Economics of improved management for transforming the foragelivestock system in Tanzania : a simulation model

Abstract

A general trend occurring in many Less Developed Countries (LDC's) is that food production is not keeping pace with food demand. Growth in food production is consistently falling farther behind population growth making food shortages a recurrent problem. With each drought, emergency food programs are required. A major enterprise of importance in the food system of Tropical Africa is the livestock industry with potential to be a major supplier of animal protein, especially to areas which are without livestock because of the presence of livestock disease, trypanosomaisis, carried by the tsetse fly. The major problem is that the livestock subsector of these producing nations in Tropical Africa has remained relatively uncommercialized due to low productivity. Communal grazing of livestock contributes to low animal performance because individual herdsmen do not have an incentive to regulate their herd size causing severe overgrazing during certain periods of the year. Level of human subsistence is marginal in the major livestock production areas where there is communal grazing. The major premise is that if increased livestock production is to be achieved, an appropriate institution is necessary for implementing improved livestock management, marketing, and distribution systems. Tanzania, a country in Mast Africa, is an appropriate case because its agricultural policy is to create incorporated villages in which communal grazing lands are managed and resources are allocated to improve village living conditions. Economic theory is applied to understand the problem of uncontrolled communal grazing and to analyze policies which can increase net benefits. The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the possibilities of combining a forage and a herd model and to evaluate management alternatives for incorporated villages. The research is based on a forage-livestock model that was adapted to tropical conditions to evaluate traditional livestock systems representative of major livestock areas throughout Tropical Africa. The model was designed to show the interaction between forage growth and livestock performance with stocking rate a feedback control between the two subsystems...