Thesis Abstract

Pastoralism is the most traditional of ruminant livestock production
systems in which extensive movement of the animals in search of pastures
and water is its salient feature. Whereas the system is adapted to
exploit the dry, arid climatic zone, it often overlaps into wetter,
agricultural land, occasionally ending up into violent conflicts.
Ranching is practically the intensive form of pastoralism but it has a
weakness of being seen as antisocial and needing high initial capital.
Whatever other truly improved system of exploiting the pastoral
agro-ecosystem, it seems it seldom can indict sedentarized tendencies
and rarely can it be less intensive than ranching. This study
investigate the problems and prospect of cattle ranching in Nigeria.

Thesis Overview

INTRODUCTION

1.1      Background of the study

Ranching is a very significant change of the pastoralist system
strategy. It changes the mobility nature of pastoralism where
traditionally there are no limits of grazing of the available pastures,
into controlled grazing. It also changes the common property character
of the pastoralist land where all land is open for pastures without any
individual ownership. Ranching is now the dominant system of ruminant
livestock production in North America, Australia and parts of South
America. This is because the advantages of cattle ranching and it
importance cannot be over emphasize Some European systems could also be
described as ranching, though enclosures are often small and animals are
frequently given supplements in the field (Ibid). In countries like
United States, (Ibid), communal grazing pastoralism was prevalent in the
19th century, but now the grazing systems are fully enclosed (Ibid)
From 1990 to 2003, the cattle herd in the Northern part of the country
grew by 140% from 26.6 million to 64 million heads. Increasing demand
and the sector’s advantages in the region suggest that ranching will
continue to grow in the region. Nevertheless, the growth of extensive
ranching in the region is worrying especially because of increased
deforestation. Scientific and modern economic intervention into
pastoralism has generally targeted the mobility and communal grazing
characteristics of the system which results into sedentarized and most
likely the enclosed, ranching system. This intervention has implication
that the pastoralist ecosystem is a limited and valuable resource. The
traditional pastoralist perception is contrary to this implication, and
considers and wishes to consider that pastoral land is essentially vast
wilderness with no instituted limitation of use (no use limits except
the availability of pastures). This obviously contradicts most
intervention outlook. Even with most prominent advocates for promotion
and improvement of pastoralist resource exploitation strategy, the
baseline seems somewhere to be based on sedentarization or predictable
location prior to other proposed measures like nutritional and
veterinary assistance for livestock, services such as education
(schools) and health; and setting up emergency grazing areas [Ibid].
There has been extensive scholarly analysis of the livelihood and
sustainability of pastoralism as a way of life of a significant
proportion of the human population. Much criticism exists arguing that
mobility of large herds of livestock is stressful to the environment as
it would cause extensive removal of vegetation. Repeated uncontrolled
grazing often ends up into bare land where vegetation is completely
removed. Due to livestock trampling topsoil of an area usually becomes
much pulverized while the immediate subsoil beneath becomes severely
compacted. Pulverized soil is prone to extensive loss of soil through
wind erosion while when it rains sheet erosion sweeps away very easily
most of the pulverized soil. The surface run-off becomes much enhanced
by the compacted soil condition. Therefore, while rainfall would be
stimulant for vegetation re-growth, because of extensive vegetation
removal and compaction the rainfall instead becomes an enhancer of
bareness of the soil after washing away all the soil that would support
vegetation re-growth. In the Sahel in Africa, it has been reported that
vegetation removal by livestock in the area is believed to have
increased soil surface albedo to the extent of causing reduction of
rainfall and rapid desertification. The worst thing about the unlimited
mobility is that it can extend its impact beyond limits. Another
criticism on pastoralism is centered on the system’s tendency against
limited use rights of pastureland In this context all pastureland is
communal and open to limitless grazing. Since communal use of
pasturelands prevents any sense of ownership of the land, no individual
pastoralist can think of expansion of his activities within the locality
in which he is existing at any particular time. At the same time the
pastoralist cannot intuit any idea of intensification because under
communal ownership there is no ground on which this intensification can
be exercised. Under the communal setup, for example, a pastoralist
cannot think of possibility of substituting some of the livestock for
more pasture land. This is the dilemma of the communal land tenure
system of traditional pastoralism. In his much referred “Tragedy of the
commons”, criticizes very categorically the communal grazing
characteristic of pastoralism and insists privatization as a way to
correct imbalances of the pastoralist practice. In his article he
described how common property resources shared by pastoralists
eventually become over-used and ruined. He argued that the pastoralist
land use strategy is unstable and a cause of environmental degradation.
Earlier more than a century ago, also criticized pastoralism and argued
observing that as far as common grazing land is concerned there is
everything against it. He asserted that where there is communal grazing,
every peasant in the village would tend to maximize the opportunity
within the same limited area, with the result that grazing lands become
always overstocked, never given rest, and usually become little more
than exercise grounds for cattle (Ibid). Facts about this are difficult
to totally refute even though some more recent literature elaborate
contrary opinion and argue for a more interdisciplinary apprehension.

