CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW
4.3 Forage Requirements
4.3.3 Supplementary feeds
Croplands forage helps to solve problems of shortage of winter forage. Because farmers have exclusive use rights to their cropland residues, but only communal access to rangeland resources, they are more likely to invest in their cropland and less likely to invest in improving rangelands. Expansion of cropping activities over time has encroached on rangeland resources, thus reducing the area of common access rangeland and increasing grazing pressure on rangelands. It has also resulted in increased fragmentation of rangelands with small partitions of rangeland surrounded by cropland. Increased fragmentation makes herding increasingly difficult, which increases likelihood of some fragments becoming over-grazed. Further, farmers are less likely to invest in fragmented areas of rangeland that are difficult to access (due to barriers created by cropland). These impacts make determination of appropriate stocking rates difficult. Therefore communities of Eritrean farmers must be encouraged to practice holistic land-use planning that takes into consideration the tradeoffs of cropland encroachment on rangelands. Anecdotal evidence of the negative effect of cropland encroachment on rangelands was provided by several of the surveyed subsistence farmers, particularly farmers in the Highlands of the Arado cattle farming regions and in the populated areas of the Western Lowlands Barka cattle region.
and the 40 Arado cattle region subsistence farmers is detailed in Table 4.4. The table indicates the total utilization of each type of conserved crop residue and the number of farmers that utilized it. Sorghum and pearl millet stalks were the most commonly used type of conserved cropland residue in the sample of Barka cattle farmers with 13 out of 40 farmers using a total of 13.8 tons during 2002. Teff, wheat and barley straws were the most commonly used conserved crop residues by farmers in the sample of Arado cattle farmers with 9 out of 40 farmers using a total of 12.7 tons of residues. In total, the
Table 4.4 Total use of supplementary cropland forage feeds by a sample of 80 subsistence livestock farmers from two breed cattle regions of Eritrea, 2002
From the sampled cattle owners in
Barka cattle area Arado cattle area Agricultural
by-product supplementary feeds
No (n = 40)
House
holds (%)
Supplementary feeds (tons)
No (n=40)
House holds
(%)
Supplementary feeds (ton)
Green feed 1 2 3.0 2 5 4.4
Maize stalks 2 5 13.8 4 10 10.4
Sorghum and pearl millet Stalks
13 33 13.8 - - -
Crush grain of sorghum
5 12 5.3 - - -
Finger millet Straw
2 5 10.4 1 2 13.5
Teff**, wheat and barley straws
- - - 9 23 12.7
Hay*** - - - 4 10 11.9
Urea treatment**** - - - 5 12 0.8
Total 13-23* 33-57* 46.3 9-25* 23-62* 53.7
*= Due to the possibility of repetition of farmers taking more than one type of by- product feeds their total is written in range.
Teff** = Eragrostis grass cultivated and Eragrostis teff grain is used as a stable food by Eritrean society; Hay*** = feed of grasses and legumes leaves harvested at a stage of 25%
moisture content; Urea treatments**** = feed prepared from any dry straw forage treated with urea to improve the nutritive value of the forage.
40 subsistence farmers surveyed in the Barka cattle area fed a total of 46.3 tons of cropland forage to their cattle (a mean of 1.16 tons of cropland forage per farmer, or 0.086 tons of cropland forage per LU). The 40 subsistence farmers surveyed in the Arado cattle fed a total of 53.7 tons of cropland forage to their cattle (a mean of 1.34 tons of cropland forage per farmer, or 0.135 tons of cropland forage per LU). However, there is considerable
variability in farmers’ access to cropland forage as a supplementary feed: in the Barka cattle region at least 32% but fewer than 58% of farmers surveyed fed cropland forage to their cattle and in the Arado cattle region at least 23% but fewer than 63% of farmers surveyed fed cropland forage to their cattle.
The Halhale Research Station has introduced a new urea treatment process in the Arado cattle Central Highland regions to improve the nutritive quality of agricultural by-product supplementary feeds and promote a better utilization of locally available feed resources.
Research reported by the FAO (2003) found that this treatment increases nutritive values of the supple mentary feeds by 12%. It was also found to increase feed palatability, resulting in an increase in feed consumption of 35%. During the time of the survey this supplementary feed was available for purchase by some farmers in areas of feed shortage.
The survey did not collect data on the extent to which these supplementary feeds were used by farmers surveyed in this study.
