Repeated Cultivation

Background Fields further away from the homestead are often designed for staple food and cash crops. Production levels are maintained more through expansion and changes in cropping than through intensification. | Background Options Policy Pressure and Policy options Technology Options

Fields near to the homestead may receive enough or even a surplus of manure from livestock kept by the family or on the farm to sustain permanent crop cultivation. These fields are mainly designed to maintain a variety of food crops for home consumption (e.g. early maize, early sorghum, bananas, tubers, fruits, vegetables, etc.). These fields are usually small in size and production is maintained through application of manure, ashes, night soil, and even fertiliser if or when available.

Factors inhibiting the maintenance of fertility of fields further away from homestead, through use of manure are:

- not enough manure for the land under cultivation (poor livestock / cropland ratio)
- poor collection and storage of manure (poor housing facilities, no manure storage facilities)
- poor or inadequate means for transport of manure to further away fields (high labour costs, lack of mechanisation)

Driving Force | Pressures for Change | Results
Demand for land | More intensive use of crop land | Change in cropping pattern (e.g. from cereals to tubers) Use of external inputs to maintain land productivity
Competition for land | Marginal land put to use for crop production | Change in cropping pattern (e.g. from cereals to tubers) Improved productivity of land (e.g. by agro forestry) Abandon further away fields when these become degraded and continue with more intensive focus on nearby fields.
Population growth and concentration | Land fragmentation Increase in distance to fields | Restrictions in free movement of livestock. Poor management of isolated fields
Demand for cash crops | Integration of cash crops in cropping pattern (In)adequate and / or (in)sufficient supply of fertilisers to sustain cash crop cultivation | Expansion of area under cultivation Inputs designed for cash crops used for food crops on other fields (farm income optimisation)

Options

- Promote improved manure management to reduce losses from manure that is available
- Enhance the keeping of more livestock in association with crop cultivation in order to make more manure available
- Reserve more land, field borders and communal areas for the cultivation of fodder crops so more animals can be kept
- Promote a combined and optimum use of manure and chemical fertilisers
- Promote more intensive management of livestock to make better use of available resources
- Recognise the positive contribution of livestock with a poor production performance to crop cultivation (manure) and household economy (security fund).
- In view of staple food and cash crop cultivation, consider problems of land degradation and the role livestock and fodder crops could play in minimising such degradation.
- In view of an increasing demand for crop products, compare the economic, social and environmental costs and benefits of crop production causing land degradation and finally people migrating to new areas or urban centres, with cost and benefits of supportive measurements to increase production, prevent land degradation allowing permanent settlement.

[Livestock & Environment Toolbox Home]