Adaptive Livestock Management and Market Participation Under Prolonged Drought: The Amazigh Livestock System of Southeastern Morocco
USE AND APPLICATION OF CFS POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS ON EMPOWERING FAMILY FARMERS: CALL FOR SHARING EXPERIENCES AND GOOD PRACTICES
Report Submitted to the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), April 2026
Author: Stephanie Zabriskie
ORCID: 0009-0000-9273-1529
Affiliation: Humanculture (Indigenous-led nonprofit organization)
Capacity: Founder and Executive Director
Abstract
This paper documents the Amazigh household-level livestock system in southeastern Morocco as a functioning smallholder food security and livelihood system under prolonged drought conditions. Goat herding, water access, and feeding strategies are maintained through adaptive practices that integrate municipal water sources and locally available agricultural byproducts, enabling continued production despite the collapse of traditional forage and groundwater access. Outputs include food, material production, and market participation through territorial trade systems such as the Rissani souk. Operating under conditions of drought, constrained mobility, and temporary settlement, the system sustains household-level production through integrated resource use and market engagement. This paper demonstrates that the Amazigh system fulfills the functions that external policy frameworks aim to support, providing a working model of smallholder production maintained through adaptive strategies under environmental constraint.
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