Livestock Initiative Restores Land, Water in Zimbabwe
http://www.trust.org/trustlaw/news/livestock-initiative-restores-land-water-in-zimbabwe
21 Oct 2011 10:52
Source: Content partner // Global Press Institute
VICTORIA FALLS, ZIMBABWE Â- Balbinah Nyoni, 37, grew up in Sianyanga
village, a rural area that lies in the semiarid region of Matabeleland North
province in western Zimbabwe.
Although the province is home to the world-famous Victoria Falls, the people
here suffer from long dry spells and high temperatures, thanks to climate
change and environmental degradation.
Nyoni is tall and slim. She has eyes that draw everyone’s attention. Her
skin is very dark, testifying to her ceaseless expeditions in the scorching
sun to provide food and water for her family from the dry land. But her
robust walk and rapid talk reflect her fighting spirit as she resists the
daily fatigue that seems to sap the energy out of many women, men and
children in Sianyanga.
Nyoni stares vacantly at the lifeless, dry lands in front of her and takes a
deep breath. She says the land used to be beautiful and that a small
perennial river flowed across her village when she was a little girl. Nyoni
adds that livestock had plenty of food and water.
She says that there were many trees for shade, remembering how it was
difficult to walk in the bush because of the dense vegetation. She says
walking in the bush used to give her goose bumps because she feared snakes
and getting lost.
“This is where we used to swim when we were young,” she says, trampling on
the mounds of sand under her feet. “My friends and I used to come here to do
our laundry, bathe and swim for hours.”
But now there is little sign that flora and fauna were once in abundance in
this area. Nyoni sighs deeply and points to an old hut up the hill about 50
meters away where her grandmother used to live.
“She thatched that hut using grass that was harvested there,” she says,
pointing to a piece of land about 10 meters away.
But the land she points to is bare. The soil is hard, and there are gullies.
Nyoni says she has witnessed drastic changes. It has become extremely hard
for the people and livestock to live and thrive here. She says women and
children bear the bulk of the hardships, as they are the ones who are
involved in domestic work.
“I wake up very early to travel several kilometers to fetch water before it
gets too hot,” she says. “By the time I return home, I will be so exhausted,
but I still have to fetch firewood, prepare a meal for my family and do an
endless list of other domestic chores such as cleaning and washing clothes.”
In light of these hardships, Nyoni says her community has realized the need
to restore the land.
Local residents say that years of irresponsible agricultural practices have
left the land dry and barren. A local organization has been employing
alternative strategies, namely using livestock in community herds to restore
land and natural water sources. The project has yielded results, which
organizers say especially benefit women, the primary caregivers here.
Organizers say the main challenge is getting the community to actively
participate and work together. The organization has been training other
nongovernmental organizations, NGOs, to expand the project’s scale.
Meanwhile, the government has been working through various agencies to
preserve Zimbabwe’s natural resources.
About 70 percent of Zimbabweans rely on farming for their livelihood,
according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
Livestock and crop production are the most important agricultural
enterprises because low and erratic rainfall make dryland farming risky in
more than 80 percent of the country.
Lesizi Bhebhe, 47, another villager from Sianyanga, says she regrets the
reckless manner in which she and her fellow villagers used to handle the
ecosystem. She says poor agricultural practices and unplanned grazing have
destroyed the land, and now the villagers are paying heavily for their
irresponsibility.
“I was one of the culprits who destroyed this area,” Bhebhe says
remorsefully.
Bhebhe, dark-skinned and pint-sized, says that when she was young, her
family used to plough next to the Nalomwe River. This type of farming was
highly productive, as the farm had abundant moisture. Her family also had a
vegetable garden close to the river and enjoyed fresh vegetables throughout
the year. But all that is gone now.
Deep and wide gullies are the scars left from Bhebhe’s land. There are some
smooth granite pebbles, a sign that water used to flow over these rocks.
Erosion has washed away the soil, leaving trees with exposed roots hanging
on for dear life.
Bhebhe particularly remembers the 2004 water crisis in Sianyanga and
surrounding wards.
“The borehole that was sunk by a local nongovernmental organization dried in
2004,” she says. “We used to wake up at 0400 hours [4 a.m.] to go and fetch
water, and we would queue the whole day as families from distant villages
were using that one source of water. Water had become a precious commodity
that some families were even buying it.”
Bhebhe says families survived on an average of five liters, 1.3 gallons, of
water a day for drinking and cooking.
“Our cattle were dying because there was no water in the rivers and streams
nearby,” she says. “To save our livestock from dying, we were forced to take
them to Gwayi River, 12 kilometers away from Sianyanga. The men would stay
there for three to four months before returning home.”
Community members say the 2004 water crisis was a turning point in their
decision to seek help.
As the heavy environmental catastrophe weighed on Bhebhe, Nyoni and their
fellow villagers, a local organization moved into Sianyanga and other
neighboring wards in 2006 to replicate a land restoration project it had
been implementing at its learning site at Dimbangombe Ranch, located south
of Victoria Falls.
Elias Ncube, 54, the training manager for the nonprofit organization, Africa
Center for Holistic Management, says that previous attempts at land
restoration focused on symptoms of desertification, such as rapid soil
erosion and increasing droughts and floods.
