Cattle transhumance and agropastoral nomadic herding practices in central Cameroon

Abstract Background In sub-Saharan Africa, livestock transhumance represents a key adaptation strategy to environmental variability. In this context, seasonal livestock transhumance also plays an important role in driving the dynamics of multiple livestock infectious diseases. In Cameroon, cattle transhumance is a common practice during the dry season across all the main livestock production zones. Currently, the little recorded information of the migratory routes, grazing locations and nomadic herding practices adopted by pastoralists, limits our understanding of pastoral cattle movements in the country. GPS-tracking technology in combination with a questionnaire based-survey were used to study a limited pool of 10 cattle herds from the Adamawa Region of Cameroon during their seasonal migration, between October 2014 and May 2015. The data were used to analyse the trajectories and movement patterns, and to characterize the key animal health aspects related to this seasonal migration in Cameroon. Results Several administrative Regions of the country were visited by the transhumant herds over more than 6 months. Herds travelled between 53 and 170 km to their transhumance grazing areas adopting different strategies, some travelling directly to their destination areas while others having multiple resting periods and grazing areas. Despite their limitations, these are among the first detailed data available on transhumance in Cameroon. These reports highlight key livestock health issues and the potential for multiple types of interactions between transhumant herds and other domestic and wild animals, as well as with the formal livestock trading system. Conclusion Overall, these findings provide useful insights into transhumance patterns and into the related animal health implications recorded in Cameroon. This knowledge could better inform evidence-based approaches for designing infectious diseases surveillance and control measures and help driving further studies to improve the understanding of risks associated with livestock movements in the region

Can Livelihood Capitals Promote Diversification of Resource-Poor Smallholder Farmers Into Agribusiness?: Evidence from Nyando and Vihiga Counties, Western Kenya.

The push towards the transformation of subsistence smallholder farming into market-oriented agribusiness has been in the public policy debates of many low- and middle-income countries, including Kenya. While various studies have highlighted the lack of livelihood capital as a reason for most smallholders not to diversify into agribusiness. How these livelihood capitals influence smallholders' decisions and choices have, however, only been partially researched. Using systematic random sampling, 392 households in Western Kenya were interviewed through a researcher-administered questionnaire. The multinomial logistic regression method was used to analyze the data. The findings reveal that livelihood capitals acted in parallel and jointly to determine the decisions of smallholders to participate in agribusiness. Results show that education level, gender, landholding size, distance to markets, farm input access, and agriculture extension services positively and significantly influenced the decision choices of households to participate in agribusiness. Households with higher livelihood capital accumulation resulted in a higher probability of participating in agribusiness while those with limited livelihood capital resulted in a lower probability to participate in agribusiness. We argue that designing appropriate pro-poor targeted policy interventions to improve households’ livelihood capital could address the problem of non-participation of poor rural smallholders in agribusiness markets

Crops and panels: a farm model with trade-offs in the Water-Energy-Food Nexus

Ever since the introduction of the concept of the Water-Energy-Food Nexus in 2011, interlinkages between water, energy and food supply have gained increasing attention in scholarly articles. This attention is fully justified, given the many connections between the need to feed another 2 billion people, the need to adapt to climate change and the need to achieve a successful energy transition. However, so far, the outcomes of the Water-Energy-Food Nexus research are not concrete enough to guide actual policy making. This lack of concrete results applies not only to economy-wide research but also to sectoral studies, including those on crop farming. Therefore, we present in this chapter the structure of a farm optimization model as tool of analysis for assessing the reaction of a ‘representative’ farmer in a specific region to changing conditions of water availability, energy supply and food markets. Model simulations can be used as input for policy discussions; specifically, it has been designed to study the impact of water shortages and water salinity on food production and farm incomes, while it also accounts for the possibility for farmers to install solar panels on their land. Although the application discusses the Jordan River Basin, the approach is applicable also to other regions, with their own characteristics and own policy choices. The model is rooted in micro-economic theory, but relies heavily also on agronomic knowledge and process-based data of, for example, irrigation capacities and solar panel yields. In the model, the farmer makes an optimal choice of competing cropping and solar panel activities, at given quality and quantity of land and water resources, technical constraints and market prices

Land degradation and ecosystem services

Destructive land use is driving long-term losses of ecosystem function and productivity. Satellite measurements of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) since 1981 provide a global yardstick, revealing that a quarter of the land surface has been degrading over the last quarter of a century; every continent and biome is affected with Africa south of the equator, southeast (SE) Asia and south (S) China hardest hit. The loss of primary productivity is equivalent to more than a billion Mg C but the associated emissions from loss of biomass and soil organic carbon are much greater. Degradation is not confined to farmland (18 % of the degrading area is cropland; 47 % is classed as forest); neither is it strongly associated with drylands, population pressure or poverty. A case study using more detailed data for China explores the effects of soil resilience and the association between land degradation and land use. NDVI can only be a proxy measure of land degradation; assessment of ecosystem services is a further step removed. Remotely-­sensed data can be used along with climatic and topographic data as an input to models that predict the provision of these services but the processes, drivers and effects beyond NPP are unseen and more importantly, unmeasured. This is an issue for emerging markets in environmental services

Assessing the effect of Faidherbia albida based land use systems on barley yield at field and regional scale in the highlands of Tigray, Northern Ethiopia

Faidherbia albida , Ecosystem-service, Land-use, Scaling, Barley productivity,