Njeri's farm system works in a cycle. Her cows, which are the major capital asset on the farm, are the drivers of the system. They provide milk to drink and sell, manure to fertilize the crops, and calves to sell or replace the cows when they get old. Njeri uses the manure her cows produce to fertilize the Napier grass forage she grows to feed the cows. She also uses it on the maize and sweet potatoes she grows to feed her family and some tea she has planted as a cash crop. In addition, she feeds crop wastes-the leaves of the sweet potato plants and the stalks of the maize plants-to her cows.

Njeri can only squeeze five liters of milk a day from each of her cross­bred cows. Other dairy farmers in her district get two to three times this quantity, but she can't produce or buy enough good quality feed to improve her cows' milk production. She and her family drink about a third of the milk her cows produce and she sells the rest to neighbors and the local milk cooperative. It seems there is never enough milk for her family's needs, just as there is never enough feed for her cows.

Nevertheless, Njeri is basically satisfied with her enterprise. "When you have a dairy cow," she says, "you have money in your pocket, food on the table, and protection against failing rains and rising prices."

Like farmers worldwide, Njeri is concerned about rain. When will the long rains begin? Will they be enough to sustain her Napier grass and maize? Will they be too strong and wash the soil from her fields? But in the highlands of Kenya, Njeri is nearly certain that the rains will come. And she is sure the land she cultivates and grazes her livestock on this year will still be hers next year.

That's not so across the large tracts of semi­arid Africa and Asia where year­long droughts are likely to occur one year out of three, and two­year droughts are likely to occur every decade. When this happens livestock producers have only one choice, to move. When the rains fail in one place, herding livestock producers-known as pastoralists- simply walk with their animals to other areas, near or far, where the rains and forage are more plentiful. In areas of low and highly variable rainfall, mobility is an essential part of how they continue to produce livestock.

To be able to move, livestock producers must have access to a variety of rangeland patches, and to what researchers call fallback resources-places where animals can graze and drink during the driest seasons of the year and the driest years. The system of rights and rules governing the use of land-which can be based on custom or actually made into law-must take into account this need for mobility and permit access to fallback resources of water and feed.

Villages, and the long­standing societies within them, normally develop systems of rights and rules that provide the people who live there the assurance they will have access to a well and discarded plant residues. However, there is room for conflict where more­mobile and less­mobile systems collide.

"There's always concern and controversy about how land is held, especially in Africa," says Brent

Swallow, an agricultural economist at ILRI. "Those concerns and controversies are greatest in the boundary areas where mobile livestock production and mixed crop­livestock farming systems co­exist-competing at times, complementing other times. The possibilities for conflict and controversy are higher still where people, livestock, and crops share the land with wildlife."

Swallow is compiling and analyzing case studies of competing land use in Niger, Ethiopia, and Zimbabwe in collaboration with some of his colleagues from ILRI, scientists from IFPRI, and local researchers from the national agricultural research services in those countries. From these case stories the research team develops models and policy recommendations for decision makers in other areas of Africa.

According to Swallow, "If you try to understand the needs and interests of the different types of farmers, the risks that they face, and the impacts of various public policy options upon them, then you can better assist decision­makers who must try to balance those needs and interests."

It's a process of learning, bridging, and integrating that can't happen in isolation from the vagaries of the real world. At ILRI, it doesn't.

Whether it's in crop­livestock systems directly, or in component parts like disease control or vaccine development, ILRI ecologist Robin Reid says one paradigm has shifted dramatically: "It's not just 'people' and then everything else," she says. "People are not considered separate from their environment anymore. They are being recognized as an integral part of the environment, subject to, and part of, all the shifts and impacts that occur."

Anticipating improved control of the tsetse fly and African animal trypanosomiasis, a lethal cattle and small ruminant disease, newly­formed multidiscipline teams are already looking at what will happen as the land currently under trypanosomiasis risk becomes more hospitable for farming. How great are the potential economic benefits? What will happen to the land, the trees, and the biological richness when more cattle, sheep and goats can live well in the region? What will happen in communities that now must cope with different pressures on natural resources and different land­use patterns?

"All along, we must listen to the user," says Guy d'Ieteren, ILRI animal scientist. "We do research right at the ground level. The path from farm level research to the policy level is very natural. The linkages between the biological efforts and the social and economic impacts become obvious if you follow them."

Many farmers, according to Reid, are acutely aware of environmental concerns. They pick up subtle feedback signals from the environment earlier than many. After years of daily interaction, they have an inherent understanding of how the environment works. But poverty forces them to do things for survival in the short term that cause problems in the long term. They understand, but can't do anything about it.

"These multi­discipline research teams I work with are all focused on solving problems at one level or another," says Reid. "What we try to do in co­ordination with this problem solving process is identify environmentally sound production practices farmers can use within the conditions of their world."

Success requires understanding where all the puzzle parts fit. And success is critical because this ILRI research team is working at one of the most vulnerable boundaries of all: the boundary where intense poverty meets a fragile environment.

(ILRI)