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Farming

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biggykhair
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15 views2 pages

Farming

Uploaded by

biggykhair
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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FARM PLANNING AND CARRYING CAPACITY

- Carrying capacity is defined as the number of grazing animals a piece of


land can support long-term while maintaining or improving the range land
resources (vegetation, soil and water)

Over the years, of doing my Farm layout planning services, I’ve had many
cases were land is limited and clients are blindly zealous about wanting to
keep many grazing animals, but are not knowledgeable on what numbers to
keep without causing damage to the land.

When planning your farm, there are certain landscaping and livestock
management aspects that have to be considered. These will help you make
better decisions when stocking your animals and choosing which venture to
partake.

Let’s go through them step by step:

1. How much of farm infrastructure are you going to build:

-This is one important issue, for example, If you have a 10 ha plot, one has to
know how much of the total area will be taken by roads and housing. What
other land uses will take up land e.g. gardening and cropping. After this
evaluation, how much of land is left for pasture?

2. What is your veld land’s carrying capacity

- After knowing how much of grazing land is left, one has to know if there is
the right amount of foraging plants (grass, herbs, bush and shrubs) for
sustainable utilization by animals without damaging the land. Some lands
may have plenty of foraging plants which can be either not of great
nutritional value or are not very much appealing to be used as food by
animals. A veld assessment has to be carried out to check on which foraging
species you have as a farmer.

- This will help a farmer determine whether it’s necessary to supplement the
veld or reinforce it by introducing other plants to make the land produce
more food.

3. What animals to keep


- Now that you have determined your carrying capacity, it time to decide
what animals to keep in relation to your lands plant provisions. Different
animals have different feeding needs and ways, for example cattle, ho

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