Economic Analysis of Land and Livestock Management Interventions to Improve Resilience of a Pastoral Community in Southern Ethiopia

Brigham W. Forrest, D. Layne Coppock, DeeVon Bailey and Ruby A. Ward

Journal of African Economies, 2016, vol. 25, issue 2, 233-266

Abstract: A linear programming (LP) analysis is presented of land and livestock management interventions that could increase the economic resilience of a cattle-based pastoral community in the Harweyu Pastoral Association, located in the north-central region of the Borana Plateau of southern Ethiopia. As a result of decades of overgrazing and lack of fire, encroachment by invasive, noxious woody shrubs and trees has markedly reduced the grass production upon which grazing cattle rely. More frequent and severe droughts and reduced grazing productivity, coupled with an increasing human population, have resulted in food aid becoming pervasive in the system. This suggests that the pastoral population has become less resilient over time. We examine the effects of altering the mix of the larger livestock species (introducing more browsing camels relative to grazing cattle), clearing stands of woody plants to promote grass production and expanding the use of traditional deferred grazing practices (kalo) to allow more grass forage to be available in the long dry season, which constitutes another resource bottleneck in the system. Results suggest that clearing the woody plants on a large scale (33% of the Harweyu landscape) would have the most positive impact on the ability of people to promote cattle production and could reduce dependence on food aid by almost one-third.

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jae/ejv021 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:jafrec:v:25:y:2016:i:2:p:233-266.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of African Economies is currently edited by Francis Teal

More articles in Journal of African Economies from Centre for the Study of African Economies Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().