1.2      STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

When ranching was introduced, the economic contribution of the
livestock was the major consideration. This consideration relegated the
multiple functions and non-economic uses of livestock, which might be
more important to the Fulani. Ranching capitalized on enhanced
production output, but overlooked the potential use of animals as
self-reproducing wealth, symbol of prestige, medium of social exchange,
and insurance policy (Cisse 1980; and Schneider 1981). A major policy
mistake was that of failing to understand that traditional pastoralism
was an important source of food and employment on a continuous basis to
most of the household members (Sandford 1982; and Cossins 1983). It is
against this backdrop that the researcher intends to investigate the
problem and prospect of cattle ranching in Nigeria

1.3      OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY

The main the objective of the study is to ascertain the problem and
prospect of cattle ranching in Nigeria. To aid the successful completion
of the study, the researcher intends to achieve the following specific
objective;

i)             To ascertain the problem of cattle ranching in Nigeria

ii)           To examine the merit of cattle ranching in cattle production in Nigeria

iii)         To evaluate the relationship between cattle ranching and cattle production in Nigeria

iv)         To examine the role of cattle ranching in reducing communal clashes

1.4      RESEARCH HYPOTHESES

The researcher formulates the following research hypotheses to aid the successful completion of the study;

H0: there is no significant relationship between cattle ranching and cattle production in Nigeria

H1: there is a significant relationship between cattle ranching and cattle production in Nigeria

H02: cattle ranching do not play any significant role in combatting communal clashes in Nigeria

H2: cattle ranching do play a significant role in combatting communal clashes in Nigeria

1.5      SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

It is believed that at the completion of the study, the findings will
be of great importance to the house committee on agriculture and
federal ministry of agriculture as the study seek to enumerate the
numerous benefit of cattle ranching over open grazing as this will help
in policy formation, the study will also be of importance to the
security operative as the findings of the study will help them
strategize to curb the menace of herdsmen farmers conflict in Benue
state, the study will also be useful to researchers who intend to embark
on a study in a similar topic as the study will serve as a reference
point to further studies. Finally, the study will be of great importance
to reporters, academia’s, students, teachers and the general public as
the study will add to the pool of existing literature and also
contribute to bank of knowledge in the subject matter.

1.6 SCOPE AND LIMITATION OF THE STUDY

The scope of the study covers cattle ranching problems and prospect
in Northern Nigeria, in the cause of the study, there are some factors
which limited the scope of the study;

a) AVAILABILITY OF RESEARCH MATERIAL: The research material available to the researcher is insufficient, thereby limiting the study      

b) TIME: The time frame allocated to the study does
not enhance wider coverage as the researcher has to combine other
academic activities and examinations with the study.

c) Finance: the finance budgeted for the study was a
major constraint to the scope of the study, as the researcher has
limited resources at his disposal to combine both research work and
other academic engagement.

1.7 OPERATIONAL DEFINITION OF TERMS

Cattle

Cattle colloquially cows are the most common type of large domesticated ungulates. They are a prominent modern member of the subfamily Bovinae, are the most widespread species of the genus Bos, and are most commonly classified collectively as Bos Taurus

Ranch

A ranch is an area of land, including various structures, given
primarily to the practice of ranching, the practice of raising grazing
livestock such as cattle or sheep for meat or wool.

Crisis

A crisis is any event that is going to lead to an unstable and
dangerous situation affecting an individual, group, community, or whole
society

1.8 ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY

This research work is organized in five chapters, for easy understanding, as follows

Chapter one is concern with the introduction, which consist of the
(overview, of the study), statement of problem, objectives of the study,
research hypotheses, significance of the study, scope and limitation of
the study, definition of terms and historical background of the study.
Chapter two highlights the theoretical framework on which the study is
based, thus the review of related literature. Chapter three deals on the
research design and methodology adopted in the study. Chapter four
concentrate on the data collection and analysis and presentation of
finding. Chapter five gives summary, conclusion, and recommendations
made of the study.