Livestock populations decimated by ‘January disease’ in Zimbabwe: diverse local responses

In the last few years, Zimbabwe has lost around half a million cattle to the tick-borne disease, theileriosis, better known as January disease, or in our study areas as ‘cattle covid’. This loss has had a huge impact on people’s livelihoods and their ability to farm. The severe draft power shortages across our study sites are as a result of animals having died or being sick and weak. The government has announced a ‘war on January disease’ for 2023.

Changing disease and vector ecologies

Theileriosis is spread by the brown tick (Rhipicephalus appendiculatus) and results in a swelling of the lymph nodes, running eyes, rough skin and loss of appetite and later almost certain death, especially with older, weaker animals. In periods of relatively good rainfall, as has been experienced certainly in parts of the country, tick populations explode and if they are not controlled through dipping, then the disease spreads.

In the last few years, nearly all parts of the country have been affected including in areas in the notionally drier areas where usually ticks do not survive. Climate change and animal disease is a big topic worthy of another blog, but there are important impacts, especially as weather events become more extreme, with big downpours resulting in sudden increases in tick populations as grass grows rapidly. A new distribution of tick populations and associated population dynamics – both over time and space – is being seen leading some to speculate that there may be new tick species carrying the disease. New selection pressures also change the vector and in turn the disease, making theileriosis today very different to before.

There has been much research on theileriosis and the brown tick in Zimbabwe and southern Africa more broadly. It should be an easy disease to control and indeed in the past it was so. The regular dipping programmes that were instituted across the country since colonial days kept the tick and so the disease at bay. Occasionally there were new outbreaks, but they were soon under control. The recent devastation of cattle populations is very different, and the Veterinary Department and ministers of agriculture are constantly beseeching people to dip, whether through the conventional immersion dip or through spray dipping.

As the officials point out it’s important to have the right chemicals, to ensure that animals are properly soaked, to add tick grease to parts of the body where ticks attack that are not usually dipped (such as ears) and to increase dipping frequency if the disease emerges. The 5-5-4 dipping regime is usually recommended, with dips spaced five, then four days apart. But it isn’t working and although the government is investing in vaccine development, with 20,000 already being tested, this is a costly alternative to vector control.

Why is January disease so bad these days? Some hypotheses from the field

So, what is going on? Discussions with livestock keepers as well as Vet department officials highlighted a number of hypotheses:

• The tick vectors are much more widespread and prevalent, with tick challenge high in nearly all areas. This is the result of periods of high rainfall in recent seasons with lots of grass growing. Following land reform, there is more grass, so more ticks in more places where people’s animals graze, resulting in a new distribution of ticks and disease.
• With the new configuration of land use following land reform, there are more animals spread across the country, but few dips especially in the resettlement areas. Along with the relaxation (or actually lack of implementation) of dipping regulations, animals are dipped infrequently and often not thoroughly.
• Some argue that the dip chemicals are not as good as they were with some being ‘fake’ and many being adulterated, although importers and manufacturers and Vet officials deny this. With the lack of foreign exchange, government has had to import dip chemicals from a number of sources. Senior officials in the Vet department have in the past bemoaned the lack of quality control. Whether it is the chemical or its mixing or application remains unknown, but this remains a possibility as fake drugs and chemicals are widely available in agro-supply stores (we visited one in Chiredzi and the very informed shop assistant pointed to which was which as we enquired about dipping chemicals. Not surprisingly the low efficacy alternatives were much cheaper and as he admitted the ones that sold most).
• Infrequent dipping and misapplication of dips may have resulted in resistance to dip chemicals (acaracides) by the ticks. Compared to the heavily grazed communal areas, ticks survive better in the new resettlements. In the past it was the commercial farms that suffered the disease most, but now it’s widespread. Grazing animals are exposed to ticks that survive in refuges and spread fast when sudden rainfall occurs. Others argue that there are new vectors among the wider array of ticks found in these grazing environments, extending the range of tick vectors.
• The mixing of breeds in both the communal and resettlement areas that resulted from the dispersal of commercial breeds across the country following land reform has probably meant less overall resistance to ticks and tick-borne disease. Hardy, small Mashona cattle could survive nearly anything, but this is less the case with exotic crosses, resulting in declining resistance in the population. With some investing in pure breeds as they stock their A2 farms – many succumb very quickly as farmers explained.

The problem is that these all remain conjectures, we don’t really know what’s happening. There are complex questions of evolutionary ecology, the economics and regulation of veterinary chemicals and ones of investment (in dipping infrastructure) and farmer (and veterinary) practice. What is clear is that livestock keepers and veterinarians are facing a very different challenge to before and are ill-equipped to respond.

Local response and innovation

While these questions need answering by some sustained research (which as far as I am aware is not happening at least to the extent needed given the national disaster unfolding), what are people doing now? Farmers we interviewed last year were desperate. Some had lost their whole herd; others had sick animals and were expecting the same. Those selling were getting pathetic prices, with traders coming to collect sick animals for a pittance. Cattle are vital assets – for ploughing, transport, manure, milk, meat and so on – and have great cultural and social value – as savings, foci for sharing, exchanges for bridewealth and so on, so this sort of loss is devastating.

The overall statistics that Zimbabwe has lost half a million animals worth USD$150 million over the last four years are shocking. But this still does not compute with the real consequences of loss of animals by individual households. Those we talked to did not know how they would cultivate. Many had reverted to farming just their small pfumvudwa (no till) plot, but that they said was insufficient to survive off and in the resettlement areas with around five hectares of arable land it meant that most of it was left as fallow if tractors could not be hired (see last blog). The result of course was more ticks in fallow fields and the cycle repeats itself.

As ever though Zimbabwean farmers do not give up. We discovered a huge amount of detailed epidemiological knowledge and an array of innovative practices. Some had become specialists in developing concoctions for giving to sick cattle, and they claimed it worked. One farmer had lost no animals at all, yet his neighbours had lost many. In the absence of support from elsewhere, indigenous veterinary practice had exploded. All sorts of remedies were suggested. They included feeding sick animals chibuku beer, giving them cooking oil (or combinations of beer and oil, soaking medicinal plants for infusions and administering smoke from certain plants.

Livestock keepers also had views on how to treat animals with available drugs. One had begun sharing his prescription through local WhatsApp groups. It was a complex combination of Hitet, Butachem and several antibiotics given in sequence after preventing animals from drinking. Once the treatment started extra molasses and multivitamins were offered to boost strength, he explained. He swore by it as an effective solution. It required rigorous timely application, and he complained that others were not following it well, berating the veterinarians for not experimenting and only following the standard prescriptions. As he put it, “you have to try different things out, diseases change, we cannot just follow the standard ways – that’s the colonial mindset.” Others had got dismayed by the locally available medicines and had imported alternatives from South Africa. They were expensive, headteacher observed, but they were worth it, as all his animals had survived.

A new veterinary response?

Simply beseeching people to dip properly or to administer drugs in line with recommendations is all well and good, but actually people were having to improvise and develop alternatives to the standard veterinary department recommendations. Rather like in the case of human COVID-19, the efficacy of some could be questioned, but currently we don’t know and a more collaborative enquiry into what works and doesn’t and why is urgently needed.

Local treatments give a sense of control and some hope in a desperate situation. Simply arguing, as a senior government vet did to us, that the problem lay in people’s lack of education and inability to follow recommendations, misses the point. What is needed is more research into the hypotheses outlined above, together with livestock keepers who have been living with the disease. And crucially in an engaged participatory way, taking seriously local understandings of tick ecology, livestock disease patterns and disease treatments.

Only then will a more effective veterinary response emerge. The January disease being faced now is very different to what was faced before – in terms of epidemiology as well as social-ecological dynamics – and new thinking is needed. Hoping that a tech-fix vaccine will solve the problem is insufficient.

