Abstract:
This study presents an integrated examination of livestock production constraints
associating with communal farming in six district municipalities
(DMs) of the Eastern Cape Province. We collected data on demographic and
socio-economic factors from 271 farmers randomly given questionnaires.
About 26 Land Redistribution for Agricultural Development (LRAD) owned
by communal farmers were surveyed to ascertain the condition of grazing
land, meanwhile, tick species and distribution on cattle and goats found in
158 sampling sites of the study area were also recorded. From the results, a
total of 34,929 adult ticks belonging to five genera and 10 species were encountered.
The most abundant tick genera were Rhipicephalus of the subgenus
Boophilus (68.91%), Amblyomma (20.72%), Hyalomma (8.64%), Ixodes
(1.22%), and Haemaphysalis (0.51%). By geographic distributions, Am-blyomma and Rhipicephalus were common to all DMs, while R. microplus
and R. decoloratus were found in the drier regions. From the map plotted for
16 custom feeding centers, lack of marketing channels (23%), poor animal
conditions (20%), lack of infrastructure (19%), high price of medicine (14%),
shortage of feed (10%), stock theft (8%), and age of animals (too old) to be
marketed (6%) are the major shortcomings in red meat production. We
found that the associations between gender (χ 2 = 31.3481, p < 0.0001), age (χ 2
= 32.4889, p < 0.0001), and farming experience (χ 2 = 52.7556, p < 0.0001)
were significantly (p < 0.05) higher. Additionally, we found that farming
commodities were significantly influenced by gender and farming experience.
From the surveyed LRAD farms, we observed a higher proportion of increaser
II grass species in Alfred Nzo (55.6%), Amathole (53.9%), and Chris Hani
(46.4%) DMs. On the other hand, the decreaser grass species were few in Alfred
Nzo (16.5%), Amathole (13.8%), and Chris Hani (21.8%). Inferences
from the data indicate the need for government and stakeholders’ intervention
to farmers through the provision of infrastructures, marketing channels,
and training on livestock based programs.
