Advancing a holistic systems approach for sustainable cattle development programmes in South Africa : insights from sustainability assessments
Loading...
Date
Authors
Marandure, Tawanda
Bennett, James
Dzama, Kennedy
Makombe, Godswill
Gwiriri, Lovemore
Mapiye, Cletos
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Taylor and Francis
Abstract
Efforts to exploit the central roles of cattle to drive agriculture and rural development in low-income countries recorded limited success owing to their narrow focus on modernizing and commercializing low-input cattle farming. Most programs failed to take cognizance of the heterogeneous range of complex relationships between the environmental, economic, social and institutional challenges that limit low-input cattle farming. The current qualitative literature review evaluates the environmental, economic and social sustainability delivery impacts of the leading cattle development programs in the low-input farming sector in South Africa using a holistic systems approach. A mixed method procedure involving stratified sampling was used to allocate local and international-based programs while, purposive sampling was used to select programs with a wider scale of operation. The review then draws on the crosscutting key constraints emerging from the case studies to provide a better grounding for subsequent sustainability sensitive recommendations. Local-based cattle development programs advanced more market-led interventions while, their international-based counterparts had more interventions including, soil and rangeland improvement. The narrow focus by both local and international developmental programs is inadequate to address a wide array of environmental, economic, social, technical and institutional challenges faced by low-input cattle producers in South Africa.
Description
Keywords
Cattle development programmes, Low-input farmers, Sustainability, Holistic systems approach
Sustainable Development Goals
Citation
Tawanda Marandure, James Bennett, Kennedy Dzama, Godswill Makombe, Lovemore Gwiriri & Cletos Mapiye (2020): Advancing a holistic systems approach for sustainable cattle development programmes in South Africa: insights from sustainability assessments, Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, 44(7):827-858. DOI: 10.1080/21683565.2020.1716130.