This blog was written by Ian Scoones and first appeared on Zimbabweland

Why livestock keeping can be good for the environment

At the end of last year, together with colleagues at IDS, I spent quite a bit of time making the case for a more balanced view on livestock and the environment. We tried to raise the debate during the two big COPs – first in November at COP27 on climate change and then in December at COP15 on biodiversity. We produced a series of reports, briefings and videos to help share our (and many others’) research.

Why is this necessary? Unfortunately, livestock have been cast as the villains, contributors to environmental destruction and a major driver of climate change. While some livestock systems are obviously damaging, lumping all systems into one argument makes little sense. The result is a confused policy debate – including at the COPs – that often points the finger of blame in the wrong direction. This results in major injustices for those livestock keepers who are guardians of nature and have limited climate impacts, as we argue in a new article in the IDS Bulletin.

So through the PASTRES programme, which I co-lead, and in alliance with a range of different organisations, we’ve been trying to encourage a more sophisticated, nuanced debate. The materials shared below are just some of a growing body of evidence that offers a different narrative.

In places like Zimbabwe livestock production is integral to mixed farming systems and in the drier areas, extensive grazing is vital for people’s livelihoods. Meat and milk production is vital for income earning for many – whether from cattle or from goats and sheep. And while animal sourced foods are not consumed in huge quantities, except by a small consumption elite, such products are essential for people’s nutrition, health and well-being.

For many readers of this blog it may seem odd to have to make such a basic argument about the importance of livestock. But believe me if you read the comment columns of many newspapers, listen to activists’ proclamations about the evil of livestock production and hear how such views get wrapped up in policy-making and donor funding, then such efforts – basic as they may seem – are urgently needed.

A recent attempt at offering a clear and simple statement about the importance of extensive livestock keeping and links to the climate change debate and wider resource politics is a Primer we produced together with the Transnational Institute and the World Alliance for Mobile Indigenous Peoples and Pastoralists (WAMIP). The Primer is available here and the launch event can be viewed again here.

Livestock are not always bad for the planet

During the COPs, we made the case that livestock can be good for the environment. The effect of livestock on the climate and biodiversity depends on which livestock, where. Pastoral systems can show neutral or positive carbon balances, especially for mobile systems that distribute manure/urine and incorporate it, adding to carbon cycling.

For the climate COPs in 2021 and 2022, we produced a report called “Are livestock always bad for the planet? Rethinking the protein transition and climate change debate“. A short 2-min video explains the basic argument, and a series of briefings outline some of the key findings, which you can watch here. And further materials can be found through the following links:

– Are livestock always bad for the planet?

– The truth about livestock

– Placing livestock in context through a systems approach

– Centring livestock-keepers

In addition, a briefing linking the climate and biodiversity debates was produced on the role of pastoralists in addressing the linked crises of climate and biodiversity. And the a blog offered a round-up of debates at COP27 in Egypt.

Moving on to COP15 on biodiversity, we produced another short 2-minute video that summarises some of the key arguments in a series of briefings. You can view it here. The following sections offer some overviews and links of the six briefings.

Why tree planting in rangelands can be bad for biodiversity and the climate

Mass tree planting schemes are proposed as a way to combat desertification, improve biodiversity and address climate change through ‘carbon offset’ schemes. Initiatives funded by international donors such as the AFR100 and the ‘Great Green Wall’ are deeply problematic, yet have targeted over one billion hectares of rangelands across the world.

This briefing explains how such initiatives can exclude people, livestock and wildlife and can seriously undermine plant biodiversity.

Enhancing biodiversity through livestock keeping

Carefully managed grazing in extensive (especially in mobile) livestock systems is essential for biodiversity conservation in many ecosystems across the world. Mobile pastoral systems can create bio-corridors through transhumance routes, disperse seeds, create fertile hotspots or mitigate against fires.

A briefing produced for COP15 offers eight examples of how pastoralism and conservation can work together.

How livestock keeping can reduce wildfires

Regular fires are essential for ecosystem health in rangelands. In rangeland ecologies, fire is important for conservation, but it must be limited and controlled, and this requires grazing. In meeting the challenge of increasing wildfires, supporting pastoral systems is likely to be much more successful than just focusing on fire suppression and more firefighters.

This briefing sets out how extensively-grazed livestock with more people looking after them can reduce the risk of fire.

Rewilding and ecosystem restoration: what is ‘natural’?

What is ‘natural’ and what is ‘wild’ is deeply contested. Rangelands are not simply degraded forests, as some assume. Plans for conservation must include pastoralists and other land users who have created valuable landscapes through use by people and their animals over many years.

This briefing sets out how different values and understanding of ecosystems are used in debates on rewilding, and why a more sophisticated debate is required.

Pastoralists as conservationists

Pastoralists and other livestock keepers are too often pitted against conservationists. Pastoralism is not compatible with a style of conservation that encloses and excludes, but extensive livestock-keeping can be central to more people-centred conservation approaches.

This briefing sets out how creating mixed use, integrated landscapes and emphasising co-management a can build a conservation approach that works for both people and planet.

The blog draws from an article on the IDS website and links to work undertaken by the ERC funded PASTRES programme based at IDS and EUI.

Why COP27 needs a more sophisticated debate about livestock and climate change

As the climate conference, COP27, kicks of in Sharm el Sheik in Egypt debates about agriculture and land use will be centre stage. And amongst these discussions the role of livestock in the future of food and agricultural systems will be hotly debated.

Unfortunately, many of these debates are poorly informed and misleading, frequently hitting the wrong target. There are strong arguments for reducing the impact of livestock farming in places like the Amazon where expansion of pastures or crops for fodder is encroaching on valuable rainforest areas. Equally there are good reasons for many in the rich West to reduce the consumption of meat and milk from high input industrial systems.

But such arguments do not extend to all livestock everywhere. Misleading policy conclusions arise from aggregated statistics, which often miss out on extensive, smallholder and pastoralist livestock systems. For example, the well-respected data and graphics provider Our World in Data provide easily-consumed data for journalists that highlight livestock as the big villain of climate change. But these data are based on studies that do not account for most extensive livestock systems, focusing instead only on ‘commercially viable farms.’

So, in thinking about climate mitigation measures, we need to ask, which livestock, where? And always avoid being trapped by simplistic, generalising narratives that can be misleading and dangerous. This is why the PASTRES programme that works in six countries across three continents released the report – Are livestock always bad for the planet? The report digs into the data and questions the standard narrative.

In particular, ten flaws in standard approaches to climate assessments of livestock are highlighted and are discussed in a short briefing, available in multiple languages. Most such assessments use so-called life cycle assessments, but too often the data are estimated based on emission factors that make no sense in most outside intensive, industrial livestock systems. Furthermore, we have to ask whether extensive systems are in fact ‘additional’ compared to ‘natural’ systems, where wild animals rather than domesticated livestock roam. And when thinking about emissions, we have to be careful when equating methane (from animals) with carbon dioxide (from fossil fuel intensive industries) as they have very different effects on global heating.

Presenting all livestock as a villain and making the case for radical shifts of diet and land use everywhere – even going so far as promoting the idea of farm-free futures where protein is derived from large fermentation vats – makes little sense. Such a techno-utopian vision would undermine many people’s livelihoods, destroy local economies and would likely have little positive impact on the environment in places where livestock are an integrated part of sustainable agro-ecosystems.

Indeed, despite proclaiming otherwise, such positions may accentuate climate injustice, opening opportunities for further concentration of food systems, while fostering exclusionary forms of conservation or ‘rewilding’. In so doing they undermine the very people who should be at the forefront of creating climate-friendly agricultural systems, such as pastoralists and extensive livestock keepers who live across the world’s rangeland on over half the world’s land surface.

A focus on net-zero targets for carbon removal from land – through reducing livestock use and planting trees, for example – may badly misfire. Trees are vulnerable carbon sources in many environments because of fire risk and may be less good at capturing and retaining carbon than grasslands, supported by careful livestock grazing.

Mass tree planting on rangelands can result in displacement of people and their livestock, as plantation crops are established and enclosures increase. The rush to plant trees is again being driven by misunderstandings of ecosystems and carbon dynamics in rangeland settings. And such damaging tree planting is being pushed by carbon offset markets that are central to net zero deals, whereby polluting companies in one part of the world can absolve themselves by planting trees elsewhere.    

