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Pitch

Maasai traditionally keep many cows, walk with them to find grass. We want them to keep less cows and grow them food on irrigation farming


Description

Summary

The proposal is targeting Maasai people in East-Africa, whose life got harder and harder every year in the last decade. Since the seasonal rains delay even months, it often occurs, that the cows lack food until death and the same to the community, whose health rely on cow milk. Traditionally maasai keep a lot of cows, because they measure wealth in cows, not in money. But this tradition is becoming less and less sustainable since the climate change hit. In the severe droughts the only way to save the cattle is to take them away somewhere, where grass is still available. This usually means hundreds of kilometers. Many families can't manage to take the animals far away, so until the rain arrive they get a lot of loss. Apparently this traditional cow keeping doesn't work anymore.We want to teach the Maasai to keep less cows and feed them from their farm. Studies shows that under East - Africa there is a lot of water, which can be fetched from borehole. We want to drill in the villages to provide the water for farming in the dry season as well. We want to introduce them the farming of neppia grass, millet, sweet potato and other plants, which provide proper food not only for the cattle, but also for the people. We want to experiment which breed of cow is the best for them to keep in different areas of the country. Currently they keep English cows at some places, whose milk supply is very high. 


Is this proposal for a practice or a project?

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