4.3.3.2 Agro-industry by-products
The findings further indicate that the cattle farming smallholder farmers had an access problem to agro- industry supplementary feeds. This access problem is due to a relative shortage of agro- industry supplementary feeds in the market, resulting in prices that most subsistence farmers cannot afford. Further, there is a common perception amongst subsistence farmers that this source of feed is largely reserved for purchase by commercial farmers. Consequently, out of the 80 farmers of the sampled study areas, a range of 8-17 farmers from the Barka cattle area and 6-15 from the Arado cattle area (totalling a range of 14 to 32 farmers) were able to get access to the agro-industry by-product feeds. Therefore, 2% of the farmers from the Barka cattle region and 8% from the Arado cattle regions supplied their cattle with, on average, 3.0 tons and 0.73 tons of bone and meat meal by- products respectively. Thirteen percent of the farmers from the Barka cattle region and 10% from the Arado cattle regions supplied their cattle with 7.41 tons and 8.0 tons of bran supplementary feeds, respectively. As Gash-Barka region has been rich in sesame (legume oilseed) crop production, 8% and 20% of the Barka cattle farmers fed their cattle with 6.0 tons of oilseed cake and 1.9 tons of sesame cake, respectively. Similarly, 5% of the Arado cattle farmers fed their cattle with 7.6 tons of oilseed cake and 15% of the farmers from the same breed area got 1.83 tons of brewery supplementary feed. Therefore, only a range of
20 to 43% of farmers from the Barka cattle region and a range of 15 to 38% of farmers from the Arado cattle regio ns were able to get access to the agro- industry by-product supplementary feeds to maintain the milk production during the hot dry period ( March to May) (Table 4.5).
The differences in the industrial by-product feeds per farmer offered between the Barka and Arado cattle areas (7.3 tons and 7.2 tons) were not statistically significant at the 95%
level of statistical confidence (t-value = 0.014).
When computing the feed rations per LU for the three- month dry season using the information of 535 LU of the Barka cattle and 398 LU of the Arado cattle data surveyed, the average ration was: 535 LU/40 households = 13.4 LU/household, then 7.3 tons per
Table 4.5 Supplementary feeds used during the dry season in two breed cattle regions in Eritrea, 2002
Barka cattle area Arado cattle area
Farmers Farmers
Agro-industry
by-products No
(n=40) %
Feed per farmer
(ton)
No
(n=40) %
Feed per farmer
(ton)
Bone and meat meal 1 2 3.0 3 8 0.73
Bran 5 13 7.41 4 10 8.0
Oilseed cake 3 8 6.0 2 5 7.55
Sesame cake 8 20 1.85 - - -
Brewery - - - 6 15 1.83
Total 8-17* 20-43* 18.26 6-15* 15-38* 8.11
*= Due to the possibility of repetition of farmers taking more than one type of by-product feeds their total is written in range.
household /13.4 LU = 0.54 ton/LU fo r the Barka cattle area. The calculation for the Arado cattle area that the 398 LU/40 households = 10.0 LU/household, then 7.2 ton per household /10.0 LU = 0.72 ton/LU. This result indicates that like the agricultural by-products, the industrial by-products were also scarce during the 2002 dry season and both the Barka and Arado cattle area farmers had similar constraints in accessing the industrial by-products.
The major reason for the constraints was that priority of agro- industrial by-products was
given to urban beef and dairy producers who were believed lacking any other options of feed sources but bringing more livestock products to market. (
This may not reflect official policy, but rather reflect that these farmers who frequently sell products at urban markets have relatively better access to these input markets.) Though some amounts of industrial by-products were released to market, because of their high prices, except some rich farmers the ordinary subsistence farmers were able to afford them.
4.3.3.3 Discussion
The results presented in this section indicate that in Eritrea supplementary feeding of cattle is important to maintain animal productivity during the dry season. However, there were two controversial ideas resulting in negative outcomes. Farmers insisted on the application of supplementary feeds during the dry season to generate the livestock income in the season. This income encouraged the farmers to retain large number of animals resulting in overgrazing. These opposite circumstances occurred due to the management failures of the farmers to limit their animal numbers during the wet season. If attention is not given to incorporate controlled stocking rates during the wet season with the provision of supplementary feeds during the dry season, as the universal review paper of Kirkman and Carvalho (2003) mentioned, the negative consequence of the provision of supplementary feeds on the rangelands would be aggravated. Grazing forage from migration in the dry season or supplementation of conserved crop residues or industrial by-products can not be a solution without adopting reduced stocking rates during the growing season.