Addressing climate change is perhaps the greatest challenge for humanity today. COP27 in Egypt is a vital political moment. But in our eagerness to meet the challenge, we must be careful about false and misleading solutions that can result in heightened injustices. Certain types of livestock keeping – in the right places, with the right management – can and should be part of the climate solution.

If you are in Sharm el Sheik, there are lots of events that focus on these issues – see the COP27 Livestock Resources from ILRI. If you are not there (I personally will be amongst the livestock keepers of Matobo in Matabeland South discussing these issues on the ground), then do have a look at some of our PASTRES publications in order to get a more informed view.

Report and briefings in multiple languages: Are livestock always bad for the planet? – Pastoralism, Uncertainty and Resilience – PASTRES

Video: Are livestock always bad for the planet? – YouTube

Article: IDSBulletin_OnlineFirst_García-Dory_Houzer_Scoones.pdf

Primer: Livestock, climate and the politics of resources | Transnational Institute (tni.org)

COP26: why a more sophisticated debate on livestock and the climate is needed

COP 26 Blue Zone, Glasgow (Ian Scoones)

Last week I was in Glasgow at COP26, shuttling between events in the Blue Zone and the fringe across the city. It was overwhelming, with a cacophony of conflicting voices and views.

The first week including a flood of announcements on coal, methane and forests. Ambitious targets were set and large numbers were bandied around. Meanwhile the negotiations continue behind closed doors as protestors marched over the weekend, urging more radical and concrete action.

I was with a delegation of pastoralists, members of the World Alliance of Mobile Indigenous and Peoples and Pastoralists network. We were aiming to highlight the more complex story around the links between livestock and climate change – going beyond the standard narrative that all meat and milk is bad.

WAMIP sheep for the climate action, Glasgow (Ian Scoones)

We hosted a photo exhibition exploring climate change and uncertainty in different parts of the world, and at another event with Nourish Scotland discussed the future of livestock systems under climate change with Scottish farmers and food groups. Our ‘sheep for the climate’ action gathered a group (with some fine Hebridean sheep) in Govan dry docks to highlight our recent report, which asks the question, are livestock always bad for the planet?.

An article in The Conversation summarised some of the main points and is reproduced below (under CC license). Also, do check out the full report, plus the briefings and information sheets (in eight languages) at this link: https://pastres.org/livestock-report/  

Cows and cars should not be conflated in climate change debates

Cattle driven into the Kenyan capital Nairobi for new pasture amid a severe drought navigate through city traffic. Simon Maina/AFP via Getty Images

Ian Scoones, Institute of Development Studies

With world leaders gathered for the COP26 summit in Glasgow, there is much talk of methane emissions and belching cows. The Global Methane Pledge, led by the US and EU and now with many country signatories, aims to reduce methane emissions by 30% by 2030. This is seen as a “quick win” to reduce global warming and will have major implications for livestock production.

Livestock have become the villain of climate change. Some researchers claim that 14.5% of all human-derived emissions come from livestock, either directly or indirectly. There have been widespread calls for radical shifts in livestock production and diet globally to address climate chaos. But which livestock, where? As a new report I co-authored argues, it is vitally important to differentiate between production systems.

Not all milk and meat is the same. Extensive, often mobile, pastoral systems – of the sort commonly seen across the African continent, as well as in Asia, Latin America and Europe – have hugely different effects to contained, intensive industrial livestock production.

Yet, in standard narratives about diet and production shifts, all livestock are lumped in together. Cows are misleadingly equated with polluting cars and beef with coal. The simplistic “all livestock are bad” narrative is promoted by campaign organisations, environmental celebrities, rich philanthropists and policymakers alike. Inevitably, it dominates media coverage. However, a much more sophisticated debate is needed.

Delving into data

Our report delves into the data and highlights the problems with using aggregate statistics in assessing the impacts of livestock on the global climate.

Some types of livestock production, especially those using industrial systems, are certainly highly damaging to the environment. They generate significant greenhouse gas emissions and cause serious water pollution. They also add to deforestation through demand for feed and expanding grazing areas, for example. And, reducing the amount of animal-source foods in diets, whether in the global north or south, makes much sense, both for the environment and for people’s health.

But industrial systems are only one type of livestock production. And aggregate emission figures do not pick up the nuances of this reality. Looking across life-cycle assessments – a technique widely used to assess the impacts on climate change from different agri-food systems – we found some important gaps and assumptions.

One is that global assessments are overwhelmingly based on data from industrial systems. A frequently quoted paper looking at 38,700 farms and 1,600 processors only focused on “commercially viable” units, mostly from Europe and North America. However, not all livestock are the same, meaning that global extrapolations don’t work.

Research in Kenya, for example, shows how assumptions about emissions from African animals are inaccurate. Such livestock are smaller, have higher quality diets due to selective grazing and have physiologies adapted to their settings. They are not the same as a highly bred animal in a respiration chamber, which is where much of the data on emission factors comes from. Overall, data from extensive systems are massively under-represented. For instance, a review of food production life cycle assessments showed that only 0.4% of such studies were from Africa, where extensive pastoralism is common across large areas.

Another issue is that most such assessments focus on emissions impacts per animal or per unit of product. This creates a distorted picture; the wider costs and benefits are not taken into account. Those in favour of industrialised systems point to the high per animal methane emission from animals eating rough, low-quality forage on open rangelands compared to the potential for improved, methane-reducing feeds in contained systems. This misses the point: a wider, more integrated systems approach must encompass all impacts, but also benefits. For instance, some forms of extensive grazing can potentially increase soil carbon stocks, adding to the already significant store of carbon in open rangelands.

Then there’s the fact that methane and carbon dioxide have different lifetimes in the atmosphere and are not equivalent. Methane is a short-lived but highly potent gas. Carbon dioxide sticks around in the atmosphere effectively forever. Reducing warming can be addressed in the short term by tackling methane emissions, but long term climate change needs to focus on carbon dioxide. It therefore makes a big difference how different greenhouse gases are assessed and how any “global warming potential” is estimated. Simply put, cows and cars are not the same.

It also matters what baseline is used. Pastoral systems may not result in additional emissions from a “natural” baseline. For example, in extensive systems in Africa domestic livestock replace wildlife that emit comparable amounts of greenhouse gases. By contrast, industrial systems clearly generate additional impacts, adding significant environmental costs through methane emissions from production, the importation of feed, the concentration of livestock waste and fossil fuel use in transport and sunk infrastructure.

Climate justice

A more rounded assessment is necessary. Extensive livestock contribute to emissions, but it’s simultaneously true that they produce multiple environmental benefits – including potentially through carbon sequestration, improving biodiversity and enhancing landscapes.

Animal-source foods are also vital for nutrition, providing high density protein and other nutrients, especially for low-income and vulnerable populations and in places where crops cannot be produced.

Across the world livestock – cattle, sheep, goats, camels, yaks, llamas and more – provide income and livelihoods for many. The world’s rangelands make up over half the world’s land surface and are home to many millions of people.

As countries commit to reducing methane emissions, a more sophisticated debate is urgently needed, lest major injustices result. The danger is that, as regulations are developed, verification procedures approved and reporting systems initiated, livestock systems in Africa and elsewhere will be penalised, with major consequences for poor people’s livelihoods.

Ian Scoones, Professorial Fellow, Institute of Development Studies

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Land reform in Matabeleland: the challenges of living in a harsh, variable environment

The land reform story in Matabeleland has been under-researched, but now there are some new findings being published. This blog profiles two papers focusing on Matobo district, also one of our study areas.

