Dury, J.

Giller, K.E.

Rufino, M.C.

Tittonell, P.A.

Wijk, M.T., van

Zingore, S.

English

Wageningen Yield 

 
 
 
AgSAP Conference 2009, Egmond aan Zee, the Netherlands 
1 
 
 
Competing use of organic resources, climate variability and interactions at 
village scale in a communal area of NE Zimbabwe 
 
M.C. Rufino, J. Dury, P. Tittonell, M.T. van Wijk, S. Zingore and K.E. Giller 
Plant Production Systems, Wageningen University; P.O. Box 430, 6700AK Wageningen, The 
Netherlands; Email: mariana.rufino@wur.nl 
Introduction  
Mixed crop-livestock systems support the livelihood of the largest number of poor people in 
sub-Saharan Africa. These rural people are exposed to a variety of risks such as recurrent 
droughts, political instability, failure of markets for inputs and products. Livestock provide 
food (milk and meat) and other services to the household, such as animal traction for 
cropping, but also fulfil a financial role. In places with low population density, livestock may 
feed on grasslands. As population pressure and competition for natural resources increases, 
some of the feed for livestock is produced in the cropland, and because of the continuous 
cultivation of the land, the removal of nutrients from the soils needs to be compensated by 
adding fertilisers, or making use of animal manure. As population pressure and competition 
for natural resources increase further, grasslands tend to disappear, more feeds need to be 
produced in cropland, and some feed is imported to the farm.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Figure 1: Schematic representation of the virtual village (A), and of the integrated tool FARMSIM 
(B), with the models FIELD (simulates crop production and nutrients dynamics in the soils), LIVSIM 
(simulates animal production and reproduction), HEAPSIM (describes decomposition of manure and 
other organic resources), GrassSIM (describes the availability of grass in the different grazing units).  
 
The objectives of this study were i) to understand the dynamics of crop-livestock interactions 
under climate variability ii) and to identify opportunities for intensification. To achieve these 
objectives, we developed and tested an analytical tool to analyse crop-livestock interactions at 
the scale of the village using a communal area of NE Zimbabwe as example.  
 
Methods  
We combined information available for the area of study, collected through interviews, 
observations, experiments, and literature. We used the NUANCES-FARMSIM modelling 
framework (Giller et al., 2006; Figure 1) adapted and tested for the conditions of smallholder 
farming in Majonjo, Murewa, NE Zimbabwe. We constructed a simplified ‘virtual’ village 
using the farm typology developed by Zingore et al. (2007) which distinguishes four farmer 
GrasslandLIVSIMLIVSIMLIVSIM GrassSIM
LIVSIMLIVSIMFIELD
LIVSIMLIVSIMHEAPSIM
Farm type
(A)(B)
 
 
 
AgSAP Conference 2009, Egmond aan Zee, the Netherlands 
2 
 
 
resource groups (RG) based on cattle ownership, farm size, production orientation, hiring 
labour, and food self-sufficiency. Feeding strategies, herding patterns, crop residues, and 
manure management were studied during the dry season of 2006 and the rainy season of 2007 
(Dury, 2007). Additionally, the communal grasslands were characterised. The tool includes 
different levels of detail: it simulates crop production at plot scale, grass production for 
different grazing units, animal production at individual level, while management decisions at 
considered at both farm and village scales by using rules. The most important transfers of 
nutrients: from grasslands to cropland, and between different farms within the village 
territory, are kept track of by integrating the different scales in which the different models 
operate. Climate variability is accounted for by simulating scenarios using data from the 
locality, which includes contrasting rainfall series. 
 
Results and discussion  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Figure 2. Simulated grain production for the whole ‘virtual’ village under three management scenarios 
(baseline, no access to cattle to crop residues of the non-cattle farmers (RG3 and RG4), and targeted 
fertilisation), and using three different rainfall series: (A) average series, (B) a wetter series and (C) a 
drier series, and the share of the non-cattle farmers grain production to total production of the whole 
village for (D) average rainfall series, (E) a wetter rainfall series and (F) a drier rainfall series. 
 
The interaction between farmers determines who benefits from integration of crop and 
livestock. The removal of C by cattle leads to lower crop yields in the poor fields of these 
farmers, and has relatively smaller effect on the fields of the cattle owners that receive animal 
manure and fertilisers (Fig. 2). Rainfall variability intensifies the interactions, when the start 
of the rains is delayed, the low availability of crop residues during the dry season may lead to 
loss of animals from the herd. In years of good rainfall the removal is relatively unimportant. 
Crop-livestock integration at village scale results in concentration of nutrients in the farms with 
larger herds and increases dependency of the poorer smallholders on external inputs, and other 
types of exchanges within the village such as labour for food, cash or manures. In the targeted 
fertilisation scenario, fertilizer compensated for the negative effect of the interactions, though it 
may be an unrealistic scenario for a smallholder community in Zimbabwe, certainly under the 
current economic and political circumstances.  
 
References 
Dury, J., 2007. MSc thesis, Wageningen University, 133 pp. 
Giller, K.E et al., 2006. Agric. Sys. 88, 8-27. 
Zingore, S. et al., 2007. Agric. Ecosyst. Environ. 119, 112-126 
Time (years)
G
ra
in
 p
ro
du
ct
io
n 
(t 
vi
lla
ge
-1
)
Current 
management
No access to crop residues 
from non-livestock owners
Targeted fertilisation
(ISFM)
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
0
100
200
300
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10F
ra
ct
io
n 
pr
od
uc
ed
 b
y 
no
n-
liv
es
to
ck
 o
w
ne
rs
          
Average rainfall Wetter series Drier series(A) (B) (C)
(F) (E) (F)


MSc thesis,

Time (years) G ra in p ro du ct io n (t vi lla ge -1 ) Current management No access to crop residues from non-livestock owners Targeted fertilisation

Competing use of organic resources, climate variability and interactions at village scale in a communal area of NE Zimbabwe

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Competing use of organic resources, climate variability and interactions at village scale in a communal area of NE Zimbabwe

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