PERCEPTION OF FARMERS TO THE ESTABLISHMENT OF RANCHES FOR HERDERS (A CASE STUDY OF BENDE L.G.A OF ABIA STATE, 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, communal grazing pastoralism was prevalent in the 19th century, but now the grazing systems are fully enclosed from 1990 to 2013, 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). This obviously contradicts most intervention outlook. Even with most prominent advocates for promotion and improvement of pastoralist resource exploitation strategy, the baseline seems somewhere to be based on sedentarization or predictable location prior to other proposed measures like nutritional and veterinary assistance for livestock, services such as education (schools) and health; and setting up emergency grazing areas [Ibid]. There has been extensive scholarly analysis of the livelihood and sustainability of pastoralism as a way of life of a significant proportion of the human population. Much criticism exists arguing that mobility of large herds of livestock is stressful to the environment as it would cause extensive removal of vegetation