Water is essential for agriculture including livestock. Given increasing global concern that access to agricultural water will constrain food production and that livestock production uses and degrades too much water, there is compelling need for better understanding of the nature of livestock-water interactions. Inappropriate animal management along with poor cropping practices often contributes to widespread and severe depletion, degradation and contamination of water. In developed countries, diverse environmental organisations increasingly voice concerns that animal production is a major cause of land and water degradation. Thus, they call for reduced animal production. Such views generally fail to consider their context, applicability and implications for developing countries.Two global research programs, the CGIAR 'Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management and Agriculture' and 'Challenge Program on Water and Food' have undertaken studies of the development, management and conservation of agricultural water in developing countries. Drawing on these programs, this paper describes a framework to systematically identify key livestock-water interactions and suggests strategies for improving livestock and water management especially in the mixed crop-livestock production systems of sub-Saharan Africa. In contrast to developed country experience, this research suggests that currently livestock water productivity compares favourably with crop water productivity in Africa. Yet, great opportunities remain to further reduce domestic animals' use of water in the continent. Integrating livestock and water planning, development and management has the potential to help reduce poverty, increase food production and reduce pressure on the environment including scarce water resources. Four strategies involving technology, policy and institutional interventions can help achieve this. They are choosing feeds that require relatively little water, conserving water resources through better animal and land management, applying well known tools from the animal sciences to increase animal production, and strategic temporal and spatial provisioning of drinking water. Achieving integrated livestock-water development will require new ways of thinking about, and managing, water by water-and animal-science professionals.
A recent study of the livestock water productivity (LWP), at higher spatial scales in the Blue Nile Basin, indicated strong variability across regions. To get an insight into the causes of this variability, we examined the effect of farm households' access to productive resources (e.g. land, livestock) on LWPin potato-barley, barley-wheat, teff-millet and rice farming systems of the Gumera watershed (in the Blue Nile Basin, Ethiopia). We randomly selected 180 farm households. The sizes of the samples, in each system, were proportional to the respective system's area. Then we grouped the samples, using a participatory wealth ranking method, into three wealth groups (rich, medium and poor) and used structured and pretested questionnaires to collect data on crops and livestock management and applied reference evapotranspiration (ET0) and crop coefficient (Kc) approaches to estimate depleted (evapotranspiration) water in producing animal feed and food crops. Then, we estimated LWPas a ratio of livestock's beneficial outputs to water depleted. Our results suggest strong variability of LWP across the different systems: ranging between 0.3 and 0.6 US$ m3 year1. The tendency across different farming systems was comparable with results from previous studies at higher spatial scales. The range among different wealth groups was wider (0.1 to 0.6 US$ m3 year1) than among the farming systems. This implies that aggregating water productivity (to a system scale) masks hotspots and bright spots. Our result also revealed a positive trend between water productivity (LWPand crop water productivity, CWP) and farm households' access to resources. Thus, we discuss our findings in relation to poverty alleviation and integrated land and water management to combat unsustainable water management practices in the Blue Nile Basin
BioOne Complete (complete.BioOne.org) is a full-text database of 200 subscribed and open-access titles in the biological, ecological, and environmental sciences published by nonprofit societies, associations, museums, institutions, and presses.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.