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

The changing face of pastoral systems in grass-dominated ecosystems of eastern Africa 45
demand for crop land (Boonman, 1993). Due to scarcity of land, most dairy
farmers in the heavily populated highlands of eastern Africa now practice a cutand-carry
zero grazing system . Currently, elephant grass is the most important
forage crop in dairy systems in the Central Kenya Highlands (Staal et al., 1997)
and has been shown to constitute between 40 to 80 percent of the forage for
the smallholder dairy farms . In Kenya alone, more than 0.3 million smallholder
dairy producers (53 percent) rely on elephant grass as a major source of feed.
The demand is so high that landless farmers plant along highway verges and on
communal land to cut and sell to stock owners.
Rhodes grass has also been widely used for improved pastures due to its
wide adaptation and vigorous root system, which confers reasonable tolerance
to drought and persistence under grazing and makes it suitable for erosion
control , and of value for hay making (Boonman, 1993). It shows some cold
tolerance, and several commercial varieties have been developed in Kenya. It
ranks second only to elephant grass in yield and drought tolerance, producing
up to 18 t DM/ha in suitable environments (Boonman, 1993).
Another cultivated grass with wide adaptability that is being grown in
eastern Africa is setaria (Setaria sphacelata ). Herbage yield can equal Rhodes
grass and it is more persistent at higher altitudes, up to about 3 000 m above
sea level, and can tolerate frost and seasonal waterlogging (Boonman, 1993).
However, it is not as drought tolerant as Rhodes grass and has a tendency
to invade agricultural land, and can become weedy and difficult to eradicate.
Although its use reduced in Kenya during the 1980s, it is still a useful grass in
wetter and higher-altitude areas, and it is now gaining importance for use in soil
stabilization and erosion control along bunds in Tanzania and central Kenya
(Boonman, 1993). Unfortunately, none of these options for improved forage
production are available to settled pastoralists across the vast dryland areas of
the region.
CASE STUDIES OF THE EVOLUTION OF EXTENSIVE RANGE SYSTEMS
OVER THE LAST 40 YEARS
General
Expansion of cropland, intensification of livestock production and changes
in land tenure are common forces for change in pastoral systems around the
world (Niamir-Fuller, 1999; Blench, 2000). Across Africa, colonial and postcolonial
policies favoured crop cultivation over livestock production, thus
giving agriculturalists the economic “upper hand” compared to pastoralists
(Niamir-Fuller, 1999). As described earlier, pastoralists are thus either pushed
onto more marginal lands for grazing or they begin to take up crop agriculture
themselves, becoming agropastoralists (vide Campbell et al., 2000). In most
cases, customary political and management systems are becoming weaker
(Niamir-Fuller, 1999). Livestock development projects are also driving change
in pastoral lands by opening up remote pastures with the spread of borehole