Optimizing Resource Use and Economics of Crop-Livestock Integration Among Small Farmers in Semiarid Regions of South Africa

Abstract

The adoption of crop-livestock integration (CLI) among smallholder farmers in the developing countries is no doubt one of the solutions to food security, risk management, and poverty alleviation in sub-Saharan Africa. However, adequate assessment on the current status of CLI becomes necessary for the development and its evolution among smallholder farmers. This article presents a basic and multi-objective linear programming (LP) model to determine enterprise combinations of crop and livestock activities that maximize total gross margin (TGM) among small farms in the Eastern Cape Province. Optimization modeling results and trade-off analysis showed 122.61% increase and 58% decreases, respectively, compared with the average TGM per livestock unit (LU). Smallholder CLI farmers can optimally maximized profit, but fail to optimally maximize home consumption with profit maximization objectives at present resource level. The results further revealed that resources such as land, livestock enterprises were (loose resources) not efficiently used. Efficient and capital use and compact arrangement of crop-livestock integration are suggested instead of free access grazing practice in the study area.