Pastoral Grazing Management System: A Panacea to Effective Livestock Management in Nigeria

Abstract

The National Livestock Transformation Planw as initiated by the Nigerian Government to promote the development of the livestock sector in some States in Nigeria. Before this plan, the initial Rural Grazing Reserve Areas initiative crashed before take-off due to push backs and unfavourable feedbacks from some key stakeholders. Generally, over the years (since the promulgation of Grazing Reserve Act of 1962)   government policies on grazing reserves and management have not met its expected outcome for curbing the incessant farmers and herder clashesand improvement of livestock management processes.  The specific objectives of this paper are to; describe the distribution of the allotted grazing reserves in Nigeria; and provide a Pastoral Management System framework that could be adopted for the implementation and operation of National Livestock Transformation Plan.  GIS overlay and Near-Distance analysis were employed to establish the reserves distribution (within States and vegetational belts as well as the distance to the nearest forest reserve) while the ISO 14001:2015 Environmental Management System approach was adopted in describing the Pastoral Management System. The States with the highest number of Grazing Reserves include Adamawa, Borno, and Taraba States while Abuja, Oyo, Kaduna, Jigawa, and Kogi are among the States with the lowest allotted number of reserves. Generally, the Northern and Middle belt regions of Nigeria are better served with grazing reserves. Also, distribution is concentrated within the Sudan Savannah in the North East and Guinea savannah along the middle belt region. The concentration is reduced in the other parts of the Sudan Savannah in the North West and Sahel Savannah in the North. The reduction is due to desertification and encroachment challenges in these areas. Also, the average near distance of these grazing areas to forest reserves is approximately 12.5km.  Since government policies on grazing reserves and pastoral farming have not met its much-expected outcome over the years, a Pastoral Management System has been recommended for effective operation ofgrazing reserves and other forms of livestock farming, in line with the sustainable development principle. It is expected that PMS would improve livestock management operations and reduce crisis amongst stakeholders. Also, there is a need to adequately survey and developed a GIS dbase on grazing reserves to serve as input in the PMS improvement monitoring processes.