Need and scope for agroforestry in Disaster Management Plan for Animals.

Abstract

Disaster causes threat to life and property. Management and mitigation measures have been primarily focused around human life. Technically, the post disaster management is centered on reviving the livelihood and often the poor and vulnerable sections of the society are affected much. Apart from agricultural farming, livestock rearing is major source of livelihood of farmers. With nearly 70% of the livestock owned by the marginal farmers, any disaster that cause a loss in livestock do affect these dependent people. Considering this reality, Government of India instituted “National Disaster Management Plan for Animals (DMP)”. The entire DMP has been forged to provide guidance for the wellbeing of animals that got entangled in disaster in form of pre-disaster preparedness, disaster response and post disaster plan. In this context, ensuring adequate quantity of quality fodder and vital veterinary care assumes primary concern in post disaster response. In this context agroforestry, tree fodder assumes greater significance owing to their round-the-year availability and quality of fodder. There are many fodder based agroforestry systems that can withstands and maintain reasonable productivity even during extremes disaster situations like floods, drought and cyclones. A classical success model is the Acacia leucophloea and Prosopis cineraria based silvopastoral models for fodder production in arid and semi-arid regions and ngitili as a silvopastoral practice of Tanzania to evade the drought. Similarly, in flood condition trees are the only means for green fodder supply. Studies need to be initiated on the planning, implementation and management strategies to be followed for optimizing the productivity and quality of fodder through community involvement. Hence the information gap has to be suitability filled though proper research as well as extension through interdisciplinary approach. So that agroforestry based livestock management strategies can incorporated into DMP, so that not only protecting our precious livestock wealth and also to ensure the livelihood security of millions of marginal farmers. Agroforestry is potential approach for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and help to mitigate the extremes of perceived disaster and incorporating agroforestry will a bottom to top approach.