Livestock wealth in Laikipia yet to be fully tapped

Parents are supposed to love, support and create an environment of beautiful upbringing. The sad reality is that this is not the case always.

The responsibility becomes even wider for parents when it comes to considering the larger web of the neighbourhood, community and the society.

Every parent would wish to see their children prosper and in harmony with the society — this is how friendship will flourish and people get to collaborate and work better.

I am not a family psychologist, but as a parent, I am able to use this analogy to explain what has been happening in Laikipia recently, regarding herders’ invasion of ranches and conservancies that has resulted in the loss of lives, huge economic, habitat, trust and social capital losses.

Laikipia’s livestock–wildlife nexus is a case of two child friends under the mentorship of two ill-disposed parents. The parents, in this case pastoralists on one hand and ranchers on the other do not see the bigger picture and opportunities that come with collaborative socio-economic development strategies.

The co-existence of livestock and wildlife in Laikipia has undergone constant push and pull phenomenon over the years — dating back to when the Mukugodo (ancestoral Maasai) hunters and gatherers dominated the area, through to the migrant herders of Laikipia Maasai and the times of the British colonial administration that led to the displacement of pastoralists and carving out of large-scale holdings.

The diverse layout of the current land use in Laikipia echoes an intricate past of human action and settlement. Different from most if not all of other counties in Kenya, Laikipia’s land use is split into forest reserves, government land, large-scale farms and ranches, pastoral areas as well as urban settlements. A study conducted by the Laikipia Wildlife Forum (LWF) estimated that 37 per cent of the land in Laikipia is under large-scale ranching, 32 per cent is under pastoralists grazing use and 21 per cent is under small scale farming.

Beneath this intricate web of constraints in Laikipia, exist unexploited opportunities for the livestock industry in that region and Kenya as a whole. Livestock is an integral economic pillar for the dryland ecosystem and it is good if stakeholders will view it from that point. Thriving livestock and wildlife economy is possible only if we figure out the root cause of the constant clash between the two sectors.

The root cause, in this case, remains the severe aridity of the Laikipia rangelands that from time to time, especially during dry seasons fail to support the pastoral livestock economy. It is about a test of the resilience of the semi-arid livestock and wildlife related economies.

Finding out the route to a resilient and thriving livestock economy is most likely going to be the solution to some of the challenges.

A study by Food and Agriculture Organisation in 2005 opined that in Kenya, livestock productivity and efficiency levels remain very low. Mortality losses (birth to sale) are 50 per cent, the average for sub-Saharan Africa is 18.07 per cent for sheep and 11.06 per cent for cattle produced in arid areas.

Although the livestock sector is highly fragmented, the opportunities have barely been exploited. With increasing middle class and growing appetite for nyama choma (roast meat), Kenya is becoming a significant consumer of meat, with beef consumption estimated to be 612,000 tonnes per year. However, Kenya is a beef deficit country — to the tune of 300,000 metric tonnes annually. We have been bridging our deficit through live cattle coming from Somalia, Tanzania or Uganda.

Laikipia is one the few counties that can turn around this sector. A few ranches have already started models that seek to integrate conservation and livestock fattening and finishing for the markets. Communities should be encouraged to adapt to such systems and allow part of their herds to be raised for the markets.

Second, there a need to revive and rehabilitate the dwindling rangelands. Some communities in the northern parts of Laikipia have embraced rangelands management approaches, but their efforts alone will not help the situation, especially when institutional enforcement of range resource use is missing.

Third, there is a need for the private sector to seize the industry gap and invest along the livestock value chain including alternative production systems such as climate-smart feedlots, traceability technologies, fattening of livestock and value addition of livestock products. Mutara ADC ranch — one of the many unutilised government livestock production areas — could be used to demonstrate some of these ideas for pilots.