The first by Adrian Nel and Clifford Mabhena traces the historical ‘echoes’ of the land reform experience. The paper focuses on research in wards 23 and 24, where both A1 and A2 farms were established after land reform. Most new settlers were from nearby communal areas and towns, but around 40% were from further afield, including Bulawayo town, Insiza district and even Masvingo and beyond. The initial lower uptake of land reform sites in this area compared to other parts of the country can be explained by people’s need for grazing not land for cropping, combined with reticence about joining a land reform programme with unknown outcomes, especially in areas where the opposition was strong. Land reform has been more protracted in these areas, with some only signing up much later as the political temperature dropped. Quite a few white farmers held on to their land for a long time, and there have been some high-profile attempted grabs of these farms, some resisted by local people.

Historical echoes: living with variability

The title of the paper plays on Terry Ranger’s classic book ‘Voices from the Rocks’ on the history of the area. As the paper shows, the struggles to set up farms echoes the experience of earlier settlers in the area in the colonial era. Afrikaaner farmers for example were criticised by the authorities as long ago as 1939 for failing to establish farm and managing cattle and cropping in a haphazard and informal manner. The new settlers have been similarly-accused, but just as in 1939 getting farms going in a very dry area with limited resources is exceptionally difficult. Diversification is imperative, and the data from A1 farms today show how livestock, and especially cattle, become the mainstay of a stable income stream. Although there are episodic die offs due to drought or disease on average households in the A1 farms had around nine beasts, rising to 13 among the richer wealth categories.

Livestock are combined with opportunistic cropping. In most years, crops produce little, sometimes failing completely; but once in a while there is a bumper crop, and grain is stored for years and investments are made. In the five years for which cropping data is reported in this paper there was one year where farmers produced on average around two tonnes of grain per household. In most years, the total was below what is sufficient to provide for a family, and farming had to be complemented with off-farm income. Again, the experiences from past years echo through the years. Ranger comments on the importance of vleis (wetlands) and riverbanks as the source of food security in the early twentieth century in the hilly areas nearby.

In the past, the white farmers who made use of this land largely concentrated on ranching, with limited arable plots, fruit orchards and irrigated gardens near homesteads. They too had to respond to the high variability of rainfall and the sudden lack of grazing during droughts provoking high mortalities. The historical record is replete with examples of such events, with farmers going bust, moving off to do other things, and coming back as herds built up.

The same type of strategy has to be followed by the new A2 farmers on the same land. They have been allocated much smaller farm sizes making managing herds in a confined space even more challenging. This means a variety of strategies for extending feed provisioning in drought periods, including deals with neighbours, including A1 and communal farmers, and buying feed, as many A2 farmers continue with jobs elsewhere. With many farms many of which have seen significant herd growth since land reform, there are now stock numbers comparable to the pre-land reform period. This is a far-cry from the complaints of earlier periods, when officials complained that ranches were understocked.  

The movement of animals across multiple properties and land use types requires a particular type of negotiation, but is essential for maintaining herds in such a ‘non-equilibrium’ landscape. For both A1 and A2 farmers there are reinventions of past arrangements for stock sharing and movement, such as lagisa and miraka. Compared to the classic land reform areas in wetter areas focused on fixed plots and farms, the arrangements in Matobo have to be more flexible and informal, allowing movement and combining income streams from multiple sources, both local and agrarian and off-farm, including of course cross-border migration, which is a major historical feature of this area.

Conciliatory strategies: white farmers in Matobo

In another paper, also based on research from Matobo, Adrian Nel explores what white farmers have done since land reform. Compared to other parts of the country during the land invasions there were more ‘protected’ farms, with farmers being allowed to stay. This emerged because such farmers had good relationships with local communities through on-going projects and being members or leaders of the same Christian church communities.

This again is different to some other parts of the country where white farming was often very separated, geographically, economically and politically. The greater integration in Matabeleland reflects the struggles for establishing livelihoods in a harsh environment and the need for collaboration and alliance making. As the paper explores, these forms of accommodation have persisted since land reform among some farms. As in the past, there were others who dropped out as the economics of farming post 2000 became too challenging and others. Also some have pushed back against the land reform, pursuing various legal cases as part of the more militant section of commercial farmers.

The paper concentrates on those who have adapted, accommodated and developed conciliatory approaches. Some label them as ‘sell-outs’ or ‘enablers’, but they are seen to be pragmatic, committed to farming and the communities they live with. When one farm was targeted for grabbing by a security official from outside the area, the locals resisted and in the end the white farmer, who had a large Christian led community project on his farm, combined with outreach activities and a huge contract broiler project, was allowed to stay thanks to interventions from the highest level.

Others have abandoned their farms (some with great relief given the travails) and taken up new business activities linked to local farming activities, very often moving up the value chain to set up abattoirs, butcheries, feedlots and other wildlife/hunting businesses. As one large operator explained he continues to run some animals through rental agreements, but mostly sources from local producers and fattens animals in a large feedlot for his abattoir and butchery, which is much easier and more profitable he explains than producing yourself.

With Andrew Hartnack, Rory Pilosoff and others, the paper argues for the need to go beyond a simplistic ‘homogenising’ view of whiteness. Those who remained distance themselves from other whites, and need to build new local alliances to survive. This results in new ‘becomings’ linked to diverse subjectivities, reconstituting the imaginary of whiteness as collaborative and conciliatory. Like their black neighbours, their identity is centrally-focused on making a living in a harsh environment, sometimes reinforced by strong and shared Christian religious values.

Living with and from uncertainty

The agrarian landscape of Matabeleland has changed massively since 2000. But there are important continuities with the past. Making a living in this area is tough, and requires flexibility, innovation, movement and diversification. As in the past, this requires collaboration and alliance-building in ways that allow all people – whether small-scale A1 plot owners, A2 medium-scale farmers or remaining white farmers – to live with and from uncertainty.

Livestock production: the limits of extensive systems in Zimbabwe

As the previous blog described, the communal area sites we have been studying in Masvingo rarely produced sufficient crops to cover even subsistence needs, and then if so only very occasionally, as with the Mwenezi experience in 2016-17. So what about livestock production?

Given its drought-prone nature, Masvingo province is known as cattle-keeping country. Many of the former white-owned farms were large ranches, often covering vast areas with very few stock. Communal area people were able to make use of this to poach graze and supplement the limited grazing in their own areas. Now with resettlement farms surrounding them, communal areas are more hemmed in. Although in the early 2000s there was surplus grazing in the new resettlements as people settled and carved out fields, this is much less the case now. Indeed, in responses to questions about interactions with nearby resettlement areas, conflicts over grazing (and also thatch grass and fuelwood) came top in the ranking by our communal area respondents.

This means that extensive livestock production is constrained in communal areas, perhaps even more so than in the past. Before the 2000 land reform sometimes negotiations were made with nearby (white) farmers, especially during drought, for access to grazing, but more often herders risked poach grazing, and occasionally suffered the consequences of the confiscation of herds and arrests. However, given the scarcity of grazing in the communal areas, it was worth it.

What happens now? Of course poach grazing persists, hence the recording of frequent conflicts, but also there are quite a few loan arrangements that facilitate access to grazing as animals are loaned to relatives or friends in the resettlements. They then have the benefit of the draft power, manure and milk, and (sometimes) the occasional offspring in exchange, while the owner keeps the animals alive and breeding. This was a very common pattern in the first decade of resettlement after 2000; however as settlers have built up their own herds, and the connections to their ‘home’ areas have faded, they are increasingly reluctant to take on communal area livestock. From our sample, loaning out was absent in the two Gutu sites, but still persisting in Mwenezi.

As the table below shows, with the exception of Mwenezi, our communal area sites could not be described as major livestock production areas. Indeed, over a third of households hold no cattle at all, and are reliant on sharing of others’ for draft power (see previous blog). Outside Mwenezi, smallstock holdings are small, and donkeys, pigs and broilers are rare.an purchase regularly. This was only 6-9% of households in the sites outside Mwenezi, where 23% had purchased cattle in the previous five years.

