Mixed Farming Environmental Impacts:
Policy Pressures and Options

(Communal Grazing, Crop Residues, Cut and Carry, Feed from Farm)

In the four most extensive Mixed Systems (Communal Grazing, Crop Residue, Cut and Carry, Feed from Farm) there is a general trend to crop-livestock integration, driven largely by human population increase. This trend is subject to very strong geographical variation and variation between socio-economic strata in any one area. The major policy pressures contributing to negative environmental impacts are those that distort the process of crop-livestock integration, and interfere with the most efficient utilisation of livestock in crop production and of cultivated crops and crop residues in livestock feeding:

- subsidies on inorganic fertiliser,
- subsidies on mechanisation and fuel
- high exchange rates
- inappropriate land tenure systems

Besides policies to slow human population growth, which are outside the remit of this toolbox, policy options that can mitigate these impacts include:

- phasing out subsidies on inorganic fertiliser
- phasing out subsidies on mechanisation
- improved land tenure for mixed farmers (though not necessarily land titling)
- improved extension to inform and motivate on crop-livestock integration, development of infrastructure such as roads and markets
- development of savings and credit institutions
- stimulating non-farm rural employment

In densely populated systems, there will be a policy option of:

- moving livestock production towards an industrial model,

in which case, due regard will need to be paid to policy options to mitigate the risks of such a shift.

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