Draught Animal Power:
Policy Pressures and Options

The use of draught animal power (DAP) can have an indirect impact where it allows the expansion of cultivation in production systems that have non-cultivated land available but are constrained by labour availability. Externally based attempts to introduce it into such systems must therefore be very carefully appraised for their impacts in terms of expansion of cultivable land. In practice however:

- Such externally-based attempts have been notoriously difficult to implement, and subject to complex socio-economic factors
- Successful introduction of DAP into areas where it is not traditionally used have often been associated with particular cash-crops (especially cotton), and powerful economic imperatives may drive the expansion of cultivation regardless of its environmental impact. If DAP is not used in such expansion, mechanical power may be, with possible negative consequences for equity.

In systems where DAP is traditionally practiced, which are also likely to be constrained by land availability, a trend away from it is likely to have negative environmental impacts in terms of increased fossil fuel use. DAP development can also have positive environmental impacts in improving or creating low cost soil and water conservation technologies, as well as equity and welfare benefits in assisting farmers who cannot afford mechanical power (or who can only access it at sub-optimal times).

Policy guidelines for developing DAP include:

- Development of savings and credit institutions which will facilitate farmer investment in expensive and "lumpy" draught animals and farm machinery
- Funding research and development in DAP. Research should:

- be adaptive to the existing concerns, constraints and objectives of farmers
- (subject to the above) prioritise increasing the supply of DAP (e.g. through better nutrition and use of smaller animals) and decreasing demand (e.g. through better implement design)
- be interdisciplinary and participatory in methodology
- involve, or at least be based on a realistic analysis of, the implement manufacture and distribution industry

- Improved extension Extension of DAP presents in acute form the problems of livestock production extension, as messages will be complex and based on research in at least three disciplines (livestock production, crop production and engineering)
- Incorporating awareness of DAP into land-use planning and land reform: the grazing requirements of draught animals, or the realistic possibilities of feeding them on farm may be overlooked both in routine land-use planning and in land reform
- Fuel pricing: the existence or potential existence of sustainable DAP may be a contributing argument in policy-making on subsidising fossil fuel use to farmers. Attempts to encourage DAP use may founder if fuel remains subsidised, or if DAP is encouraged mainly for reasons of the national fuel budget, and not of farmers' immediate concerns.

Key References

Ehui, S. and Polson, R. 1993. A Review of the Economic and Ecological Constrainst on Animal Draft Cultivation in Sub-Saharan Africa. Soil and Tillage Research, 27.

Morton, J. and Sutton, D. 1999. DFID and Draught Animal Power: A Review of Past Activities and Future Priorities, Livestock Production Programme, Natural Resources International Ltd., Chatham.

Starkey, P, Mwenya, E. and Stares, J (eds) 1994. Improving Animal Traction Technology, ATNESA/CTA/GTZ, Wageningen

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