	Mwenezi	Chivi	Gutu West	Gutu North
Cattle held per household (N)	7.6	4.0	3.1	3.7
Loaned in (N)	1	0.5	0.5	0.4
Loaned out (N)	1.7	0.2	0	0
Above zero cattle (%)	64	66	51	61
Above ten cattle (%)	22	8	6	7.3
Cattle purchased in last 5 years (% of households)	23	8	6	9
Cattle sold in last year (%)	41	6	14	15
Cattle milk sales (%)	24	2	0	0
Goat (N)	7.9	1.8	2	2
Sheep (N)	0.8	0.1	0.5	0
Smallstock sold in last year (% of households)	44	8	14	5
Donkey (N)	1.3	0.3	0.2	0.1
Pig (N)	0.9	0	0.1	0.1
Broiler %	2	9	5	0
Broiler contract (% of households)	1	0	0	0
Herding labour hire (%)	7	4	1	2
Feed inputs (%)	7	0	5	19
Vet inputs %	30	20	23	19

 

Perhaps only Mwenezi could be described as a livestock system based on production, with a relatively large average cattle (7.6, ranging from zero up to 105) and goat (7.9, ranging from 0 to 60) holdings, and regular sales and purchases. Although more than the other sites, there is still very limited labour hired explicitly for herding (only 7% of households). Cattle milk sales are also recorded here from those with larger breeding herds. This is not surprising given the dry conditions of the area, and the extensive, relatively high quality sweet grazing available. While the bumper sorghum harvest in the years of our study was unusual, livestock production can provide a regular income.

This contrasts with all the other sites where average cattle holdings averaged 3-4; just about enough to maintain a draft span, and provide some transport, manure and milk, but sales and purchase are comparatively much lower. When sales occur, these are usually emergency sales for school fees, medical expenses or a funeral. Replacements are by-and-large through births within the herd, and these are infrequent because of the small herd size and the age/sex composition, which is geared towards older oxen for draft rather than a breeding herd.

Limited intensification

You might expect, with constrained grazing, there would be a shift to more intensified production – for example stall feeding with purchased feed. There is some evidence this is happening to a small extent in Gutu North, where 19% are purchasing feed, but most of this is at a very small level, and largely supplements. In other areas, this is not a phenomenon except for a few who will buy in to support calves or pregnant cows. Contract arrangements for livestock production have not taken off in these areas, which would be another way of financing feed and other inputs for a more intensified alternative. Only a few in Mwenezi are linked to a contract broiler arrangement with a local farm.

With the collapse of state veterinary services in recent years, and the poor quality of dipping chemicals, there has been a rise in tick diseases across the country. This has meant that those with resources purchase spray dip chemicals for private spraying. Some also recorded buying veterinary medicines for sick animals. A quarter to a third of households – those with larger, more valuable herds and flocks – invest in this way, and have learned to cope without state services. The rest remain vulnerable and deaths from a variety of tick-borne diseases are regularly recorded, especially in wetter years.

In sum, outside Mwenezi, despite Masvingo’s former reputation, these are largely not livestock production areas today. Cattle are kept for multiple uses, notably as inputs to agriculture which, despite poor results, is still seen as the core activity. Land areas are constrained in the communal areas with notional grazing areas often occupied by settlements and farms, or very heavily used and so degraded. This is very different to the situation in the past, and in other parts of the country further west in Matabeleland and southern Midlands, where a more livestock-based economy exists, more akin to that found in Mwenezi and the Lowveld areas.

Contrasts with the resettlement areas?

The A1 resettlement areas nearby are not that different. Here cattle are kept primarily as an input to agriculture, for draft power and manure, with milk, meat and live sales being bonuses, and sales key for emergencies. The herd is seen a stable savings account, which, given the volatility of the economy, makes much sense. Yet the herd size is mostly too small to allow for the possibility of making a regular living. In the A1 resettlement areas too, pressure on land is increasing. In 2000, there was plenty of spare grazing, but now more people have arrived, lands have been subdivided and grazing areas are being encroached. With more fields and settlement, the need to for herding labour during the cropping season increases, but labour is scarce and expensive, and relatively few invest in dedicated herding labour, as with the communal area sites. In other words, unlike for crop agriculture, livestock production in the resettlement and communal areas is more similar.

The big exception is broiler production, which, as a project for younger family members and women, has taken off across the new resettlements. Sometimes this is supported by contracting arrangements, but usually it is independent, financed by surplus income from agriculture and off-farm sources. The difference here is the availability of cash for investment. In the communal areas this is rare, and many are living hand to mouth. Occasionally an aid project will come along, but these are sporadic and often last just a few years. For most communal area households usually there’s not enough surplus to do much more than keep going. This is different in a significant proportion (not all by any means – see other blogs) of resettlement households, where accumulation from agriculture can be invested elsewhere and investment drives further investment in process of stepping out (diversifying) and up (accumulating) of livelihoods.

Once again, land redistribution and the opportunities for accumulation that this offers provides the basis for enhanced livelihoods. But this is constrained for land extensive production activities such as with livestock. Former white farmers had hundreds if not thousands of hectares and managed to make a reasonable (but not always very good) living from livestock ranching. With a more equitable distribution of land this is no longer an option, and more intensive approaches to production – broilers, piggeries, stall-feeding and so on – become the priorities outside the areas like Mwenezi with good grazing and land surplus. Such investments, though, need cash, and this is in very short supply, with limited other options in the communal areas as the next blog will discuss.

This post is the fifth in a series of nine and was written by Ian Scoones and first appeared on Zimbabweland.

This field research was led by Felix Murimbarimba and Jacob Mahenehene. Data entry was undertaken by Tafadzwa Mavedzenge

Photo credit: Tapiwa Chatikobo

Models for integrated resource assessment: biases and uncertainties

What are the most appropriate ways of understanding changes in natural resource change in rural areas, particularly in the context of climate change? How can we make use of data that is patchy and uncertain? How can models help decision-making about future management?

These questions are at the heart of three recently published journal articles on Zimbabwe. The three papers focus respectively on climate impacts on livestock feed (in Nkayi), land use intensity patterns (in Wedza) and the prevalence of grass fires (in Mazowe). What connects them is the use of remotely-sensed data on land use with an integrated modelling approach, aimed at policy prescriptions for resource management.

This style of research on natural resource use has become more and more common in recent years, as increasingly detailed data derived from satellite systems has become freely available. Integrated assessment models, modelling everything from climate impacts to crop production to land-use to water scarcity, can be linked to geo-referenced spatial data and parameterised with field-based data collection.

As a style of inquiry, integrated modelling approaches have a number of advantages. Diverse data sources can be combined, and predictions made around key policy issues. But there are also problems – and, in different ways, these three papers illuminate some of them.

Five problems with integrated resource assessment modelling

First, models are always framed by assumptions around problems and solutions. Each of these studies adopts a particular stance, resulting in recommendations for interventions to address the highlighted problem. So, climate change results in feed gaps for livestock, which can be solved by ‘climate smart’ adaptation measures in Nkayi. High land use intensity – excessive extraction of primary production – means that ‘hot spots’ of land degradation ‘externalities’ can be identified for intervention measures in Wedza. Increasing fire frequencies are assumed to be universally a bad thing, not a necessary consequence land clearance or a reflection of natural cycles in savannah dynamics, as fuel load builds up. Instead, recommendations, including the deployment of fire teams, creating fire-breaks and developing monitoring systems, are put forward for Mazowe.

Second, the uncertainties embedded in complex models are legion, meaning that any predictions have to be heavily qualified. These papers all acknowledge important uncertainties. In the assessment of land use intensity against a baseline of net primary production in Wedza, these arise, for example, from problems of estimating primary production in the baseline case, especially below-ground. Linking biomass harvesting to specific areas when livestock move is also recognised as a source of uncertainty. In the analysis of climate impacts on fodder management options in Nkayi, the uncertainties surrounding climate predictions across scenarios is acknowledged, and the model in turn is developed with parameters that are constrained within a ‘reasonable range of uncertainty’. Yet, by the end of the papers, important uncertainties are seemingly put aside in the desire to reach a definitive conclusion for the way forward. The apparent need for prediction, directions for ‘decision-making’ and control-oriented intervention are all-consuming.

