Climate change threatens devastation of communal livestock farmers

South Africa has long been classified as semi-arid and therefore water scarce. However, many traditional adaptations to this are increasingly becoming ineffectual as climate change exacerbates the frequency and severity of droughts. The country’s numerous communal livestock farmers are among those at greatest risk.

By Lloyd Phillips, senior journalist at African Farming and Landbouweekblad 

Although exact figures are difficult to pin down, an estimated 1.5 to 2 million South African households are reportedly involved in communal livestock farming. In total, they own an estimated five million cattle, seven million goats and 4.3 million sheep. Most of the country’s communal livestock owners are concentrated in the traditional authority areas of the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Limpopo.

For most of these communal livestock owners, their animals represent both customary wealth and a source of essential monetary income for their generally low-income rural households. Unfortunately for these same owners, competition for limited communal grazing is typically high, the quality of available grazing is typically low and reserve grazing capacity in times of extreme climatic events is typically non-existent.

Climate change is already disrupting long-established agricultural practices around the world. In South Africa, the increasing frequency and intensity of droughts is only one of many worrying and potentially devastating climate change-related threats to all the country’s farmers, large and small, and, by extension, its entire society. Among the most vulnerable are communal livestock owners, who already face significant challenges, and for whom increasingly frequent droughts pose an added, immense risk.

Susanne Vetter is a professor of botany at Rhodes University and past president of the Grassland Society of Southern Africa. To better understand this drought risk and its impacts, and hopefully to generate potential mitigating solutions for South Africa’s numerous communal livestock owners, she and two fellow researchers, Dr Victoria Goodall and Rauri Alcock, conducted a multiyear analysis* of about 3 000 households in KwaZulu-Natal’s rural, communal and semi-arid Msinga district, where mean annual rainfall is 613mm.

Goodall is a senior statistician at VLG Statistical Services and research associate at Nelson Mandela University’s Department of Statistics, its Centre for African Conservation Ecology and its Institute for Coastal and Marine Research. 

Alcock is director of the Mdukatshani Rural Development Project in KwaZulu-Natal. Mdukatshani gathered and provided the census data and other data included in this study. 

Also read: Sustainable rangelands take centre stage at 60th grasslands congress

Data Reveals Distressing Impacts

The researchers used the major national drought of 2015-’16 as the basis for their deep-dive analysis of the Msinga households. They then also assessed and analysed the longer-term impacts of this drought. Among the many aspects that Vetter, Goodall and Alcock delved into were:

• the detailed inventory of each household’s livestock immediately before and after this drought; 
• the extent and nature of livestock mortalities associated with this drought; 
• what measures the livestock-owning households may have considered or used to try to mitigate this drought’s impacts on their animals; and
• a detailed overview of whether and how households may have rebuilt their herds and flocks following this drought.

Immediately prior to the 2015-’16 drought, 54.8% of Msinga’s households each owned an average of 7.5 cattle and 80.2% of households each owned an average of 16.5 goats.

Vetter described the 2015-’16 drought as not just another dry spell. The combination of El Niño conditions and unprecedented high temperatures created a perfect storm for livestock mortality.

“What happened next was devastating. Across 20 communal dip-tank areas in Msinga, 42% of cattle and 28% of goats died. Approximately 9.3% (302) livestock-owning households lost all their cattle and approximately 4.5% (109) lost all their goats.”

Feedback from Msinga’s livestock owners was that first all the local communal grazing was depleted. Not long after, the leaves of palatable shrubs and trees that livestock, especially goats, could browse was also depleted. At the same time, drinking water sources for livestock were drying up, making it increasingly difficult and time-consuming for animals to walk between the remaining fodder and water, which were often no longer in the same vicinity.

“Breeding females died first, then the young animals. What exacerbated the deaths was that many of Msinga’s livestock owners could not afford the high costs of buying and transporting in supplementary emergency fodder, like hay. Those that could afford to, often did so too late to save many of their animals.”

Culture Is A Crucial Consideration

A further problem was the reluctance by many of Msinga’s communal livestock owners to firstly proactively reduce animal numbers when the threat of imminent severe drought was confirmed and/or secondly to sell off struggling animals – albeit at less favourable prices – even when the drought’s impacts were in full swing. 

The researchers listed various reasons for this, including: 

• the high cultural and social value of livestock, such as to maintain links with ancestors and to be used for payments in customary transactions;
• economic factors such as livestock representing stored financial security, and that larger herds and flocks act as buffers against drought impacts;
• practical factors such as limited market opportunities for livestock in communal areas. This is often exacerbated when droughts are imminent and markets cannot easily absorb large numbers of animals in poor condition; and
• psychological factors such as the hope, despite forecasts to the contrary, that rains would fall again soon.

The research identified that even when rains eventually did begin falling again from late 2016, these remained below average until mid-2019. 

“The 2015-’16 drought’s immediate impacts were so severe that, in some cases, Msinga’s livestock owners have still not yet fully recovered. Those who owned cattle were often impacted far worse than those who owned goats.”

The researchers discovered various reasons for this overall slow recovery. These included:

• Poor rangeland condition. Much of Msinga’s communal grazing was densely stocked before the drought struck. During the drought, livestock competed desperately for rapidly dwindling fodder. These factors, together with subsequent below-average rainfall, bush encroachment and post-drought livestock activities, slowed vegetation recovery.
• Economic devastation. Because of the 2015-’16 drought, Msinga’s livestock-owning households collectively lost an estimated 9 645 cattle valued at approximately R100 million and an estimated 16 732 goats worth approximately R25 million. This significantly reduced each affected household’s potential monetary income and consequently significantly increased their financial insecurity and debt burden. Furthermore, many of these households could no longer afford to purchase replacement animals.

