Make farming a career
Last week, we saw how the choice of a livestock stocking rate on a farm is such an important range management practice. This is because the wrong stocking rate can so easily lead to overgrazing and environmental degradation. This week, we will discuss how cattle farmers can adopt more environmentally friendly methods of range management.
In recent years, government has emphasised the need for our farmers to see farming as a commercial, or economic activity; in other words, as a business rather than simply seeing it as a way of putting food on the table for the farmer and his family and fulfilling a social role. So, we need a change in the national mindset. But there is one problem – the average age of our farmers is 58 years and this means that such farmers have been working on the land for a very long time and so are fixed in their ways.
Therefore, to develop the agricultural sector, we need to encourage young people to take up farming as a career. And they will be more likely to view farming as a business and a way of making a living than older people. Although young people today may face challenges such as a lack of training and access to affordable funding, the recent establishment of the Ministry of Entrepreneurship may go some way to overcoming these hurdles. And in recent years, the Junior Certificate of Education Agriculture syllabus has been modified so as to include a new major topic – agribusiness. Here pupils learn about making business plans, how to set up a business, how to budget, keep records and many other aspects that are so essential to the running of a successful farm. We need to create an enterprise culture!
A commercial farmer needs to make a profit in order to stay in business. And with training and improved access to funding, he will be more likely to carry out good range management practices and so reduce environmental degradation on his farm and improve livestock productivity; make a profit and keep his bank manager happy!
There are two ways of tackling the problem of overgrazing; firstly, to improve the rangeland condition, and secondly, to prevent the problem from occurring in the first place. Prevention is better than cure! But since overgrazing has already seriously ravaged most of our livestock farming areas, then in most cases farmers will be forced to improve range condition. Now that’s a tall order, but anything is possible if farmers have the determination, dedication and discipline to change things for the better.
Farmers can improve their rangelands in the following ways. However, some of these methods may be unpopular but the state of our rangelands calls for drastic measures if we are to see agriculture become a leading force in Botswana’s economic development. Firstly, destocking, which simply means reducing the size of our cattle herds. This may be achieved through offtake; this is expressed as a percentage of a farmer’s herd that is removed from the veld during the course of one year. One example is if animals are culled or sold to the Botswana Meat Commission abattoir in Lobatse. Let us say that a farmer has 500 head of cattle on January 1st and at the end of the year, December 31st, he has 490 head of cattle. This means that his herd has decreased by only ten animals, or by 2 percent. So, we say that the offtake rate for that year is two percent. Now that is a very low offtake rate and will do little to improve range condition by increasing the amount of grazing. Therefore, we need to increase the offtake rate; an offtake rate of over 15 percent will do much more to provide more grazing for our animals.
Farmers can also introduce rotational grazing on their farms. Here the farmer will divide his land into fenced paddocks. From time to time he will move his animals from one paddock to the next to allow the grazed paddocks to recover before being grazed again. For example, he may divide his farm into five paddocks and allow his animals to graze in each one for two weeks. This means that the animals may graze for two weeks in the first paddock, paddock A. After these two weeks have elapsed, the animals will be removed and will then graze for two weeks in each of the four remaining paddocks – B, C, D and E. This means that paddock A will have eight weeks in which to recover and for grasses to grow again and set seed before the animals are allowed to move back in. But for this method to be effective, the farmer has to ensure that animals have access to water and supplementary feed in each paddock.
Cattle are responsible for most of the overgrazing in Botswana. For this reason, farmers can practice mixed stocking by rearing cattle with other types of livestock, such as goats. Since goats are browsers and so feed on the leaves of woody plants, rather than grass, then there will be less overgrazing. The introduction of goats will also help reduce bush encroachment. Goats are also more drought resistant than most breeds of cattle and so can survive better than cattle when grazing is scarce.
Botswana receives rain only in summer and so there is a long dry season that may last from April to October. If the rainy season has been a good one, then there will be a lot of fuel for veld fires that may then destroy large areas of veld and so deprive cattle of much needed grazing. For this reason, farmers need to control, or prevent, such fires. Once again, prevention is better than cure. This can be done by constructing firebreaks along fences. These should be at least five metres wide and clear of vegetation. And they should be maintained each year by using tractors to plough in any new vegetation. Last week’s South
African Farmers Weekly contained an article in which farmers were warned to expect more widespread fires this dry season as a result of the exceptionally good summer rains that much of South Africa has experienced. So, farmers here also need to take note of this!
Farmers can also seed rangelands by sowing good perennial grasses such as Panicum maximum [ mphaga] and Digitaria eriantha [ moseka].
Gullies are a sign of extreme environmental degradation. They may be infilled with soil and the land can then be made level. Gabions may also be constructed across gullies. These are walls of large, loose stones that are bound with wire mesh. When water flows over them, the water will slow down and so cause less erosion. Some material carried by the water may then be deposited in the gully.
Farmers may also place lines of rocks across sloping land. After heavy rain, water will now be trapped by the rocks and so will sink into the soil instead of flowing down the slope and eroding the land.
Finally, there needs to be an increase in the amount of land under freehold land tenure in the country. At present, only some six percent of the country is occupied by freehold farms – Ghanzi Farms, Tuli Block, and areas around Francistown, Gaborone and Lobatse. But freehold farms can unlock the potential of agriculture to develop the rural economy. This is because under this tenure system farmers can buy and sell land and so are much more likely to spend money on improvements, such as fencing and boreholes, and so improve or restore overgrazed land to its original condition.
With all these measures in place, livestock farming will be more sustainable in the long term, in line with the mandate of the Ministry of Entrepreneurship which is to drive the development of sustainable economic activities. In so doing, the agricultural sector will be revitalised and this will help to achieve the goal of economic diversification as envisaged by the Economic Diversification Drive Strategy. So, let us look to the future in our quest to improve the status of livestock farming in Botswana. Now is the time not to look back with “nostalgia” on how we raised our animals in the past. Times are changing, and if we do not adapt to the needs and demands of our rapidly changing world, then we will pay the price and so will the environment! Let us not get left behind!