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Most semi-arid rangelands of Tanzania are highly degraded due to high land use pressures including shifting cultivation and overgrazing. The presence of large patches of bare ground, pronounced soil erosion features such as rills and gullies and high encroachment of both invasive plant species and dense thorny bushes, as well as damaged surface water resources are amongst easily noticeable signs of rangeland degradation. For decades bush clearing, water spreading and reseeding using improved pasture seeds (grass and legumes) have been amongst the proposed rangeland improvement practices to reduce the scarcity of feed during the dry season in communal semi-arid grazing lands. However, these technologies have not been adopted by a wider part of agro-pastoralists in the country. The low adoption rate is attributed to a number of barriers including culture, land tenure, methods used to transfer proven technology and practices, contradictory agricultural policies and unavailability of pasture seeds. In other words, the problem may not be the absence of the relevant technologies for the rehabilitation of these degraded semi-arid rangelands, but rather processes that are used to foster adoption and wise use of these technologies by the wider part of the targeted communities. Home pasture nursery (HPN) is a new innovative approach that was developed and tested in the communal semi-arid rangelands of Gairo district that has indicated high potential for enhancing adoption of pasture production technologies under communal semi-arid grazing systems. Herein, a field experience on HPN is expounded. |
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