Community Cattle Project
Living in a pastoralist area, livestock are often the only form of income for many members of our communities. However, as cattle numbers increase and areas of grazing decrease, we are seeing the stark need for quality over quantity. Many of our neighbours have always judged wealth by the number of cattle you have, no matter how malnourished they are. We are working together with the pastoralist people to move away from quantity and strive for quality. Through the Sosian Cattle Trading Project we buy up community cattle in the dry times, offering good prices when the market prices would otherwise be very low. We then fatten the cattle on Sosian grass and sell to market. On average this scheme injects approximately $250,000 directly back into the communities every year.
Additionally we lend out our high quality stud bulls for the communities to use on their cattle. By improving the genetics and quality of their animals they are beginning to get bigger and meatier cattle, which bring in much better market prices, thus allowing many pastoralists to have less animals without sacrificing financial gain.