He says that the government, NGOs and other stakeholders invested resources
into combating these symptoms instead of addressing the cause. For example,
he says that drilling boreholes in Sianyanga provided only a short-term fix
for the water shortage because the boreholes eventually dried. Instead, his
organization focuses on long-term solutions, such as covering the land to
make sure that the soil retains water when it rains.
Ncube says water in Matabaleland region is scarce, and many boreholes
continue to dry because the land is bare and very little water manages to
infiltrate the ground. Therefore, he says the soil needs to be covered to
reduce runoff and evaporation.
So the Africa Center for Holistic Management has introduced an alternative
solution: bunching livestock, or grouping them closely together, to restore
land and natural water sources.
Ncube says livestock harness the power of their hooves to break up hard
ground, which allows soil to better absorb water, and compact soil, which
encourages seed-to-soil contact, resulting in better seed germination. He
says they also trample old grass, which would prevent new grass from
growing, so that it lies flat on the ground, covering the soil and sealing
in moisture. Their dung and urine also fertilize the soil, and planned
grazing prevents overgrazing.
“Livestock can also lay down old grass so that the soil is covered and less
prone to the process of evaporation,” he says. “And that animal dung and
urine help enrich the hoof-prepared soil and their grazing, which is timed
to prevent overgrazing of plants, keeps perennial grasses healthy, thereby
minimizing the need to burn and expose soil.”
Before the initiative, the community used to burn the grass, a common
practice in Zimbabwe. But the fires threaten biodiversity and have led to
multiple fatalties.
Ncube says that animals are corralled in a field for approximately seven
days, depending on the size of the herd and field, giving each animal
adequate space to sleep. Sianyanga locals bring together their livestock to
form a community herd, which currently consists of 100 cattle, 50 goats and
eight donkeys.
Ncube says that this simple process has proven to restore degraded land and
natural water sources. The activity also helps increase plants and wildlife.
“Our work at Dimbangombe learning site and in the Hwange communal lands has
shown us that it is possible to restore the land and natural water sources
to health,” he says. “We have learned that healing the land using livestock
restores people’s dignity and hope.”
Bhebhe says the water crisis in her area has improved since they began to
practice planned grazing, a procedure that involves an orderly series of
grazing to give plants time to recover. The process gives plants a chance to
grow and multiply, steadily increasing the amount of high-quality plants
available per acre.
“I used to get poor harvest,” Bhebhe says. “But after using livestock to
prepare my crop field, I harvested 150 kilograms of maize where I previously
harvested 50 kilograms.”
Africa Center for Holistic Management is currently working with 10
communities, including Sianyanga, to heal the land, natural water sources
and livelihoods. Farmers in these areas who have been using animals to treat
their lands have seen boosts in crop yields, according to the data
management department of the Africa Center for Holistic Management.
“Animal-treated crop fields in Monde, Sizinda, Dibutibu and Mabale in Hwange
communal lands had higher yields than control crop fields,” says Doreen
Murove, data manager for the Africa Center for Holistic Management.
Murove says her department used Monde, Sizinda, Dibutibu and Mabale to
create a sample for gathering data to assess the impact of animal-treated
crop fields.
“Maize harvested in the animal-treated crop field in Monde was 2 tons per
hectare, while the field which was not animal-treated produced 0.1 tons per
hectare,” she says. “In Mabale, the animal-treated field yielded 5.5 tons
per hectare, while the control field produced 0.4 tons per hectare.”
In Sizinda, the animal-treated crop field produced 4.4 tons per hectare,
while the control field bore 1.8 tons per hectare. In Dibutibu, the
animal-treated crop field reaped 2.6 tons per hectare, while the field that
was not animal-treated yielded 0.68 tons per hectare.
Bhebhe says more women are involved in the project because they are left to
fend for the family when men travel out of town to look for work. She says
HIV/AIDS has also left many households headed by women.
Communities have a community herd, and families maintain their livestock
together under the planned grazing scheme. Bhehbhe says sharing the
responsibility cuts down on the women’s work.
“We take turns to look after the animals, and this makes the work less
strenuous, giving us the opportunity to do other chores at home,” Bhebhe
says.
Ncube says the village may soon get water closer to home, thanks to the
initiative, which should also make women’s daily routines easier.
“The situation has improved significantly with the introduction of planned
grazing,” Ncube says. “The land is retaining moisture, and more grass is
growing. Although the Nalomwe River in Sianyanga is still silted, the
situation has improved a lot. The water table has risen, and villagers may
soon be having more water close to their village.”
Ncube says the major challenge to the program’s success is persuading the
whole community to actively participate, citing skepticism among some
members. He says cultural beliefs also make it difficult for communities to
work collectively toward achieving a common goal.
“Keeping and herding animals together is a challenge,” he says. “Some
community members believe that other community members use witchcraft to
prevent their livestock from reproducing. Others fear that their livestock
will get diseases if herded with other animals.”
He says shifting these mindsets is essential.
Africa Center for Holistic Management is training other nonprofit
organizations, such as Chikukwa Ecological Land Use Community Trust, Action
Against Hunger Zimbabwe, World Vision Zimbabwe and Land O’Lakes, to use its
livestock strategy to restore land and natural water sources.
The Zimbabwe government has mandated the Environment Management Agency to
promote the sustainable management of natural resources and protect the
environment through stakeholder participation. The agency is involved in
projects, such as preventing wildfires across the nation.