Policy Brief of Common Grazing Land Management in the Northern Highland Ethiopia: Review

doi:10.7176/jrdm/81-02

Abstract

Ethiopia is the highest with livestock population in Africa and its growth is increasing with population growth. Small holder farmers’ livelihood and the country national income is depending on livestock and crop production. In the livestock sector, free grazing is the major feeding livestock system and communal grazing land is the main feeding source. Poor communal grazing land management leads overgrazing of communal grazing land followed by environmental degradation in particular soil erosion. The government realized the problems but the policy effectiveness on communal grazing land is not reviewed well. This paper aimed to review common grazing land management and the policy and its effectiveness in the northern highland of Ethiopia. The livestock population is increasing dramatically so that it is becoming high threat for common grazing land. Livestock policy was adopted in Ethiopia but the implementation is weak due to low enforcement mechanism for common grazing management. To overcome the common grazing land management problem in the near time, disincentive policies like tax per head, need to encourage private investment, increase livestock productivity and need to adopt optimum allocation livestock stock rate. DOI: 10.7176/JRDM/81-02 Publication date: December 31 st 2021

Highlights

Ethiopia is the first ranked country in Africa in its livestock population which is estimated to be about 59.5 cattle million, 30.70 million sheep, 30.20 million goat 2.16 million horses, 8.44 million donkeys, 0.41 million mules, and about 1.21 million camels (CSA, 2017).The livestock population is growing fast with human population growth
Though livestock is the fundamental contributor for farmers’ livelihood and national GDP, the livestock is becoming high pressure on grazing land. This leads overgrazing of communal grazing land followed by environmental degradation in particular soil erosion
Farmers do not have skill of conserving feed like silage (Alemu Gashe and Awoke Kassa, 2018).With limited grazing land the livestock population trend is increasing with positive linear trend(Nega et al,2003).Common grazing land is gradually converted to farm land(MOARD, 2007)

Summary

Introduction

Ethiopia is the first ranked country in Africa in its livestock population which is estimated to be about 59.5 cattle million, 30.70 million sheep, 30.20 million goat 2.16 million horses, 8.44 million donkeys, 0.41 million mules, and about 1.21 million camels (CSA, 2017).The livestock population is growing fast with human population growth. Free grazing is the major feeding livestock system and communal grazing land is the main feeding source (Alemu Gashe and Awoke Kassa, 2018). Though livestock is the fundamental contributor for farmers’ livelihood and national GDP, the livestock is becoming high pressure on grazing land This leads overgrazing of communal grazing land followed by environmental degradation in particular soil erosion. Farmers do not have skill of conserving feed like silage (Alemu Gashe and Awoke Kassa, 2018).With limited grazing land the livestock population trend is increasing with positive linear trend(Nega et al ,2003).Common grazing land is gradually converted to farm land(MOARD, 2007). In many parts of Ethiopia the common livestock feeding system is free grazing of common pasture This open access grazing land is resulting higher pressure on grazing land (Benin, S. and Pender, J., 2002). Empirical data evidence Comparing the livestock population growth with area of grazing land we can realized that the biomass of grass is going to be decreased

Stock rate

Findings

Conclusion and recommendation