Also read: Study finds droughts devastate SA’s communal livestock owners

Goat Flocks Recover Faster Than Cattle Herds

Being physically smaller, adept at walking and climbing and mixed feeders (grazing and browsing), as well as requiring less nutrition, gave Msinga’s goats significant survivability advantages over the cattle there during the 2015-’16 drought. In the drought’s aftermath, the goats had the further advantages of being reproductively mature from seven to 10 months old, having a five-month gestation, and commonly birthing twins. All these factors enabled most of Msinga’s goat owners to recover their flocks within three years after the drought ended.

Cattle, on the other hand, are physically big and require large quantities of grass that, unfortunately, was the first vegetation depleted in Msinga. In the aftermath of the 2015-’16 drought, surviving cattle – and their owners – faced further disadvantages, including the animals’ late reproductive maturity (between 15 and 24 months), a nine-month gestation period and the fact that cows usually give birth to only one calf at a time. Susanne and her colleagues found that, consequently, in 2019 Msinga’s cattle population was still 33% below its pre-drought level of 2014. By 2024, many of the district’s cattle owners were still struggling to achieve the herd sizes they had in 2014. 

“An interesting finding we made was that larger herds and flocks, and their owners, were generally more resilient to the drought conditions and to the after-effects than owners of small herds and flocks, which includes many women livestock owners. It suggests that owners of larger herds and flocks have the resources to buy inputs to reduce losses and to speed up recovery. Also, having a small herd or flock automatically increases vulnerability as even a loss of one or two animals represents a big proportion of the herd or flock and leaves fewer animals to breed with after the drought”.

Many of Msinga’s households that had smaller herds and flocks before the drought and that lost all their animals during the drought have not been able to regain livestock ownership since.

With the impacts of climate change expected to get worse before this phenomenon is, hopefully, eventually slowed, the study has revealed that communal livestock owners in especially semi-arid and arid regions are at particular risk. For this reason, the researchers are calling for a diversity of urgent and meaningful interventions to increase these owners’ resilience.

Susanne says: “These interventions must be tailored to address the specific needs of different types of livestock owners, including both men and women, and of the species they own. It is essential that the design of these interventions considers the important social and cultural factors of where they are to be implemented in different parts of the country.

“Such interventions should also look at ways to help households that lost entire herds and flocks, to re-establish these.”

Also read: Production solutions needed to survive droughts

Policies And Management Go Hand In Hand

The researchers’ management recommendations include:

• Promoting goat ownership and production as the more drought-resilient alternative to cattle in semi-arid areas, especially those where there has been a decline of grass cover and an increase in bush;
• Education about and support for strategic destocking in anticipation of droughts;
• Information about and support for supplementary livestock feeding from earlier on during droughts;
• Support for and practising of better grazing and rangeland management, including through sustainable stocking strategies; and
• Education about and support for improved animal health and, therefore, livestock resilience.

The Mdukatshani Rural Development Project, the Goat Agribusiness Project of KwaZulu-Natal and the HPSA community development organisation (formerly known as Heifer International South Africa) have all long been providing the likes of diverse training to many communal livestock owners. However, they alone cannot reach all of South Africa’s millions of communal livestock owners. Their work, and the positive outcomes thereof, would also be greatly enhanced if appropriate policies were developed and implemented.

The researchers’ policy recommendations include:

• Improved drought forecasting and other early warning systems;
• Better and timeous climate information dissemination to communal livestock owners;
• Establishing readily accessible markets for communal livestock owners to be able to sell animals in anticipation of and during droughts;
• Providing subsidised “drought-preparedness” resources, such as feed and animal health products, to communal livestock owners;
• Investing in rangelands restoration and anti-degradation programmes in communal areas; and
• Providing flexible financial support, such as insurance and relief funds, to drought-impacted communal livestock owners.

In light of their own research, Vetter, Goodall and Alcock conclude: “There is still surprisingly little knowledge about drought impacts in the communal livestock sector. Yet, this is crucial, especially with climate change. Because the frequency, intensity and duration of droughts are expected to rise as a result of climate change, this will result in an increasing human and economic toll.

“Support for smaller-scale livestock owners has to focus on risk aversion and [on reducing] losses of entire herds and flocks, [which carries] severe socio-economic consequences. The communal livestock sector remains crucial for livelihoods, yet surprisingly little is known about its resilience to drought, and this gap must urgently be addressed.”

For more information, visit www.mdukatshani.com, www.gapkzn.co.za and www.hpsa-africa.yolasite.com. 

* S Vetter, VL Goodall & R Alcock (2020) Effect of drought on communal livestock farmers in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, African Journal of Range & Forage Science, 37:1,93-106.

2015-’16 Drought’s Key Impacts On South African Agriculture

• Eight of nine provinces were declared disaster zones. Source: Government reports and Global Science Research Journals.
• Maize production declined by nearly 50% compared with five-year averages. Source: USDA Foreign Agricultural Service.
• The national cattle and sheep herd reduced by approximately 15% because of drought effects. Source: AgriSA. (There were more than 643 000 livestock deaths across five southern African countries because of lack of feed and water, and disease. Source: United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.)
• The 23% increase in cattle slaughtering was attributed to drought-related losses and destocking. Source: Red Meat Industry Forum.
• Agricultural debt levels already exceeded R116 billion in 2014 and were exacerbated by drought-related losses. Source: Bureau for Food and Agricultural Policy (BFAP).
• Maize meal inflation reached 37% year on year, with food basket costs rising 19%, disproportionately affecting the poorest 50% of the population. Source: BFAP.
• 1.7 million people received food assistance in South Africa during the drought’s peak crisis period. Source: Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa.

Compiled by Prosus Toqan AI