Sedentary Grazing sub-system on Communal Areas

Livestock systems are called sedentary when the human groups and the livestock are permanently resident in a defined area around a village, a permanent camp or in a limited area as a farm or a ranch.

Sedentary systems in communal pastures and open grasslands apply to stock farming when animals are conducted or guarded by herders or are moving free not farer than the distance walked in the day from the farm or the watering point. Generally, animals stay each night in park or in a barn. Pastures are mainly natural grasslands and rangelands but often include the cropping areas after harvest and fallows.

This system is, in many situations, closely related to the "mixed communal grazing system" which refers to the sedentary farming with crops and livestock (agro-pastoral system). The difference is the proportion of revenue and subsistence goods due respectively to livestock and crops. Stock breeders own herds large enough to maintain a family and practice in addition more or less agriculture, meanwhile agropastoralists can only belong a few animals as a complementary activity to cropping. The evolution from a system to the other is not uncommon, influenced by the opportunity of market and the availability of pasture or arable land.

Transhumant and sedentary grazing systems develop complementarity and mutual services with the crop farmers, the fields producing crop residues valables for ruminants and the animals fertilizing the soil. On the opposite, conflicts can occur if animals cause damages to the crops or caused by competition for land.

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