve livestock marketing, either by lowering costs and risks associated with stock movement or by bringing the point of slaughter closer to producers. As land becomes more intensively utilized, these become more important. However, such facilities have often been left to fall into disrepair, perhaps because of the financial difficulties experienced by parastatal marketing companies. Field abattoirs can be especially important during drought years, when they can handle 'salvage' sales of livestock too weak for external trekking. In such situations, they help protect pastoralists' terms of trade.
20. Camels and milking goats are being introduced to ex-cattle pastoralists who live in areas subject to increasing drought or with ample browse. Official government programs in the past paid almost no attention to these species, but it is now realized that having access to camels or milking goats has a tremendous advantage to pastoralists who must live on milk for extended periods.
21. Group/cooperative ranches are an attempt to incorporate existing social groupings as a basis for allocation of land title, by making them the owners of a commercial entity intended to operate as a commercial ranch. Management is often by a committee, perhaps advised by a technician. While this solution keeps outsiders from "grabbing" common lands, it may still exclude other pastoralists who used such land seasonally. There have been many difficulties over management and control of finances in group ranches.
22. Parastatal ranches are an alternative approach, often adopted on lands which have been cleared from tsetse infestation. They generally aim at beef production by a parastatal agency which controls the ranches and does the capital development (staff, water, fences, firebreaks, etc.). Few parastatal ranches have run at a profit, and many have had difficulties with cash flow (disease outbreaks), security, and trespass. They tend to occur where governments do not want to give large tracts of land to private individuals.
23. Fattening/stratification programs seek to uncouple livestock breeding from the finishing of stock for final sale. It was hoped that the drier lands would concentrate upon a cow/calf operation, producing the immatures which could be sold to those in the higher rainfall zones for fattening (perhaps using crop residues). Some countries have used mainly credit to finance the purchase of immatures. Others have tried to establish feedlots near sources of demand or slaughterhouses. Feedlots have a poor record in Africa because of highly unstable sources of feed concentrate, and also unpredictable price variations.
24. Service centers and barefoot veterinarians represent institutional innovations to insure that producers have access to drugs and animal health care within easy reach. Field veterinary centers may be established as an organizational base for the stocking of drugs and the offering of simple treatment. Alternatively, local communities may be encouraged to employ their own field assistants after a short period of externally assisted training. However organized and staffed, such units are only effective if supported by training and supervision from a higher level which can insure access to drugs and adequate quality control for the services offered.
25. Herders' associations can be established to open the door for local participation in the provision of services and the regulation of grazing. In theory, they can serve several purposes: i) to raise investment capital locally; ii) to channel credit; iii) to operate joint enterprises, such as a ranch or livestock trading; iv) to regulate stocking quotas and rates; v) to pay for services by means of levies; vi) to control trespass; vii) to employ service delivery staff; viii) to buy and hold supplies and drugs; ix) to build and maintain water supplies; and x) to be the point of contact in extension campaigns. These are very ambitious objectives, seldom realized in practice. Herders' associations require much organizational support, especially in societies which lack hierarchical or stable leadership. They are also subject to capture by richer members or by local elites. Nevertheless, they remain an attractive option for giving pastoralists more say in service delivery.
26. Mobile extension units have sometimes been created to convey new ideas. At first this was done by mobile cinema vans, usually under Ministry control, which might travel from market to market. An alternative 'low technology' option has been travelling puppet shows, which have been very popular where pastoralists are accustomed to gathering for evening entertainment. More recently attention has shifted to using these units for exchanging information between pastoralists, and for incorporating local knowledge into officially sponsored extension outreach (introducing a two-way information flow).
27. Restocking projects are designed to provide pastoralists who have lost most of their animals with the means to rejoin the pastoral economy. Most such projects give destitute households goats or sheep, but in West Africa sometimes a few larger animals are given out. The transfer may take the form either of an outright gift or a loan, with restrictions on sale or slaughter. To re-equip a household with small stock requires between 30 and, say, 80 animals selected to insure a large proportion of breeding females. Usually a donkey or camel is included to provide transport, and recipients may be given food rations during the initial period to keep households from selling or killing the stock they receive. Restocking projects have been very popular.
28. Sedentarization efforts aim at settling former nomads onto fixed parcels of land, usually around water points and where there are social services. Many countries would like to see nomadic peoples settle, so that services can be planned and commercialized production encouraged. The actual record is disappointing, since there are often negative environmental impacts.
29. Small-scale irrigation has often been introduced in the hope that ex-pastoralists might be able to grow their own food and thereby reduce dependence upon their herds for subsistence. Such projects of course require a reliable water supply - a need which puts irrigators in competition with pastoralists wherever water is scarce. Most small-scale irrigation projects have proved very expensive, because of the small areas actually irrigated and the few beneficiaries; output has also been disappointing. Such schemes usually require specialized assistance and backup support (fuel, pumps, pest control) which can prove difficult for a community to organize. Negative environmental impacts (malaria, nematodes, loss of trees) have been great.
30. Water harvesting is also sometimes suggested as an answer to pastoralists' needs for alternate food and forage supplies. It is more effective when done by means of micro-catchments oriented towards trees and horticulture; there are few examples of success in regard to grain and forage production. In essence, water harvesting represents a diversion of water to concentrate surface flow higher in a drainage. (Roadside runoff collection points represent an alternative example). It should be recognized that trees in the dry zones are usually located according to drainage rather than rainfall - the implication being that water is being used by trees even if it may seem to be "wasted". Successful water harvesting requires major attitudinal changes among the people, and tends to accompany a settled way of life.
31. It would seem from the diversity of measures outlined above that most possibilities have already been tried, at least in a few sites somewhere within Africa's dry lands. The three interventions not yet attempted "on the ground" are:
i) technical packages oriented around the use of old kraal sites (to tap their enriched nutrients);
ii) experiments to find alternative approaches to primary schooling which also permit herding; and
iii) better use of indigenous knowledge within field programs.
