Farming issues: Need for innovative ideas in managing communal rangelands

14 Aug, 2016 - 00:08 0 Views

The Sunday News

Mhlupheki Dube
WE are quickly approaching that season when farmers begin to pay heavily for what they should have done while there was still time. This is the season when it becomes so depressing to visit your kraal and look at the animals. A time which is akin to the period when a drought takes effect on your highly promising crop. Going to the fields becomes depressing because of the sorry state of the crop.

It is like that with livestock as you see your animals deteriorating in condition and there is always that cow which you are not brave enough to cull because it is a very efficient production machine which drops a calf every year but is always the first one to waste away and every season you are holding your breath hoping it crosses the difficult season!

I say this is the time when farmers pay for not doing what they should have done in time. That is piling up feed in whatever form to use during the lean period. It is also the time when farmers suffer for being reckless spenders. This is in terms of rangeland management. A rangeland is the cheapest source of feed for farmers and it is no ground breaking economics to know that any serious livestock farmer who wishes to keep his production cost down and increase gross margins in the process has to manage his/her rangeland properly. This is where most of the smallholder communal farmers are found wanting as animals are left to crisscross the whole rangeland with reckless abandon.

The veld is quickly deteriorated and by end of May there is hardly any blade of grass left. This is primarily because it is a communal area with no properly organised grazing lands and grazing patterns. However, something needs to be done to assist communal farmers in management of their rangelands. We have accepted before in this very platform that around 80 percent of the national livestock herd is within the smallholder sector hence it makes elementary sense that this sector needs to be guarded jealously as it is home to a vital national resource.

Firstly, local authorities and Local Government offices need to begin to have a big say on the settlement patterns in communal areas. This business of homes sprouting everywhere with no proper layout is so pre-medieval and largely retrogressive.

While we may not be able to do anything with already existing settlements, we are certainly able to direct upcoming settlements be they the resettlement type of the typical communal type. If the settlements are organised, it means rangelands can be zoned out and properly managed in terms of grazing patterns. They don’t even need to be fenced but they are managed by simple community by-laws which dictate which areas are grazed when. Transgression of the by-laws can attract heavy fines.

I know communities in Nkayi District that have such effective grazing by-laws especially about grazing on prime areas along the Shangani River bed and some wetlands. Communities like Dakamela and Sivomo. These have managed to set up strong by-laws which are enforced and it appears to work for them. Perhaps it is because they are always hit severely by droughts and they always record highest livestock mortalities due to drought and as they say necessity is the mother of all inventions.

Communal rangelands simply need to be organised and managed properly if we are to avoid livestock losses. We all know that it is still a mindset evolution for most smallholder communal farmers to be convinced to buy feed to supplement their animals. They won’t even buy the hay bales let alone commercial feed. All they will do is watch as their herd is wasting away until they start dying. So let’s start from where we can easily convince farmers and this is enacting by-laws to support rangelands. In fact these community by-laws seem to be very effective, a clear case in point being the one around opening fields for communal grazing.

There are always dates set across almost all communal areas prohibiting animals to begin grazing on field stover and grass before set time frames. This is to protect both the stover and other farmers who may still have crops yet to be harvested in the fields. Communal grazing lands can be zoned and allocated times for beginning grazing.

Shouldn’t our extension officers on the ground assist with such a scheme? This to me will be the most effective communal rangeland management instead of singing the destocking song which farmers will never listen to because it is in itself contentious whether we are overstocked or we are simply mismanaging our rangeland. Uyabonga umntakaMaKhumalo.

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