It depends on the rain: Smallholder farmers’ perceptions on the seasonality of feed gaps and how it affects livestock in semi-arid and arid regions in Southern Africa

The risk of climate-induced feed gaps, i.e. seasonal deficiencies in forage quantity and quality, is a major constraint for livestock in the dry regions of southern Africa. In South Africa particularly, the frequent occurrence of drought is a challenge for livestock farming and, coping strategies to mitigate feed gaps on smallholder farms are urgently needed. We chose the Limpopo province, of northern South Africa to study livestock farmers’ perceptions of the temporal patterns of feed gaps and their perceived impacts on livestock production across different agro-ecological zones (AEZ) and farm types (i.e., livestock only, mixed crop-livestock farms). We combined a semi-structured questionnaire on ninety farms with data from herbage analysis (mineral nutrient concentrations of grasses grazed in winter). Additionally, we explored the effect of seasonal feed availability on feed gaps, expressed as gross primary productivity (GPP), based on long-term simulated vegetation data. We found a close correlation between farmers’ perceived feed gaps and GPP (Pearson’s r = − 0.77, p < 0.01). Farmers’ perceptions of feed gaps are related to precipitation deficits that restrict rangeland productivity especially in winter and spring across the AEZ. Consequently, farmers considered that feed gaps occur mainly in winter (80%) followed by spring (30%) and autumn (20%). In addition, our analysis demonstrated that in winter the mineral concentration in rangeland biomass is inadequate to meet the livestock feed requirements. The percentages of farmers who perceived feed gaps and animal weight loss in the winter season did not differ significantly between farm types (p = 0.40) and AEZ (p = 0.41). Among livestock-only farmers, feed gaps were perceived to occur more in autumn (p < 0.01) whereas for mixed crop-livestock farmers the feed gap perception was greater in spring (p < 0.01). Farmers located in the drier zone perceived feed gaps more in spring (p < 0.05), leading to the significant perception of livestock weight loss for that period (p < 0.01). As strategies to deal with feed gaps, farmers rely on crop residues and/or reduction of livestock numbers. To improve the sustainability of the livestock system, our results show that feed gaps follow a strong seasonal pattern and they suggest that intervention strategies do not necessarily need to account for local climatic differences but rather for farm operation types.