Third, the style of argument too often leads to a closing down of discussion of more diverse options. All three papers are structured in the standard way of scientific papers, with propositions tested according to a set of methods, leading to results and conclusions. In the methods section, the qualifications, imperfections and uncertainties are duly noted. But, by the time the results are presented, around a particular quantitative model, such difficult issues are quietly put to the background. By the time of the conclusions, they have all but disappeared, and much stronger causal, predictive statements offer a definitive way forward, frequently hinted at by the original framing. For example, a model of land use intensity Wedza, focused on the extraction of net primary productivity, inevitably side-steps questions of how landscapes are understood, and how future resource use is seen by different groups of people. The social and political dynamics of change are not part of the storyline, despite the attempt to link resource use with different wealth groups.

Fourth, models are only models – simplified ways of thinking about the world – and they certainly can be helpful in thinking through options. But sometimes the assumptions just don’t make sense. Models to have any purchase need some ground-truthing, and some stress-testing with reality. The paper on grass fires shows clearly that there are no statistically significant differences across tenure types in fire frequency and extent. In other words, land reform farmers cannot be blamed, but without field based data, the paper is unable to explain the patterns, and instead uses a model that extrapolates future patterns from the past. In respect of fire, this is rather unlikely – fires due to land clearing will decline as farms and fields are established, while hunting will decline as game animal populations are eliminated. As a result, the regression-based models become detached from likely future realities. Instead, the regressions play a political role: by extrapolating increases in fires, they justify a set of externally-defined interventions.

Finally, the rush to a definitive recommendation for policy too often results in missing out on complex system dynamics, histories and contexts. The paper in this trio on livestock fodder systems, for example, assumes that the ‘feed gap’ will be filled by improved fodder quantity and quality, including the growing of fodder crops and the application of fertiliser to crops to improve stover. And this in dryland Nkayi? Surely not. The paper acknowledges that past attempts at improved fodder management have consistently failed, but does not probe why in the rush to provide an intervention-friendly recommendation aligned with a ‘climate-smart’ intervention narrative.

Styles of science: how to broaden out inquiry and open up debate

All three of these papers make important arguments and present significant data. They all have been peer-reviewed in respectable journals (Agricultural Systems, Ecological Economics and Geocarto International). The data is (mostly) of high quality, the models are consistent (if problematic) and the arguments are clearly made (although open to challenge). But reading these (and these are only exemplars of many, many others, perhaps rather unfairly singled out), the five wider concerns raised above kept coming back.

It makes me uneasy when a style of science closes down debate. Uncertainties are not embraced and alternative interpretations are not given space. An assumption that the end-point must be a science-based ‘smart’ intervention means other possibilities – more social, political for example – are not countenanced. This is less a critique of the particular methods and models, but more the style of policy-oriented science, centred on integrated assessment modelling, now central to a huge industry of ‘global change’ research.

What might an alternative approach look like? Modelling that takes uncertainty seriously would not close down to definitive solutions, but would aim to open debates up. Models that are interrogated with deep, field-based data, thus triangulating between modelling approaches, result in greater robustness and wider interpretation. When reading the papers, I had to ask: are there alternatives to new fodder regimes and crop fertilisation to address the consequences of climate change on livestock production in Nkayi? Of course there are! Does fire management have to be focused always on fire prevention; are fires always bad? Of course not! But such alternatives were not debated.

Suggesting diverse, alternative options for the future – different interpretations and solutions from an open approach to data, evidence and integrated assessment modelling – allows for an engaged, inevitably political debate, about what makes sense for whom. This would make for papers that are less neat, but perhaps ultimately more useful.

This is the fourth of a short series of blogs profiling recent papers on Zimbabwe.

This post was written by Ian Scoones and first appeared on Zimbabweland. Photo credit: Ian Scoones

Food security in Zimbabwe: why a more sophisticated response is needed

The food security situation in Zimbabwe – and indeed across large swathes of southern Africa – is serious. El Niño has struck hard and production levels this past season were well down. The UN estimates that in Zimbabwe alone 4.1 million people – 42% of the rural population – will be in need of support before the next season. Aid agencies are raising funds and are involved in a major humanitarian operation (see WFP and USAID, for example).

We are now entering the most difficult period. Between September and March, when early ‘green’ crops become available, the food situation will be tough, and many will be reliant on handouts and purchased imported food. Disposal of livelihood assets is already occurring and FEWSNET predicts that large parts of southern Zimbabwe will be in ‘emergency’ conditions, together with parts of Mozambique and Malawi.

There is little doubt that the harvests this year were really poor. And this was on the back of a bad season last year. This means that stocks are low and funds circulating in the local, rural economy limited. I do not want to question for a minute the severity of the situation, but I do want to challenge the way it is being portrayed, and ask whether this allows for the most effective targeting of those really in need.

Data challenges

For Zimbabwe the basic data comes from the annual ZimVac report, complemented by various crop surveys. ZimVac, as discussed on this blog before, is a major survey based on a sample of 14,434 rural households across 60 districts. Enumeration areas are chosen across districts and samples selected based  on population density estimates from the most recent population census. It assesses food production, cash income, livestock and so on, and comes up with a food access estimate, based on a daily 2100 k Calorie intake requirement during the consumption year to 31 March. Those unable to meet food needs through a range of sources are deemed to be in deficit and in need of support. This is where the 4.1 million figure comes from – the number of people estimated to be in this situation at the end of March 2017 (even if just for a day).

But as discussed before on this blog, these estimates may miss out on certain aspects. For example, In April, when visiting field sites in some areas hit badly by drought, I was surprised how much maize was being produced in home gardens and around settlements this year. While the main field crop had failed, more intensive production near the home. Sometimes involving supplementary irrigation, and certainly higher inputs of organic fertiliser, home garden areas were producing maize, including substantial quantities of green mealies. These crops rarely get noticed in the larger censuses as they focus on the main field crop, but added up these can be significant, although of course totals are way down on other years.

The other missing story relates to livestock. This year there were major concerns that the El Niño drought would decimate livestock. There were significant die-offs early on, but thankfully sporadic rains fell in February. This was too late for most crops, but it did replenish grass and water sources in many parts of the country, including those drought prone areas of Masvingo and Matabeleland that were suffering livestock mortalities. This turn-around will have had major impacts on food provisioning in these areas in the absence of harvests. There were entrepreneurs buying up animals in numbers and this was a ready source of cash for many. Many livestock were moved to resettlement areas where there is more plentiful grass due to (currently) lower population densities. The high livestock populations in resettlement areas, particularly in southern districts, adds to their food security resilience.

Livestock and their movement is often forgotten in food security assessments (ZimVac covers elements of this, but it’s complex, and difficult to capture in large surveys). Along with the importance of green mealies, other ‘famine’ crops, and the range of (often illegal) coping strategies that people employ mean that successful food provisioning is far more extensive than the UN agencies suggest.

While the data is broken down by district, it is not differentiated by the type land tenure and use. We do not get a sense of the differential vulnerabilities of, for example, communal area dwellers, those with A1 or A2 farms, villagised or self-contained, nor workers linked to such rural households. We know from extensive research that rural communities are highly differentiated, both within and between sites. At the moment we get a very blunt assessment, district by district. The report lists the ten best-off and worse-off districts, for example. Some of the districts where we work, where there was more land redistribution, both in the Highveld and further south, are in the better-off areas. Does this mean land reform areas are less food insecure? We cannot tell from ZimVac data as presented.

A more complex pattern: why land reform is not to blame

There are hints though that a more complex pattern sits below the aggregate numbers. The ZimVac summary report (p. 150) shows that nationally only 11% of households will be food secure this year based on their own cereal crop production. This is even lower in drought-prone areas, such as Masvingo, for example. On aggregate 58% of the national rural population will be food secure through the consumption season, but this is made up through access to income from a variety of sources, not just food production. How do these aggregate figures match up with data from the new resettlement areas?

