Rangelands, Drylands & Pastoralism

This thesis was carried out within the project ImGoats, a project led by ILRI and implemented by CARE in Mozambique, aiming at increasing the incomes and food security of poor smallholders through innovations in the meat goat value chain.

The agriculture sector has great potential to contribute to the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions through changes in agricultural management and land use. However, the technical potential for agricultural mitigation has yet to translate into actual emission reductions due to considerable constraints to the generation of emission offsets through agricultural projects.

The demand for the control of safe food, from consumers the world over, has revolutionized the manner in which wild game meat harvesting occurs.

During the drought of 2009 many Kenyan pastoralists were forced to move with their livestock in search of grazing land. We met Ann and her family in the rangelands outside of Nairobi. This is her story of how the drought has affected her life. This photofilm was part of a duckrabbit training productions for ILRI in Nairobi in August 2010.

The 2009 drought in Kenya has had a devastating effect on pastoralists. Hundreds of thousands of cattle died and with them a way of life that had provided families a livelihood from the land. We met Lawrence in a quarry just out of of Nairobi. For many generations his family have reared cattle on the rangelands of Kitengela.

Characterization of the Short-eared Somali goat population around Dire Dawa, Ethiopia, was undertaken in a community-based and participatory approach. Range of participatory tools, including Focal Group Discussions, participatory mappings and transect walks, were employed to study the local community's Indigenous knowledge and practices in animal breeding.

This study was conducted to assess livestock feed sourcing and feeding strategies and their implications on livestock water productivity (LWP) in mixed crop-livestock production systems of the Blue Nile Basin (BNB) in Ethiopian Highlands. Three Woredas (Diga, Jeldu and Fogera) representing diverse agricultural farming systems were considered.