Institute of Resource Assessment

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Browsing Institute of Resource Assessment by Author "Ali, Mohamed Merghani Mohamed"

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    Assessment of coping strategies on livestock feed gaps in Bara locality North Kordofan state, Sudan.
    (University of Dar es Salaam, 2018) Ali, Mohamed Merghani Mohamed
    Climate change as an emerging threat has caused many impacts in arid and semi arid areas. Bara locality as semi-arid area has already experienced these impacts like change in amount and seasonality of rainfall, which intensify the severity of feed gap. This led pastoralists to adapt different means to adapt and cope with the feed gap. This study aimed at evaluating the coping strategies applied by pastoral households of Bara to cope with the feed gap. The study used primary data that were collected through interviews which included structured, unstructured and key informants. Other methods used were field observation and focus group discussion. Interviews with 120 heads of households distributed over four villages represented 10% of the total number of pastoral households from each village. The data were finally analyzed using SPSS and Microsoft excels 2007. The findings showed that there are an estimated number of coping strategies to the feed gap including buying feed from markets, selling part of the animals, agricultural waste collection and cultivation of fodder crops (al- guar) - Cyamopsis tetragonoloba. Others are mobility, feed storage, cultivation of melons, reliance on forests, mixing water, salt, sugar and flour, parturition control, renting a patron, feed factories and use of cotton seed and beans. The study revealed that these strategies have reduced the damage caused by the feed gap in an estimated manner, leading to conservation of large number of livestock owned by pastoral households. The findings imply that for sustainable livestock production there must be integrated climate change-coping strategies during feed gap. As such the study recommends the establishment of policies for the conservation of natural pastures and raising the adaptive capacity of pastoral households to meet the feed gap.