CATTLE RANCHING IN NIGERIA: PROBLEMS AND SOLUTION
Abstract
Pastoralism is the most traditional of ruminant livestock production systems in which extensive movement of the animals in search of pastures and water is its salient feature. Whereas the system is adapted to exploit the dry, arid climatic zone, it often overlaps into wetter, agricultural land, occasionally ending up into violent conflicts. Ranching is practically the intensive form of pastoralism but it has a weakness of being seen as antisocial and needing high initial capital. Whatever other truly improved system of exploiting the pastoral agro-ecosystem, it seems it seldom can indict sedentarized tendencies and rarely can it be less intensive than ranching. This study investigate the problems and prospect of cattle ranching in Nigeria.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the study
Ranching is a very significant change of the pastoralist system strategy. It changes the mobility nature of pastoralism where traditionally there are no limits of grazing of the available pastures, into controlled grazing. It also changes the common property character of the pastoralist land where all land is open for pastures without any individual ownership. Ranching is now the dominant system of ruminant livestock production in North America, Australia and parts of South America. This is because the advantages of cattle ranching and it importance cannot be over emphasize Some European systems could also be described as ranching, though enclosures are often small and animals are frequently given supplements in the field (Ibid). In countries like United States, (Ibid), communal grazing pastoralism was prevalent in the 19th century, but now the grazing systems are fully enclosed (Ibid) From 1990 to 2003, the cattle herd in the Northern part of the country grew by 140% from 26.6 million to 64 million heads. Increasing demand and the sector’s advantages in the region suggest that ranching will continue to grow in the region. Nevertheless, the growth of extensive ranching in the region is worrying especially because of increased deforestation. Scientific and modern economic intervention into pastoralism has generally targeted the mobility and communal grazing characteristics of the system which results into sedentarized and most likely the enclosed, ranching system. This intervention has implication that the pastoralist ecosystem is a limited and valuable resource. The traditional pastoralist perception is contrary to this implication, and considers and wishes to consider that pastoral land is essentially vast wilderness with no instituted limitation of use (no use limits except the availability of pastures).
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