Optimizing Aspects of Land Use Intensification in Southern Kajiado District, Kenya

Land use is intensifying in southern Kajiado District, Kenya. In the 1960s and 1970s, land used communally by Maasai was divided into group ranches with title held collectively by ranch members. Some ranches have since been divided into parcels owned by individual members. Other sources of land use intensification include human population growth and immigration, more intensive livestock management, and a rapid diversification of livelihood strategies. Livestock keeping remains the dominant livelihood strategy, but many practice rain-fed agriculture , do intensive irrigated agriculture in the swamps, earn wages, or own businesses. Land use intensification may be an inevitable or even desirable process in Kajiado. However, there are many pathways to intensified use. Pathways will have deleterious effects for some and positive effects for others. Computer modeling provides one means of identifying potential impacts from decisions, and which stakeholders they will affect. We use an inte-grative ecosystem model called SAVANNA joined with a model called PHEWS that simulates household decision making. We undertook a research effort for the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) under a project supported by the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and International Cooperation. We met with many pastoralists in southern Kajiado District in early 2005 to discuss their concerns, then with project personnel at ILRI to define scenarios to address using our mod-eling tools. Our analyses focused upon four scenarios, summarized below. In early 2005, BurnSilver conducted focus groups with pastoralists and found that the potential for using improved breeds had become a dominant question. Kajiado pastoralists are experimenting with adding improved Boran and Sahiwal cattle to their herds of small East Af-rica shorthorn Zebu (or Maasai Zebu). The improved breeds are larger, produce more meat and milk, and sell for higher prices. But they also are less drought resistant, are able to travel shorter distances, require more forage, can be more susceptible to disease, and are more expensive to purchase. We wished to determine what benefits there would be to households owning mixed herds of Zebu and improved cattle. We used a literature review to modify a suite of parameter values (e.g., body mass, milk production , travel costs) in SAVANNA and PHEWS that characterize Maasai Zebu and improved breeds. We then modeled populations on four group ranches, with cattle herds comprised of pure Zebu to pure improved cattle. In one method we modified the traits of the cattle herd in the modeled system …