"We have deserts too, we just don't live in 'em, a-hole!"
Posted on 06/21/2018 1:12:00 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
As drought kills Kenya’s livestock, some herders are fighting hunger by growing their own grass.
At noon in Joseph Kwopin's dry and dusty homestead in Kenya's central Baringo County, a calf shelters from the sweltering sun under a shed made of sticks. The barren ground has no vegetation but for a few shrubs and the red-flowered Carraluma socotrana plant – a rare species whose appearance here could seem cruel given that it isn't edible, even to livestock...
According to UNICEF, 2.6 million Kenyans have become food insecure as a result of the lack of rainfall. The Kenya Red Cross reported at the beginning of this year that 5 percent of livestock in some areas of Kenya have died since the drought began last year.
Livestock accounts for an estimated 12 percent of Kenya's gross domestic product and more than 40 percent of its agricultural sector. The mass deaths of the animals are threatening the livelihoods of Kenyan pastoralists... who inhabit the arid and semi-arid lands that comprise 80 percent of the country. In times of drought, they must roam farther in search of grass over which they must compete with people from neighboring tribes.
Some pastoralists have resorted to cattle stealing to recoup their losses – at times through violence. The only solution to the insecurity, some experts say, may be for herders to change their long-held customs by planting and maintaining grass of their own for sustainable grazing.
(Excerpt) Read more at usnews.com ...
"We have deserts too, we just don't live in 'em, a-hole!"
I miss Sam.
Same here.
Good. If they give up goats . Those strip vegetation, increase drought by killing off the greens. (Though killing greens is not necessarily bad for the economy, ya know.)
Oh, but then the stuff would be delivered and 95% would be sold on the black market to enrichen their country's corrupt leadership... never mind.
Many years ago, the ancestors of these people lived in the lowland regions and made a good living capturing and selling slaves, including ObaMao’s ancestors. Then whitey came along and put a stop to it. Especially the British.
Sheep are worse, cattle are better -- but their main problem is that they are environmental parasites, and they're encouraged in their herding by the corrupt parasites who run most Africa regimes.
We don't run food through gas tanks, but thanks for playing. And if we stopped burning ethanol, corn production would fall, a consequence of burning petroleum fuels to grow the corn in the first place.
What a brilliant idea-growing your own damn grass in an arid/semi arid area as a more reliable food source for livestock than open range grazing-as far as I know, that is what has been done for 200 years of so on the W/SW Texas ranch I’m from, and all the others there-so how is it that livestock keepers in Kenya are just now figuring that out? Oh, well-better late than never I suppose...
drought kills grass you try to grow - you increase your pasturage to grow more animals, and then there are more to die off.
Control of the water and consistent supply to grow that grass would be the key to at least maintaining 1/3 the animals during prolonged droughts
BTW for all the Warmists, and ClimteChangeMongers — those droughts have been happening for thousands of years and wont be believed when you point at it in your usual fraudulent way ....
It is common here to sell off livestock in a drought when the pasturage isn’t sustaining the livestock you have-it is either that or buy hay to make up the difference-which is ruinously expensive-drought brings the price of cattle/beef down and inflates the price of a bale of hay to ridiculous levels, but that is how life in works in the world outside of cities where food comes from...
It is common here to sell off livestock in a drought when the pasturage isn’t sustaining the livestock you have-it is either that or buy hay to make up the difference-which is ruinously expensive-drought brings the price of cattle/beef down and inflates the price of a bale of hay to ridiculous levels, but that is how life in works in the world outside of cities where food comes from...
Oops!!!
What nonsensical drivel.
We’ve had mountains and mountains of surplus feed steps for more than 50 years, although we try, we can’t possibly burn it all.
You have to be very careful with food aid that it doesn’t destroy what business there is- US dumping of free aide rice in Haiti wiped out Haitian farmers who could not compete with “free.” Same thing occurred in Vietnam and helped turn farmers against us.
It was a case of subsidizing our farmers at the expense of another country’s, disguised as “goodwill.”
They may not have had any property rights all these years- who is going to invest in cultivating and seeding land they don’t own, that can be taken at a moment’s notice, or is already owned by the government and access to it is just a matter of bribery?
It’s sensible to sell of surplus stock where your right to the land is secure, in order to protect what grass you have for the stock you keep; but in places with land is held in common [which is was here, too, before farmers started fencing the land off and range wars began] , if you thin your herd and the grass replenishes, some other guy can come along any time with his herd and his cattle eat up all your grass and move on, and you get nothing for your effort.
I’m not sure what Kenya’s land rights are like but chances are that has a lot to do with it.
There was some landowner in the north African desert who fenced off a great big pentagon shaped plot of bare desert so n one could graze their goats and sheep there, and just left it alone.
In a very short time the land greened up and became quite lush, while all the land outside the pentagon remained dusty and barren.
The aerial photos were amazing.
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