The Sunday News
Mhlupheki Dube
NOW that the Command Livestock Programme is in full swing and breaking the jinx of stillbirth that some projects suffer, more input and improvement on the model is needed for it to be as successful as the crop production version.
Some farmers are already proud owners of heifers courtesy of the programme and many others will benefit if the same level of commitment towards achievement of set goals and targets is maintained.
It is also pleasing to note that Command Livestock encompasses a lot of different forms of livestock therefore, making it almost all-inclusive.
Last week we saw some command chicken production activities in some other parts of the country.
However, I would like to propose that the Command Livestock Programme be improved to look at even promoting models that support farmers who can produce both livestock and wildlife.
This is in view of the fact that there are a number of smallholder farmers who got land during the land redistribution exercise and their properties had a lot of game species.
It is obviously sad to note and admit that most of these farmers have since lost most if not all of those game species due to a number of reasons which include poaching and natural migration of the animals to more serene places.
In fact, I would like to believe that the latter contributed more to the decline of wildlife populations in the resettlement farms.
It is important to note that wildlife is defined as a fugitive resource because of its ability and tendency to migrate from one property to another.
The temptation is for most people to conclude that there is no more game in our resettlement farms because the new owners were poaching.
This could be true for some properties but it cannot be generalised for all the resettlement farms.
The main reason in my well-considered view is the unavailability of existing livestock/wildlife integration models that are suitable for small-scale communal farmers.
Also there wasn’t enough education on what practices the smallholder farmers could adopt so that they are able to integrate their traditional livestock rearing enterprise with wildlife production. It is a no brainer that the practice by smallholder livestock farmers are incompatible with wildlife production.
An example is the tendency of keeping a multitude of dogs which always accompany the owner to the veld.
Dogs will inevitably chase after game they come across the veld and this means with every homestead owning at least a dog, wildlife will never have peace in the veld until it migrates to a property which has no dogs.
Another practice is that of putting bells on almost every animal in the herd and the chorus of gongs when the animals are moving is unbearable to the game.
Wildlife generally prefers a quieter and serene environment. This is more so for the plains game which are generally the hunted species by carnivorous wild or domestic animals.
It is against this background that I seek an adjustment on the Command Livestock programme to accommodate activities that can promote models that encourage livestock/wildlife integration.
Our smallholder farmers need to be able to produce wildlife and derive benefits like the previous occupants of the same land.
It is public knowledge that wildlife is also a serious source of income for those utilising the land.
Actually there is very little that smallholder farmers need to input when engaged in wildlife production. Simply providing a secure and quiet environment is enough to even lure back those animals that had migrated to other properties. The important question therefore, is what should the Command Livestock programme do to promote and integrate wildlife/livestock production among smallholder farmers in our resettlement areas.
I may not have all the ideas but the pivot of my instalment is that the vast land which is now under the ownership or use by the smallholder farmers can produce both wildlife and domestic animals and this will immensely benefit the farmers.
Models therefore, need to be developed and tried out so that smallholder farmers are not just labelled compulsive poachers who wiped all the game from their farmers without a scientific analysis of the real causative factors of wildlife disappearances from the farms and the mechanism that can be instituted to ensure that the wildlife still subsists in the resettlement farms.
Uyabonga umntakaMaKhumalo.
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