Abstract
This study presents an integrated examination of livestock production constraints associating with communal farming in six district municipalities (DMs) of the Eastern Cape Province. We collected data on demographic and socio-economic factors from 271 farmers randomly given questionnaires. About 26 Land Redistribution for Agricultural Development (LRAD) owned by communal farmers were surveyed to ascertain the condition of grazing land, meanwhile, tick species and distribution on cattle and goats found in 158 sampling sites of the study area were also recorded. From the results, a total of 34,929 adult ticks belonging to five genera and 10 species were encountered. The most abundant tick genera were Rhipicephalus of the subgenus Boophilus (68.91%), Amblyomma (20.72%), Hyalomma (8.64%), Ixodes (1.22%), and Haemaphysalis (0.51%). By geographic distributions, Amblyomma and Rhipicephalus were common to all DMs, while R. microplus and R. decoloratus were found in the drier regions. From the map plotted for 16 custom feeding centers, lack of marketing channels (23%), poor animal conditions (20%), lack of infrastructure (19%), high price of medicine (14%), shortage of feed (10%), stock theft (8%), and age of animals (too old) to be marketed (6%) are the major shortcomings in red meat production. We found that the associations between gender (χ2 = 31.3481, p χ2 = 32.4889, p χ2 = 52.7556, p p
Highlights
The overall demand for the livestock product is greatly increasing by contributing 30% of agricultural products and 2.5% to the country’s Gross Domestic Product in South Africa [1] [2]
This study presents an integrated examination of livestock production constraints associating with communal farming in six district municipalities (DMs) of the Eastern Cape Province
Agricultural practices involving communal farming systems do not have an adequate monitoring system that controls the availability of grazing resources, coupled with poor animal husbandry practices that have resulted in lower offtake per annum [5]
Summary
The overall demand for the livestock product is greatly increasing by contributing 30% of agricultural products and 2.5% to the country’s Gross Domestic Product in South Africa [1] [2]. In the nine provinces of South Africa, the Eastern Cape Province (ECP) is endowed with different agro-ecological zones for crop and livestock production. Biomes such as Albany Thicket, Forest, Fynbos, Grassland, Indian Coastal Belt, Nama-Karoo, Savanna and Succulent Karoo in the ECP [3], make the ECP second in terms of the land size (168,966 km). In spite that the effort of the National Development Plan (NDP) for 2030 in South Africa involves agricultural practices that will create millions of jobs for the youths in the rural community [10], previous records
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