Introduction
Definitions
The term ‘restocking’ is an imprecise one, and a wide variety of projects might be described as including restocking components. Sidahmed (1998) gives the following, extremely specific definition of the term: "Restocking is an approach which aims at helping individual pastoral households or communities to build up lost herds and flocks in a sustainable manner."
However, similar issues arise even when the beneficiaries are not pastoralists or when the new animals are not in fact replacements of lost livestock. As a result, a broader concept of restocking, covering most instances in which project beneficiaries are helped to acquire new animals, is a useful analytical tool.
Within this broader concept, there are obviously important distinctions to be made. For instance, as Heffernan (1999) points out, animals may be distributed as a form of immediate disaster relief, as part of the rehabilitation process, or in a longer-term development effort. According to Sidahmed (1998), the first is often a feature of restocking by non-governmental organizations (NGOs), while most IFAD projects fall into the second and third categories. Some examples of IFAD rehabilitation projects are the Kidal Food and Income Security Programme in Mali and the more recent farm reconstruction projects in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Long-term mitigation projects, by contrast, include the two Smallholder Cattle Development Projects (loans 035-ID and 171-ID) in Indonesia, the Arhangai Rural Poverty Alleviation Project in Mongolia and several regional agricultural development projects in China.
A second distinction depends on the species and purpose of the animals distributed. The majority of IFAD projects seem to focus on herds and flocks of cattle, sheep, or goats providing milk or meat. An example is the Shanxi Integrated Agricultural Development Project in China, which aimed to provide 15 000 breeding cows or heifers, 13 700 breeding ewes or does and 2 300 breeding rams or bucks to about 32 000 households.The project exceeded its targets in all categories and introduced pigs (particularly common in Asian projects) as a new element after appraisal. However, a substantial minority of projects aim instead to provide draught animals, often as part of wider crop development programmes. In the Agricultural Development Project in Matam in Senegal, medium-term credit was made available for pairs of oxen or buffalo, and similar projects have taken place in India, Laos, Mali and many other countries. Finally, a number of poverty alleviation projects have made poultry (or sometimes pig or small ruminant) units available, typically to women, for additional income-generating activities. The Special Assistance Project for Cyclone Affected Rural Households in Bangladesh was a good example of this, involving more than 20 000 goats and more than 250 000 chickens.
A
third distinction can be drawn according to the importance of the restocking
component within a project. The importation of 40 trained oxen pairs as
a minor element of the Notsé Rural Development Project in Togo
is relatively insignificant when compared to the Arable Lands Development
Programme in Botswana, which had as a major objective the improvement
of land preparation and ploughing and distributed 4 597 draught power
packages.
This contrast of scale is related to the distinction between minor breed-improvement components that provide a small number of male livestock and major restocking projects that make available many more animals, predominantly females. There are clearly important differences between the Upper-East Region Land Conservation and Smallholder Rehabilitation Project in Ghana, which purchased 190 improved Sahelian rams, and the current herd reconstitution projects in Rwanda and Burundi. Nevertheless, there is a continuum here. Many poverty alleviation projects have also attempted to ensure that the livestock they provide are genetically superior (usually by including local or cross-bred females and imported males), with mixed results. For example, the Community-Based Agricultural and Livestock Development Project in Cape Verde attempted the genetic upgrading of livestock on a larger scale. This was successful in the case of cattle, but failed with goats, apparently because the activities "started up without thorough understanding of the farming systems" (IFAD, 1999).
Finally, there is a distinction between the majority of IFAD projects, which tend to provide animals on medium or long-term credit, and the few that include varying degrees of subsidy. In the Ouadis of Kanem Agricultural Development Project in Chad, 1 800 families without livestock were entitled to purchase goats at a quarter of the market price. The Small Ruminants Project in Togo was restructured and the planned credit for 12 000 ewes was replaced by matching grants. Likewise, in the Andhra Pradesh Participatory Tribal Development Project in India, milch animals and plough bullock pairs were made available on a 50:50 grant-credit basis. A discussion in the Staff Appraisal Report of the problematic Livestock Development and Rangeland Management Project in the Central African Republic elucidates the issues involved:
"Financial support for herd rebuilding (USD 2.5 million, 8 percent). Some 1,850 small herders who would like to remain herders but whose herds are not currently of a viable size would need seed money to acquire up to six 3-year-old breeders at a cost of about USD 270, or a total financing need of USD 1.4 million. An analysis of the budget of these herders clearly shows that they are unable to pay interest on any loan for the purchase of cattle. Repayment of principal on a no-interest loan would also be doubtful. Taking cattle as collateral does not provide much security as animals may disappear because of all kinds of diseases. For all these reasons, it is highly unlikely that any loan made to small herders would be reimbursed. In these circumstances, a much simpler and cheaper mechanism is to provide a grant, despite the moral hazard that may be involved. A system of ‘passing-on’ breeding cattle to other members of the community, after several years, may lower the moral hazard. An initial contribution by the beneficiaries fitting the accepted criteria of poverty, of the order of 10 percent of the cost of the animals to be purchased, would be matched, as proof of group solidarity, by an equivalent grant by FIDE (the Inter-Professional Livestock Development Fund). The remainder would be provided by the Government on a grant basis and financed out of Credit funds."
This approach is, however, unusual for IFAD. Most livestock is provided on credit, causing some problems with repayment and raising a new set of questions. First, there are different types of repayment. Some of the more successful methods, which rely largely on peer pressure as a motivational factor, are revolving funds and pass-the-gift arrangements. Fifty per cent of the intended cattle recipients in the Eastern Islands Smallholder Farming Systems and Livestock Development Project in Indonesia were initially provided with animals. Later, they were to return two similar offspring to be given to their fellow group members. A similar revolving animal scheme was instituted in the Crop Improvement and Marketing Project in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, although participation was low. Revolving credit funds were used for animal purchase in the Rehabilitation Programme for Drought-Affected Areas in Ethiopia, the White Nile Agricultural Services Project in The Sudan and the North-Central Province Participatory Rural Development Project in Sri Lanka, among others.
Second, there are various approaches to the provision of credit. In some cases, the credit is made available for general use, so that farmers are given small loans and make their own decisions whether or not to acquire livestock. To define these cases as ‘restocking projects’ may be stretching even our broader definition. However, supervised credit is more common in IFAD projects, and most common of all is the provision of credit for specific livestock ‘packages’ of varying detail and flexibility. These packages often include feed and shelter for the animals. Sometimes only one package is available; in other cases beneficiaries have a choice. (In theory, at least: the evaluation report on one project in China mentions that the government bureaucracy was making non-participatory, top-down decisions regarding which packages would be available in particular villages.) The animals themselves may be provided by the project directly or procured by the beneficiaries with project money and sometimes project advice. The number of packages available in each livestock category may be predetermined, or it may be changed in accordance with farmer demand, as in the Jilin Low-lying Land Development Project in China, in which the dairy component was cancelled at mid-term and replaced by credit for pigs and geese. All of these issues affect the choices and incentives that the individual beneficiary faces when deciding whether or not to apply for a loan.
It is clear that the broad definition of ‘restocking’ adopted in this review allows the inclusion of a diverse set of IFAD projects. However, insofar as these projects are all concerned with the provision of livestock to beneficiaries, they also fit a certain pattern. The same key questions regarding targeting, implementation and sustainability arise again and again.
