Integrating livestock into farming systems in Northern Cameroon

• Published in: Agricultural systems Vol. 38; no. 3; pp. 319 - 338
• Main Authors: Ngambeki, D.S., Deuson, R.R., Preckel, P.V.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 1992; Elsevier
• Series: Agricultural Systems
• ISSN: 0308-521X; 1873-2267
• DOI: 10.1016/0308-521X(92)90072-V

Farming systems in West Africa's semi-arid zone consist of mainly purely nomadic pastoralism and purely sedentary crop production with a minor crop-livestock production system. Farmers there are slow to integrate cropping and livestock and utilize their intermediate farm products of crop residues, draft power, and animal manure to tackle production constraints such as shortage of animal feed, labor bottlenecks, and soil degradation. This paper uses a crop-livestock linear programming model to show that, apart from the adoption of crop technologies, by integrating and using crop-livestock farm linkages, farmers can make more efficient use of their marginal land with less chemical fertilizers, improve their economic gains substantially, and achieve a more sustainable production system.