Abstract
Agro-pastoral production system in western Serengeti is subsistence oriented livelihoods directed towards attaining self-sufficiency in food and livestock production and supporting growing human population. Production strategies involves the extensive use of land cultivating for food and cash crops production, and fallowing land. Households form the basic units of production, which utilize land, family labour, livestock keeping and any capital at their disposal to meet their production goals. Livestock, especially cattle have great symbolic value regarded as a bank on hoves, and a basis for various traditional transactions that makes households strive to increase livestock capital. Analysis of crops production and livestock population trends reveal that agro-pastoral system expand due to increase in prices of livestock products. Paucity of land to absorb the growing human and livestock population caused the political and administrative machinery to develop and implement village land use plans to ensure proper land utilization. However, introduction of land use plans alone is not a panacea to land use problems in villages. It was envisaged that land use plan should be accompanied by introduction of sustainable crops and livestock production systems by improving productivity of land in terms of pasture and crops to support the current human and livestock population in the Western Serengeti. The future direction of agro-pastoralism in Western Serengeti under these circumstances is not well understood. This entails a need for a multidisciplinary study of impact of agro-pastoralism on livelihood of people in Western Serengeti.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 191 |
| Journal | Livestock Research for Rural Development |
| Volume | 29 |
| Issue number | 10 |
| ISSN | 0121-3784 |
| Publication status | Published - 2017 |
Keywords
- Food security
- Land use
- Western Serengeti