We’ve been tracking food production in our study areas in Masvingo for some years. In our sites in Masvingo and Gutu districts for example across the harvest seasons from 2003 to 2013, between 44% and 69% of households produced enough for household consumption (estimated at 1 MT). In the Wondezo extension A1 site in Masvingo, farmers produced on average 2 MT in 2014 and over 6 MT in 2015, with 85% and 89% producing sufficient from maize alone for household consumption in those years. In our A1 resettlement sites in Mazowe, over 5 years between 2010 and 2014 seasons the average household maize production was 3.5 MT, declining over time as tobacco production increased. This means that on average 78% of households produced more than a tonne of maize in each year, and were food secure from own-farm production alone. This of course does not account for the significant cash income from tobacco in Mazowe (realising nearly $3000 per household on average across A1 farms between 2010 and 14), or vegetable production and livestock in Masvingo, along with other sources of income.

In other words, the ZimVac sample must be very different. 11 per cent this year (and higher but still low figures in other years) having sufficient food from own production is way lower than in our admittedly much smaller samples in the resettlements. In our areas, consistently over time and across sites, we do not see the level of food insecurity recorded by the ZimVac surveys – although of course it exists in pockets, among certain vulnerable people. There are of course communal areas nearby our A1 sites where the situation is quite different, and it is probably from here that the ZimVac data derives. Our comparisons with communal areas showed the contrasts, with resettlement areas outperforming communal areas across the board. But without any differentiated national food security data, it is difficult to make sense of the aggregates generated by standard crop assessments and livelihood surveys.

This food security crisis therefore is not the result of land reform as some would have it (as I keep telling journalists who ask; here’s an example from a Dutch daily that offered a more sophisticated take). Other countries in the region have suffered badly from the same drought, and Zimbabwe has before, long before the post 2000 land reform. In fact, land reform areas are an important part of why the actual underlying situation is better than it might be. My hunch – still not tested despite much encouragement – is that ZimVac’s sampling frame (appropriately for a national sample that is proportional to population density) is focused on communal areas. This means that the dynamics of the new resettlements in the food economy are being missed out on.

As reported many times on this blog, we see significant flows of food and other finance coming from the A1 resettlement areas, both to communal areas and to urban centres, through kin networks and labour migrancy. This is unrecorded and therefore not accounted for. My guess is that it is really significant in the overall food security story in the country, and taking account of land reform in the wider assessment would allow a redirection of effort by humanitarian and development agencies to support production for boosting local food security and economies, investing where the potential lies.

There is no reason for complacency though. Things could and should be much better, with proper investment. For example, the lack of irrigation infrastructure (and its state of repair, and its poor functioning due to intermittent electricity supplies) is a cause for major concern, and undermines resilience

The politics of food aid: why a more targeted approach is needed

Food aid is of course is highly political. It always has been, and accusations of partisan allocations have occurred again this year. Many are happy not to rely on the obligations and patronage that food aid implies – whether to the party-state or NGOs – and seek their own way. But there are some who are really destitute, without the networks that provide support. They are really needy and include a lot of people, but it’s certainly not 4.1 million. They include widows or older parents without living children, child-headed households, farm labourers, those with illness and disability, for example.

They all need help, as existing provisioning and coping strategies are insufficient. They are scattered all across the country – including in the high potential, richer areas within communities who are otherwise prospering, and are difficult to find. These are the people who need food, and would be a better focus for a more sophisticated, targeted approach to relief, which could combine with a more strategic developmental approach to increase production and market led economic development across communal, resettlement and urban areas.

This post was written by Ian Scoones and appeared on Zimbabweland

The El Niño drought hits livestock hard in Zimbabwe

The El Niño drought is hitting hard this year. Livestock in particular are suffering, as grass and water are scarce. Some fear that it could be as bad as 1991-92 when around a million cattle died. To date some 7000 cattle mortalities have been recorded, the majority of which have been in Masvingo province, as well as Matabeleland. Government and aid agencies are encouraging farmers to destock, urging people to buy supplementary feed to save breeding stock. Drought task teams have been established in the affected provinces, and emergency feedlots are being established. It is a very serious situation. As perhaps the most valuable asset that most people have, losing herds can be devastating for livelihoods and recovery takes many years. Some small showers have recently improved grass conditions in some places, but the amount of fodder available is clearly grossly inadequate to see animals through the long dry season across the coming months.

Livestock in the 1991-92 drought

In this blog I again draw on work we carried out in 1991-92 in Chivi communal area, and is reported in the book, Hazards and Opportunities. During 1991-92 overall cattle survival among our sample was only 41%. This was the case for both large and small herd owners, with no significant relationships being shown between pre-drought herd sizes and survival rates. As now, it was a widespread drought, with all areas and all people affected. By the end of the drought 68% of households had no cattle at all, up from 55% before the drought. Drought recovery took years, and it was only by the late 1990s that herds had reached pre drought levels.

Herd composition is also affected by drought, and in turn affects the recovery dynamics. The table below shows the composition in the Chivi sample, pre and post 1991-92 drought. Cows were especially badly affected (particularly those with calves), although heifers survived better, and were the basis of post-drought recovery.

 

Cattle type	Pre-drought (N = 583) %	Post-drought (N = 247) %
Bull	8.1	6.5
Oxen	22.5	17.8
Cow	34.5	21.9
Steer	5.7	8.1
Heifer	20.8	37.7
Male Calf	2.7	2.4
Female Calf	5.8	5.7

 

 

The pattern of response among Chivi herds during 1991-92 is shown in the Table below. This differentiates between two phases of the drought: the early period before December 1992 and the later phase after this time and before the end of 1992.

RESPONSE	Period 1 (N=64) %	Period 2 (N=48) %
Illegal grazing	9.7	25.0
Movement out	29.0	35.4
Leasing	14.1	10.4
Commercial feed	16.1	14.6
Pods and hay	3.2	4.2
Cut & carry grass	12.5	4.3
Tree products	100.0	100.0
Crop residues	34.4	2.1

Movement out of the area was a vital strategy. However it took on a different form to earlier droughts. Data from the 1982-84 drought and the impact on cattle survival in Mazvihwa, Zvishavane district collected during my PhD studies (Scoones 1992), show how early movement was crucial to overall survival.

Strategy	Description of movement	% survival	N   (herds)
A	Out of area (c. November 1982)	40.1	287
B	Out of the area in the dry season (Aug-Oct 1993)	22.9	402
C	No movement outside area	3.3	181

But by contrast to 1982-84, movement had less of an impact in 1991-92. Cattle were moved from Chivi to a variety of sites during late 1991. In the first part of the drought, 29% of herds were moved out of their home area to another site within the communal lands. By the second part of drought this had risen to over 35%. Illegal grazing outside the communal area (in resettlement areas or commercial farms) represented another type of movement. Nearly 10% of herds had been moved to such sites in the first period of drought and by the second period a quarter of all herds were using illegal grazing. However, the drought’s impact was so extensive and so dramatic that movement within a large radius was pointless. Animals that had been moved earlier got stranded, unable to benefit from the micro-management afforded to cattle resident at home kraals

During 1991-92, the largest cause of mortality was death due to starvation or extreme water shortage (47.7%). A significant number of animals were slaughtered just prior to death through poverty in order to salvage some meat for local consumption or sale (30.3%). Low nutritional status is linked with disease susceptibility and a number of animals died either directly from illness or were slaughtered because of disease (4.5%). Extensive searching for food required animals to wander far. This meant that a number were permanently lost; either they died while out foraging or they were stolen (5.7%). Foraging also had to take place in dangerous places (road edges, mountains, river banks) and a number of cattle died due to accidents (7.2%). Only very few animals (4.5%) were purposefully slaughtered.

The pattern observed during 1991-92 parallels that in previous droughts. Due to the fact that cattle are considerably more valuable live (for draft power, manure, milk etc.) than dead (sale value), there are very strong incentives to try and maintain live stock. Destocking is a risky option as the terms of sale during drought and repurchase following drought are not favourable to the herd owner. The costs of not having animals available to plough in the rainy season (assuming rains came) is so high that most farmers retain their stock as long as possible. No matter how much the government or the NGOs beseeched livestock owners to destock, they didn’t, and the rationale was clear.

