Farmer Participation
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Increase number of farmers that have signed conservation agreements
Data collection in progress
Kakheti Steppes
Georgia
Problem: The pastures in this landscape are degraded, primarily due to unsustainable grazing practices where the sheep density is too high, sheep are constantly present within the pastures and consequently the vegetation is overgrazed. This leads to loss of plant biomass and cover, desertification and erosion.
Action: SABUKO is working with farmers to increase their participation in a rotational grazing scheme, which means that portions of the pastures are left ungrazed at any given time to rest and regain vegetation cover.
Indicator: An increase in farmer participation in more sustainable grazing practices will indicate SABUKO’s success in stakeholder engagement, trust-building, behaviour change and capacity building that will lead to long-term commitments to decrease grazing pressure on the pastures within this landscape.
Methods
SABUKO monitors electronic auctions on e-auction.ge, where the National Agency of State Property advertises the lease of state-owned pastures. Through this platform, they can determine the areas officially allocated to farmers through the public lease agreements and verify whether rotational grazing schemes are included in the agreement. SABUKO also conducts on-site monitoring visits, to confirm adherence to conservation agreements and assess the level of engagement through direct observation and discussions with farmers. Farmers participate in short quizzes aimed at assessing their knowledge and commitment to rotational grazing practices and conservation principles. Based on this, farmers in each area are collectively assigned to a category: “Engaged”, “Very engaged” or “Very committed”, depending on their level of adherence and engagement.
This indicator builds on monitoring established by the Iori River Valley project on rotational grazing participation among shepherds.
SABUKO staff member speaking to one of SABUKO’s participating farmers. Photo: Giorgi Khubashvili.
Results
SABUKO has been working with farmers since 2019 on implementing more sustainable grazing practices. However in 2023 they were able to scale up their efforts and sign up many more farmers (see Fig. 1 and Table 1 below).
To date this encompasses 39,069 ha across three different grassland areas (Chachuna, Kotsakhura and Vashlovani).
Figure 1: Number of farmers participating in sustainable grazing practices, per year.
Giorgi Chikorashvili, SABUKO staff, speaking with one of SABUKO’s participating farmers. Photo: Giorgi Khubashvili.
Table 1: Number of participating farmers in project areas under different types of rotational agreements, and their participation level. MR – Managed Reserve; PA – Protected Area.
Partners
Partners
