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280 hectares of prosopis cleared in Afar, Ethiopia
Afari communities involved in the Prosopis Management Project have worked with Farm Africa to organise themselves into Community Development Committees and have started to clear their land of prosopis. So far, an amazing 280 hectares have been cleared of a dense covering of the highly invasive and thorny plant. This is no mean feat – the committee members only have a small window of time each day when the temperature is cool enough to dig deep enough to make sure the prosopis roots are removed and cannot re-grow.
Pastoralists in the remote region of Afar, Ethiopia, rely on their livestock for survival and move with the seasons to find water and grazing land for their animals. They sell their animals to raise money to buy food. Drought, coupled with an invasion of prosopis, means pastoralists are losing valuable grazing land. Without adequate grazing land, livestock become unhealthy and harder to sell, leaving pastoralists without an income to buy food.
One of the reasons that prosopis has invaded the Afar district with such ease is the propensity for the pastoralists’ animals to eat the pods. After consumption, the animal’s bodies then reject the seeds, and as the animals move around, they spread the seeds, which then re-grow. In order to avoid this, community members have been collecting the pods and crushing them to produce livestock feed. When the seeds are crushed they cannot re-grow – as a result not only is the spread of prosopis controlled but there is a constant supply of animal feed, even during times of drought.
Three pod crushing mills have already been installed in Gewane and Amibara districts and are up and running.
Comments
anyone with details of the nutritional value of prosopis juliflora pods?
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