The 1991-92 drought mortalities meant that much restocking during the 1990s was with mixed breeds, or animals purchased from commercial ranches. During the land reform, breeds got mixed even more, with the hardy indigenous Shona, Tuli and other breeds being diluted in the nation’s genetic stock. Indigenous breeds are well known to be able to survive off mixed diets of grass and browse and can survive without water for long periods. By contrast the larger, grass-dependent ‘improved’ breeds’ condition quickly deteriorates when grazing and water is scarce. In many respects, Zimbabwe’s cattle herds are less resilient than they were before.

What lessons can be drawn?

First, flexible movement is key, and restrictions imposed by veterinary controls can result in major increases in mortality. However illegal movement to underutilised commercial ranches is now not possible, nor is lease grazing on ranches. Most of these areas are now resettled as part of the land reform. Movement to the new resettlements from the communal areas has been a regular feature of the past 15 years, as have new relationships being struck with A2 farms. Relief grazing on state land is also vital, and so making access to state farms, military land and national partks will be important. These strategies will be crucial for herd survival in the coming months, and need to be encouraged and facilitated.

Second, access to water is almost as important as grazing, and in the past many animals perished from thirst rather than starvation (although usually a combination). A focused public works programme that invested in rehabilitating water sources, including pumping from dry rivers, establishment of mifuku, and so on, could be a highly productive investment.

Third, supplementary feeding is vital, especially for maintaining a core breeding herd. In the early 1990s there were not so many agrodealers, and certainly very few out in the rural areas. This has changed, and means that the purchase of blocks and other supplementary feeds has become much easier. People also have experience of using such sources of feed now, and will likely make much more use of them this year than in the past. Ensuring market supply, and offering subsidised options, may be a good investment.

Fourth, encouraging people to sell animals early as part of a destocking campaign has been a failure in the past, and is likely to be so again. While some richer A2 and A1 farmers, with other sources of income, and no reliance on draft animals for ploughing, may opt for destocking sales, most will only sell when animals are already virtually dead. Those with access to land, water and feed may take advantage of such poverty sales and buy up animals for rehabilitation and later fattening. Here the role of A2 farmers may become important, compared to the past.

The costs of losing herds is devastating as we saw in the early 1990s. The impacts are felt for years, undermining agricultural production and livelihoods. Ensuring that mortalities are reduced, and that animals survive is essential, but it seems the efforts being invested now are too little, too late; and sadly making the same mistakes of the past.

This post was written by Ian Scoones and first appeared on Zimbabweland

The crop bias in resettlement: why pastoralists in Matabeleland are losing out

Discussion of livelihoods after land reform in Zimbabwe has been dominated by studies from Mashonaland, focusing particularly on crop production. Few studies have explored land reform in Matabeland, particularly in the pastoral livestock-keeping areas of Matabeland South. This is why the work of Clifford Mabhena is really important. His 2010 Fort Hare thesis, ‘Visible Hectares, Vanishing Livelihoods’ was based on extended fieldwork in Gwanda and Umzingwane districts. He argues that by focusing on settlement and crop production – the Mashonaland model – resettlement has availed more land, but not improved livelihoods, especially of pastoral livestock owners. A paper in the Journal of Contemporary African Studies came out last year which summarises the story.

Since the 1980s, resettlement has not seen huge success in the dry zones of Matabeleland (see Joss Alexander’s 1991 paper, The unsettled land). The sign-up for 1980s ‘Model A’ schemes was limited, and the attempt to design a livestock-oriented approach through the Model D scheme was largely a failure. Planners simply did not understand the nature of local livestock systems – the importance of seasonal transhumance (lagisa), loaning systems, and how livestock were managed across households, for example. The imposition of the ‘rectangular grid’ of standard settlement schemes – with the echoes of colonial planning – were widely resented and resisted, as Steve Robins described in the 1990s. Fences were cut and paddock grazing abandoned in favour of more flexible systems.

In the pastoral settings of southern Matabeleland there is perhaps an even greater, but rather different, pattern of livelihood differentiation, with (male) livestock keepers sometimes with huge herds, being the really ‘big men’ of local society, while others – younger men, women and poorer non-livestock owners – sought out other livelihoods, involving migration, mining and collection of wild products, as well as crop farming when the rains were good. In the past, the narrow ownership of livestock had benefits more broadly through kin and village connections, as well as offering employment through herding. But these benefits were mediated through complex social relations, involving sharing and loaning, that have declined and were never seen as being embedded in resettlement models. These were based instead on the notion of the individual plot holder and mixed farmer, settled permanently in villages, and without the need to move and access grazing in distant places.

As pastoral studies across the world have shown, in dry areas with variable rainfall, flexible movement is essential, as are ‘key resources’ that allow dry season grazing to sustain herds in times of dearth (see the book I edited in 1994 – Living with Uncertainty – for example) . Just as in the classic examples of transhumant and nomadic pastoralism of East and West Africa, in Matabeleland there had always been a locally adapted version based on the same principles of flexibility and mobility. Over time, as so many other places, this had been undermined, as land was removed and barriers to movement imposed. But nevertheless Matabeleland pastoralists made use of key resource grazing along the Shashe and Thuli rivers, and moved to gain relief grazing in ranches and wildlife areas. With the violence of the 1980s in the region, many large scale ranches were abandoned releasing grazing for those with large herds in the communal areas. As many pointed out, the problem in the communal areas was not too many people, but too many livestock, so the demand was for more grazing, that many were able to gain through various forms of leasing and poaching – all allowing some form of grazing flexibility to be maintained.

The post 2000 resettlements changed this. The ranches were carved up into A1 and A2 plots and handed out to beneficiaries. In the A2 plots, well connected people often benefited but the areas were too small for really effective livestock farming in such a harsh climate. In A1 areas, land was handed to often poorer people from the communal areas, with the intention that they become crop farmers. The farms however have often not flourished due to drought, and compared to the increasingly crowded communal areas, there are few livestock.

As Mabhena argues, there has been a mismatch between local needs and the design of resettlement models. The one-size-fits-all model from Mashonaland has not worked. He argues “the obsession of the Mugabe government with the redistribution of land as an end in itself rather than with the creation of viable rural livelihood options for rural people has led to a collapse of policymaking in the rural sector, especially in relation to the pastoral economy”. As Mr Nkomo, one of Mabhena’s informants from the communal areas explained:

“We used to lease graze or even grazed our livestock freely during the dissidents’ era in some of these farms… but the state has settled people there. Where do they expect us to graze our livestock? Furthermore most of those resettled are strangers and own very few livestock”.

 The JCAS paper concludes:

 “Land redistribution is a programme capable of enhancing rural livelihoods if the state identifies the interests of beneficiaries before deciding on the peoples’ interests brings a danger of embarking on programmes and projects that do not address the needs of the local people and are not sustainable. People of southern Matabeleland are pastoralists and therefore could enhance their livelihoods if more land is made available for grazing than for village settlement distribution model. Misreading the landscape and misrepresenting peoples’ interests brings a danger of embarking on programmes and projects that do not address the needs of the local people and are not sustainable….There is a real desire at the local level to make agrarian livelihoods work better but the state’s ‘one size fits all’ land reform programme focusing on agrarian reform through crop production has impacted negatively on livestock production and other livestock related livelihoods”.

 The crop bias in agricultural extension and land use planning in Zimbabwe has existed for decades. It has marginalised a vitally important element of the production system, and resulted in the imposition of measures that rarely work in the context of complex livestock production systems – whether attempts at ‘improved breeding’ or ‘paddocked grazing schemes’. This huge blindspot has major consequences in the drier parts of the country, and particularly Matabeleland where livelihoods are based on pastoral production. There clearly is a need for a major rethink of resettlement models for Matabeleland: a lesson that really should have been learned years ago through past failures resulting from inappropriate impositions.

This post was written by Ian Scoones and appeared first on Zimbabweland