Session 1: Opening of the 55th Annual Congress of the Grassland Society of Southern Africa

Governments and donors have shown growing impatience with what they see as the lack of results from conventional agricultural research that has not addressed their main concerns: Poverty reduction, food security, sustainable natural resource use, competitiveness in international markets; the poor return on investment in agricultural research; the regional imbalances in agricultural development, with the most endowed zones/systems receiving all the benefits of agricultural research. Political and public perceptions of the role of agriculture in rural development have changed, from a narrow emphasis on agricultural production values; technical efficiency; specialisation and increase in scale to a broader emphasis on the multiple functions of rural areas: Social welfare and healthy food; non-agricultural production values and environmental values and landscape. There is a need for flexible approaches to promote innovation and for dealing with complex issues with processes that will effectively resolve complex problems and realise complex opportunities. It is also necessary to explore an alternative to traditional reductionism and linear approaches of technology generation, transfer and adoption and to achieve collective action and by encouraging interaction between multiple stakeholders. Agricultural research needs to enhance the performance of individuals and or organisations in tackling complex issues because complex issues cannot usually be resolved/realised and positive change achieved by single persons/organisations acting alone. We need to strive to bring positive change that is acceptable across a broad range of stakeholders. The focus should not be to generate research products with the hope that they will be broadly adopted when transferred to end-users but collective exploitation of the opportunities involving stakeholder participation to enhance adoption.

Despite the size of the informal small-scale farming sector and its livestock holdings in South Africa, there has been little detailed work to assess how livestock populations are affected by drought. The KwaZulu-Natal Goat Agribusiness Project has been compiling a livestock census year by year for five years with some 20,000 farmers per year. This census collects information farmer by farmer on livestock that they own, sales, mortalities, as well as what farmers have been spending on the livestock. This census represents an area of approximately 55,000 km2. South Africa experienced a major drought in 2015–2016. An analysis of goat and cattle census data from the Msinga-Weenen area in KwaZulu-Natal, which represent the livestock of some 3,000 households, shows that cattle farmers lost 43% of the herd, compared to 29% for goats in 2015–2016. Three years after the drought, cattle numbers remained depressed, whereas goat numbers had recovered. The analyses also showed that in 2015–2016, as in the drought of 2003, larger herds suffered lower mortality rates, suggesting that owners of larger herds had better means to support their herds. Support to reduce drought losses and aid recovery should thus take into consideration the different capabilities and needs of small and large herd owners. Effects of high stocking rates and resource condition on mortality and herd growth were apparent during the drought year of 2016 but not the other years. Most die-offs appear to have been concentrated in a short period once forage and water resources became too scarce and far to reach. Recognising when this threshold is imminent would be useful for targeting strategic interventions. To develop appropriate ways of supporting livestock owners, off-station research into the growing rural farming areas is critical to gain a better knowledge of livestock ownership patterns, how livestock are affected by resource availability, drought, veld condition and management practices, and what farmers' aspirations and constraints are. The methodology of livestock censuses in rural communities is described and it can be used by other researchers in the rest of the country. The state departments need to also process this information once it becomes available to create better extension systems. A cattle-free future may be on the horizon and instead, large numbers of drought-tolerant goats might be the only thing that will keep our grasslands and savannas intact and protected from bush encroachment. They will do this while feeding the growing population. What the countryside will look like in 20 years' time in terms of livestock numbers and types is an important question grassland scientists need to answer to continue to have the ear of both the state and farmers.