Abstract
Approximately 67% of the national cattle population (5.2 million) and 85% of the national goat population (3.4 million) is owned by smallholder, communal agro-pastoralists in Zimbabwe. The Southern Africa Rangeland and Grazing Training Program (SARGTP) is a holistic land and livestock management (HLLM) project collaboration between Africa Centre for Holistic Management (ACHM), Land O' Lakes (LOL)/Zimbabwe, Land O' Lakes/Zambia, and Africare/Zambia. This program is may be viewed as a coping strategy to enhance resiliency of agro-pastoralists to more effectively manage the natural asset base - rangelands and rain fed croplands adjacent to homesteads - across the southern African region. The evaluation examines the effectiveness of community livestock keeper training to improve grazing lands, water, and livelihood/food security. Based on evidence collected it is clear that HLLM is an approach with considerable appeal for many communities frequently facing disaster due to drought and desertification so long as four major technical preconditions are in hand: (1) sufficient water availability for livestock to facilitate joint herding, or "bunching," the bringing together of livestock owned by individual families into a collective herd; (2) enough grazing availability in areas where HLLM is first applied to enable livestock owners to rationalize giving HLLM a go; (3) access to input markets to enhance the purchases of commercial stock feed (maintenance and fattening), drugs, chemicals, and output markets to facilitate livestock sales, income generation, and in particular to destock in early stages of drought; and (4) community consensus based on analysis of costs benefits and risks of HLLM leading to consensual buy-in. The overall finding in the SARGTP evaluation is that: (1) risk reduction and resiliency have been improved to some degree through HLLM training provided through ACHM directly to beneficiary communities in Zimbabwe, as well as through ACHM to other NGO implementing partners and communities in both Zimbabwe and Zambia, (2) when targeted appropriately, HLLM as currently packaged is pertinent to many communities in the southern Africa region as a disaster and risk reduction approach, and (3) to scale up HLLM in the sub-region, a shift in focus is needed from the current approach relying on awareness raising/community mobilization/HLLM training, to one where more sophisticated upstream analysis of prevailing land use patterns and governance arrangements is used to optimally frame HLLM implementation. (Excerpt, modified)