🇲🇿 The cattle breeds of Mozambique

Cattle play a small part in Mozambique, where farming means small rain-fed plots of cassava and maize. About 1.2 million cattle graze extensively on grassland, and beef and milk output stays modest. Disease, notably tsetse flies in the north, limits herds, so livestock keeping is concentrated in the drier south.

• About 1.2 million cattle were counted in 2009.
• Beef output was estimated at around 22,000 tonnes in 2009.
• Cows' milk production stood near 75,000 tonnes in 2009.
• Tsetse flies in the northern provinces hold back cattle.
• The south leads livestock keeping because animals there face fewer diseases.

Cattle in Mozambique

Cattle play a small part in Mozambique's farming, which is dominated by food crops grown on tiny hand-worked family plots. Livestock keeping is a modest branch of agriculture: cattle are raised alongside goats, sheep, pigs and poultry, and the whole branch is little developed. Herds graze extensively, meaning the animals range over grassland rather than being fed in stalls. Around 1.2 million cattle were counted in 2009. Disease is the chief limit on bigger herds, and in the northern provinces the tsetse fly, a biting insect, troubles cattle. The south, where animals face fewer diseases, is where livestock keeping is concentrated. Of the country's land, some 44 million hectares are recorded as pasture, far more than the 3.9 million hectares actually cropped.

Regions and communities

Mozambique's regions split sharply. The south and south-west are dry to semi-dry, with poor soils, scarce rain and repeated droughts and floods; the centre and north are wetter and more fertile, producing most of the food surpluses. Yet for livestock the pattern runs the other way. The southern region is the centre of animal keeping, because animals there are less exposed to disease. In the northern provinces, tsetse flies trouble cattle and limit herds. Humid highlands lie mostly in the central provinces, where thick forest grows on fertile ground, while the drier interior carries only thin savannah. So crops are the wetter north's strength, and animals the drier south's.

Milk, butter and beef

Cattle give Mozambicans beef and milk, but in modest amounts. Beef output was estimated at about 22,000 tonnes in 2009, with cows' milk at around 75,000 tonnes. Both figures are small beside the crops that feed the country, such as cassava and maize, or the cash crops of tobacco, cotton, sesame, sugar and tea. Other farm animals add pork, poultry meat and hen eggs to the table. With livestock farming so small in scale, cattle goods remain a thin stream in an economy that rests chiefly on food crops grown for home use; only about a third of farmers sell any harvest at all.

Today

In 2009, Mozambique counted about 1.2 million cattle, along with 4.5 million goats and sheep, 1.3 million pigs and 18 million poultry. Animal keeping remains underdeveloped, and disease is named as the main obstacle to bigger herds. Only poultry has a small modern industry that is growing quickly. For cattle, the way forward lies in the south, where disease pressures are lighter, while the north's tsetse belt keeps numbers in check.