How do livestock producers respond to climate change in land reform areas in southern Africa? A recent report from the Institute of Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa offers fascinating insights into how small- and medium-scale livestock producers on redistributed farms are dealing with climate variability in both Zimbabwe and South Africa.

The report, edited by Tapiwa Chatikobo and Ben Cousins, explores how small-scale livestock producers manage the inherent uncertainties of livestock production in ‘non-equilibrium’ rangelands land has been redistributed via land reform programmes. Rich case material comes from Namaqualand in the Northern Cape province of South Africa and Matobo district in Matabeleland South province, Zimbabwe. The study sites exhibit ‘non-equilibrium ecologies’ where temperature, rainfall and vegetation are highly variable over time and space, and droughts are a common occurrence. Climate change is expected to exacerbate environmental variability in these areas.

Given the ever-changing climate, the report asks: what lessons can be drawn from experiences of the small-scale livestock farmers on redistributed farms over the past three or four decades, and what do they mean for policies aimed at assisting small-scale livestock farmers to adapt to climate change? The authors argue:

“Our analyses demonstrate that mobility and other means of tracking resources – ‘opportunism’, flexibility, changing species, and so on – long identified as important in (agro-) pastoral contexts, remain key in post-land reform settings and should be recognised and supported. So should flexible social boundaries, wide-ranging social and political networks, and processes of negotiation, as emphasised in much of the recent literature on pastoralism and livestock systems in the Global South. We also warn that if not well designed, land reform can fragment rangelands and undermine or frustrate flexible and opportunistic livestock management strategies aimed at adapting to climate variability and change.”

Managing variability in a new landscape in Zimbabwe

In the chapter on Zimbabwe, Tapiwa Chatikobo asks how small- and medium-scale livestock producers settled on redistributed farms respond to climate variability? Land reform has reconfigured rangelands, with major implications for how livestock are managed especially in dryland regions. Through land reform, formerly large-scale ranches have been subdivided into smaller/or medium-scale units. Thus, ‘fragmentation’ of rangelands has been a big part of the story in post-land reform settings.

Today’s ‘new’ farms are very different in character to erstwhile commercial ranches, not least in size and in relation to property regimes. They range from those that are held individually (A1 self-contained and A2 farms) to those combining individual and common property, including rangelands (A1 schemes). Consequently, land reform has created a very different social landscape, with new boundaries and forms of property in the rangelands, alongside a highly differentiated of livestock producers practicing different livestock systems. These new property relations intersect with ‘non-equilibrium’ rangeland dynamics to create distinctive livestock production systems.

In this new context, the everyday adaptation practices and strategies deployed by small-scale A1 and medium-scale (A2 and self-contained) livestock farmers to deal with climate variability and change in Matobo district are examined. To deal with climate variability, we see that livestock producers adopt a variety of adaptation strategies, depending on access to financial resources, political connections and other social relations, including kinship ties.

The study finds that “a complex array of land-sharing, long-term leasing and short-term rental arrangements in relation to rangelands are emerging, as well as practices that are outside the law, such as ‘poach-grazing’.” The study also reveals the reinvention of the traditional ‘mlaga’ (transhumance) system that has long characterised livestock production in Matabeleland in Zimbabwe. In the face of high levels of environmental variability and changing climate, such arrangements are essential as they enable flexible forms of access to rangelands.

Land redistribution as a route to increase climate resilience for livestock systems in South Africa

In the chapter on South Africa, ecologists Igshaan Samuels and Clement Cupido explore the potential of land redistribution to act as a catalyst to improve climate resilience among traditional Nama pastoralists in the dryland region of Namaqualand, in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. The limitations of the current approaches to land redistribution in South Africa are highlighted, but the report proposes an alternative model for land redistribution that is feasible, equitable and more likely to increase resilience.

In Namaqualand, South Africa’s three forms of land reform – land restitution, land redistribution and tenure reform – have been implemented, although the study’s main focus is land redistribution. In its current form, the authors spell out three main problems. First, the land redistribution is subject to elite capture:

“This has involved a few farmers taking control of the local government management committee responsible for land reform, giving members of the local elite significant influence on who benefits. Control over the decision-making process by this group has led to the marginalisation of small-scale pastoralists. This process of exclusion is ongoing…”

Second, a guiding paradigm of land redistribution programmes in Namaqualand has been the ‘commercial’ ranching model whereby the municipality encourages pastoralists to use a paddock system to ensure that the land is properly managed. “This is not an appropriate system for this variable environment as pastoralists cannot make optimal use of patchy natural resources”, the report argues. Fences are not only costly; they also curtail livestock mobility:

“The system preferred by policy makers places an enormous emphasis on fencing, which is very expensive, adding additional burdens to the land reform budget. Thus, the design of the programme is unable to meet land reform objectives, but in addition does not allow livestock producers to adopt appropriate management strategies in an era of climate change, thus presenting a double-edged sword to pastoralists on redistributed land.”

Given all these shortcomings, the authors propose an alternative model, involving the purchase of adjacent farms to old communal areas in the eastern part of the district where summer rainfalls occur, which will increase the availability of summer grazing. This would allow pastoralists to move their animals between winter and summer rainfall regions, thereby allowing them to adapt to predicted increasing variability and climate uncertainties.

A variety of climate adaptation strategies

In conclusion, the report shows that small-scale livestock producers adopt a variety of strategies to adapt to climate variability and change. Some are engaging in intensification (involving the use of external inputs); others rely on extensification (often through land markets); others have reverted to traditional systems of transhumance, such as the ‘mlaga’ system based on social relations.

At the centre of these strategies is a set of class relations. As Ben Cousins argues “These relations are critically important in attempting to develop policies and programmes to support the adaptive strategies of livestock producers benefitting from land redistribution”.

A shared feature in both case study sites is that intensification strategies are often too capital-intensive to be affordable, and those with limited resources resort to other kinds of strategy, with a strong focus on livestock mobility. As a result, new innovative ways of accessing grazing during drought periods have emerged. These take a variety of forms, include ‘poach-grazing’, leases, short-term rental, sharing, and sometimes a return to the original communal areas to assert claims based on a history of community membership in the past.

To conclude, Cousins argues:

“In our view livestock production systems in the drylands of Southern Africa are best described as complex, hybrid, emergent and resilient. Our cases also suggest, however, that in relation to redistributed land in the region these regimes are not fully established as yet, and are likely to evolve further over time. Ongoing research is clearly required to characterise the dynamics of change and explore wider implications.”

 

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