Panorama of agro-pastoralism in western Serengeti: a review and synthesis
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Date
2017
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Abstract
Agro-pastoral production system in western Serengeti is subsistence oriented livelihoods
directed towards attaining self-sufficiency in food and livestock production and supporting
growing human population. Production strategies involves the extensive use of land cultivating
for food and cash crops production, and fallowing land. Households form the basic units of
production, which utilize land, family labour, livestock keeping and any capital at their disposal
to meet their production goals. Livestock, especially cattle have great symbolic value regarded
as a bank on hoves, and a basis for various traditional transactions that makes households strive
to increase livestock capital. Analysis of crops production and livestock population trends
reveal that agro-pastoral system expand due to increase in prices of livestock products. Paucity
of land to absorb the growing human and livestock population caused the political and
administrative machinery to develop and implement village land use plans to ensure proper
land utilization. However, introduction of land use plans alone is not a panacea to land use
problems in villages. It was envisaged that land use plan should be accompanied by
introduction of sustainable crops and livestock production systems by improving productivity
of land in terms of pasture and crops to support the current human and livestock population in
the Western Serengeti. The future direction of agro-pastoralism in Western Serengeti under
these circumstances is not well understood. This entails a need for a multidisciplinary study of
impact of agro-pastoralism on livelihood of people in Western Serengeti.
Description
Research Article
Keywords
land use, food security, western Serengeti