Smallholder beef production systems are vulnerable systems constrained by multiple factors including uncontrolled breeding, limited infrastructure, grazing land and poor disease control.

By Marble Nkadimeng, animal scientist and researcher at the Agricultural Research Council (ARC)

Approximately 90% of beef cattle smallholder farmers have been noted to have limited farming skills and knowledge, support services and low reproductive performance. Only 5% practise seasonal breeding, with 60% of farmers challenged by lack of sufficient camps and limited breeding bulls. These challenges and vulnerabilities in the smallholder system exacerbate the need for a cost-effective and collaborative approach such as integrated community-based approaches that align with the environmental and economic constraints inherent in smallholder cattle production settings.

Community-based approaches are programmes that have emerged as potential solutions for improving the productivity of smallholder farmers. These programmes involve farmers within a specific geographical area who share a common farming goal and have an interest in collaborating. By working together, they can share knowledge, skills, infrastructure and labour to support one another and enhance beef cattle productivity.

The objective of this programme is to establish an integrated system that addresses power imbalances and fosters partnerships among beef cattle farmers in the community. This includes organising workshops and training sessions that enable farmers to codesign solutions tailored to the needs of their community.

Also read: ‘How do we ensure no farmer or community is left behind?’

Benefits of Community-based Integrated Beef Cattle Production Programme

Communities pooling and sharing resources have multiple benefits in areas such as forage and grazing management, reproductive performance, knowledge exchange and infrastructure. In many communities, beef cattle farmers already practise collective herding, where a single herder manages animals from two or more households. However, their collective farming lacks clear structure and does not fully harness the benefits of collaboration for herd productivity and growth. The potential benefits of adopting a community-based programme in smallholder beef cattle production are explained:

Farmer Field School 1_Supplied — Integrated platforms such as farmer field schools, community workshops and training sessions can create effective channels for sharing farm knowledge, including disease reporting systems, supplementation, weaning and record-keeping. Photo Supplied

1. Forage and grazing management

Cooperative pasture management programmes such as the village pasture rotation are programmes that farmers of the same community or village can use to manage grazing land. The programme involves dividing village grazing areas into manageable paddocks where one section of the village’s grazing land is grazed while the other sections are rested. Farmers can use temporary fencing systems to manage the size and access to pastures. Rotational grazing is a climate-smart practice that allows pasture plants to recover and helps improve soil fertility. This increases vegetation cover, strengthens rangeland health and makes it easier to manage the animals’ nutritional needs. Rotational grazing allows farmers to harvest surplus forage during the wet season for storage as hay or silage to create community fodder banks for the dry season. Moreover, farmer collaboration can promote crop-livestock integration where crop farmers provide residues to cattle owners, and cattle farmers provide manure for crop production. Managing forage improves body condition score (BCS) by ensuring livestock have enough energy reserves for improved growth and reproductive performances.

Also read: Communal farming: Ensuring profitability benefits the environment too

2. Information and knowledge

Integrated platforms such as farmer field schools, community workshops and training can create effective channels for farm knowledge sharing, including knowledge on disease reporting systems, supplementation, weaning and record-keeping. Disease reporting systems may open a platform where farmers can alert one another about sick livestock, disease outbreaks or cases of abortion, instead of passing on sick animals to one another through sales. Without such a system, farmers may sell sick cattle to neighbours whose herds share grazing land, which ultimately creates continuous cycle of disease and reinfections. Moreover, through knowledge sharing, communities or villages can establish a weaning system where calves can be separated from their mothers by means of rotation between village camps or herds to reduce pressure on individual households. This weaning method allows cows in different herds to recover simultaneously, which helps them regain and maintain optimal BCS for successful rebreeding and a shorter calving interval. In addition, community trainings on record-keeping may ensure consistency when it comes to keeping farm records, which is often lacking at individual farm level. Farmers can elect a record-keeping committee, where each household submits data on agreed dates to the committee for the production traits the community has prioritised for future improvement.

3. Infrastructure

Community infrastructure sharing involves building or maintaining common crush pens, and handling facilities and breeding camps. This centralises animals for services and promotes easier adoption and consistency of routine herd management practices such as vaccination, deworming, and breeding season and overall health checks. With shared breeding camps bulls can be kept separated from cows in selected village camps or herds. Bull separation will simplify the adoption of a controlled breeding season to synchronise calving with forage availability, improve cow BCS for reconception and reduce the inter-calving period in smallholder herds. Furthermore, shared crush pens not only facilitate vaccinations and health checks but also enable breeding soundness examinations to allow clear bull fertility records instead of relying on unknown bulls, which is often the case when working individually in smallholder herds.

Farmer Field School 2_Supplied — Integrated platforms such as farmer field schools, community workshops and training sessions can create effective channels for sharing farm knowledge, including disease reporting systems, supplementation, weaning and record-keeping. Photo Supplied

4. Bulk buying

Collaborative farming allows communities to pool funds for bulk purchases of medication; manage herd health; provide feed during droughts; and buy essential equipment like communal weighing scales to monitor animal growth. This approach lowers overall costs and reduces the financial burden on individual farmers.

In summary, community-based programmes are not just an integrated system, they are a driving force for beef cattle production improvement in low-input farms. When farmers work together and share resources, they grow stronger herds and have stronger rural economy.