KEY ISSUES

Nowadays the local livestock herds are experiencing insufficient pasture, undernourishment, poor veterinary services, which more often result in consequent over-grazing or migration and physical weaknesses of the livestock heads. This in turn reduces the resilience of the system and decreases the capacity to protect grazing areas, also increasing the need of emergency exit strategies, such a rapid sale of herds below the market value, which results in a substantial loss of capital. Moreover, the absence or lack of alternative income-generating activities, depending for instance to poor slaughtering and meat processing infrastructures, is evident.

OUR RESPONSE

This is our strategy to increase the economic asset of pastoralist communities:
• Creation of a cooperative of women and young males able to apply appropriate slaughtering, meat preservation (drying and salting) and introduction of vegetable leather tanning technique;
• Improve livestock breeds and livestock management practices;
• Introduction of small scale farming of sorghum, highly resistant to drought, indigenous and open pollinated, as a staple food.