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Adapting to climatic disasters in African rangelands What can we learn from the current crisis in the Horn of Africa? Trygve Berg Noragric. ( ) (ö ö ) /----------^---/ o/ / | / | | W----- | |

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  1. Adapting to climatic disastersin African rangelandsWhat can we learn from the current crisis in the Horn of Africa?Trygve BergNoragric () (ö ö) /----------^---/ \o/ / | / | | W----- | | | | | |

  2. Drylands of Africa: Homelands of pastoral people • How does climate change affect pastoral production systems? • Duration of the rainy season • Duration of the dry season • Temperature effects on vegetation and quality of grazed vegetation • Adaptation: Supplementary feeding in the dry season

  3. The current situation in the Horn of Africa • Commercialisation of the nomadic livestock sector • Breakthrough for interest in supplementary feeding

  4. Commercialisation of the nomadic livestock sector: Investing in ‘feedlots’ Bulls are bought from nomadic areas and are fattened by means of a mix of straw, hey and rice bran with significant admixtures of cotton cake (residues from extraction of oil from cotton seeds). This batch of bulls had an average weight of 300 kg at arrival had gained an average of 45 kg after 30 days. They are usually kept for 90 days before marketing. Such a feedlot could be as big as several thousand animals.

  5. Commercialisation of the nomadic livestock sector • From subsistence pastoralism to commercial production • Cattle nomads, sale of most of the bulls and some heifers • Camel nomads, trading of males (90%) • According to the Ethiopian Ministry of Trade, meat and live animal export amounted to 211 million USD the last year. Other sources tell me that the informal export is at least as big. • There is a huge trade with livestock in Somalia, all informal. • Dramatic increase in livestock prices

  6. Increasing production and profits? • Surplus of good fodder in the early rainy season • The dry season is the constraint • Starved cows produce one calf every two or three years • Improved feeding during dry season could increase the calving rate and thereby increase number of animals that can be produced and sold

  7. Supplementary feeding in the dry season • Haymaking • Fodder production • Trading with farming communities: • Crop residues (straw) can be upgraded in terms of feed quality by simple urea-treatment • The current crisis has increased the interest in and demand for technology of supplementary feeding

  8. Securing access to dry season survival resources Nomadic patterns of migration; Rivers fed by different climates and not necessarily reduced by drought in dry lowland areas

  9. Back to how climate change affects the pastoral production systems • Temperature: reduced digestibility of the fodder. • Duration of rainy season: Length of rainy season determines the productive period including resources for building fat-reserves, and length of the dry season that determines the period during which the animals must survive, if necessary by mobilising fat-reserves of the body. • Rainfall events during the dry season may cause regrowth of fodder herbs and thereby help the animals during critical periods.

  10. Vulnerability • Animal reserves • Camels, cattle and sheep that are used by nomadic herders have fat deposits, eg. the hump and dewlap of zebu cattle, the camel’s hump and the fat tail and even dewlaps of sheep. These fat deposits serve, togetherwith general body gains, as reserves thatcan be mobilised for survival during leanperiods. A herded animal can spend almost all its body fat and up to half its body protein and still survive. But if it loses more than 10 % of the body water it cannot survive. • Selective grazing • During the dry season average digestibility may drop to below maintenance requirement in grasses and other grazed or browsed parts of the vegetation. However, there is great within-plant variability and animals can survive by selectively eating the better part of the vegetation. This is also the case with crop residues such as cereal straw. Animals eat leaves and discard stems of the stovers according to level of digestibility. Selectivity also includes the ability to shift between grass and browse according to opportunities. In rangelands with bush vegetation the typical browsers, camels and goats are less vulnerable.

  11. Impacts of increased temperature • Digestibility of fodder is negatively correlated to temperature • The negative correlation is stronger for grasses than for legumes • Reduced digestibility is associated with lignification and goes faster in stems than in leaves • Leaves of legumes and trees have no structural function and is therefore less exposed to lignification

  12. Climate change and temperature • Quantitative effects of temperature on digestibility varies from 0,5 to more than 1 percent units per degree C according to different studies. When feed quality is already low, this can have serious consequences.

  13. Duration of rainy season A study on ‘hotspots of vulnerability’ gave this map where the yellow colour indicates areas with pastoral production systems that are likely to undergo > 20 % reduction in length of growing period by 2050 (Thornton et al. 2006)

  14. Consequtive Dry Days from 1998 through 2009 (Sandeep)

  15. Rainfall events during the dry season; Number of rainy days with a minimum of 1 mm of rainfall during December, January and February for 1998-99 through 2008 – 2009 (Provided by Sandeep).

  16. Summary of climatic stress factors associated with climate change scenarios • Higher temperature will reduce digestibility, particularly of grasses in the grazed vegetation • Shorter growing period; less time for production and for building fat reserves • Longer dry season with poor feed resources for survival • Significant rainfall events in the dry season don’t seem to occur at all in the typical pastoral areas

  17. Adaptation • Traditional survival mechanisms include migration and selective grazing • If, under possible climate scenarios this means a diet below maintenance levels during the dry season and survival by means of body reserves, the animals will be in poor health, and calf only every other or third year. They are fodder insecure and produce little.

  18. Other mechanisms of survival? • Hey-making • Integration with agriculture: • Urea-treated crop residues • Trading with hey from farming areas

  19. Climatic parameters • Temperature • Duration of dry season • Rainfall in river catchment areas

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