Grasslands of the World.pdf - Disasters and Conflicts - UNEP

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Grasslands of the world
However, most communal access to pastoral land and water is not unregulated,
rather it is governed by traditional rules of access controlling who uses the land
and water, where and when. These rules were designed to sustain grassland
productivity for the use of all in communally shared lands. Privatization of
land is now causing the “tragedy of privatization” , where pastoral people are
impoverished because land holdings are too small to support their livelihoods
in dry grazing lands . This is what Rutten (1992) nicely coined as “selling land
to buy poverty”. The overgrazing issue is discussed below, applicable to both
communal and privatized land.
INTEGRATION OF GRASSLANDS INTO SMALLHOLDER FARMING
SYSTEMS
As pastoral systems evolve and herders avoid drought and disasters through
diversification and risk management , sedentarization and settlement to improve
income-earning capacity is occurring in northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia
(Little et al., 2001). There continues to be an expansion of cropping in areas
where agriculture is feasible, to allow herders to better manage risk and respond
to drought (Little et al., 2001). As cropping expands into the rangelands of the
region, grasslands have become an integral part of crop-livestock systems.
Nearly all grassland areas in developing countries are grazed (CAST, 1999).
One viable alternative for settled crop-livestock farmers in the region is to use
cultivated forage grasses to support livestock production and reduce the pressure
on the natural grassland. Cultivated forages have received less attention
from breeders than other crops (CAST, 1999). However, recent expansion in
dairying, especially around urban areas in eastern Africa , and the anticipated
increased demand for livestock production proposed by Delgado et al. (1999)
has led smallholder farmers to pay more attention to increased use of cultivated
grasses. Inclusion of grasses into a crop-livestock system can also have positive
environmental benefits. Vegetation cover can be improved through transfer of
seeds and trampling and breaking soil crusts and fertility improved by manure
deposited during grazing (Steinfeld, de Haan and Blackburn, 1997). Fallow
and grassland rotations improve soil fertility and minimize soil erosion, while
reduced nutrient losses from manure from livestock fed on grasses in a cutand-carry
system double the effective availability of nitrogen and phosphorus
and can be put back into the system to maintain nutrient balances (de Haan,
Steinfeld and Blackburn, 1997).
Rhodes grass and elephant grass are among the earliest tropical grasses
grown in eastern Africa , since the start of the twentieth century. They have
been widely planted for livestock production in Kenya and Uganda since the
1930s (Boonman, 1993) and are an important part of crop-livestock systems in
higher-potential areas. Grass rotations and fallowing of crop lands were common
practices to provide soil cover and restore organic matter some 50 years
ago, but this practice has reduced due to increasing population pressure and