A Livestock Lifeline
Pastoralist communities in northern Kenya, whose primary assets are livestock, were faced with potentially devastating income loss when the Government of Kenya were forced to close public livestock markets in order to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. This on top of a general decline in demand due to lower consumer spending put pressure on many households in community conservancies, who rely on income from livestock trading.
That is why many NRT member community conservancies have requested the services of the NRT Trading Livestock-to-Market business (LTM) during the pandemic.
LTM was created with the simple mission to provide community conservancies with a consistent, reliable, and fair market for their beef cattle. LTM holds markets in willing NRT member conservancies, who see value in taking advantage of the objective LTM prices. NRT Trading buys cattle directly from pastoralists on a weight-based price system to match the system in terminal markets (the scale is publicly viewable for sellers to ascertain the value of their cattle). Transparent pricing puts revenue directly in the hands of pastoralists, earns the member conservancies income, and contributes to county taxes. A conservation fee is applied to each sale, which is a contribution by both NRT Trading and the sellers at the ratio of 2:1 (2,000 KSh. to 1,000 KSh.) respectively. This helps to support community conservancy operations and livelihoods development initiatives.
From January to June 2020, LTM has:
Purchased 1,764 head of cattle from 522 sellers in eight conservancies
47 of these sellers were women
With revenue returning to households, the number of beneficiaries of these sales is estimated at 3,500 people
KSh. 75,293,280 ($ 710,314) was paid out to sellers
Conservation contributions to conservancies totalled KSh. 4,608,800 ($ 43,479) for operations support and community projects. This is because sellers contribute a small portion of the revenue from their sale to their conservancies as an administration fee, while NRT Trading also contributes money.
NRT Trading worked closely with local District Commissioners, Chiefs, and county COVID health officials to get special permission to conduct markets in the interior of conservancies. The markets were conducted with strict social distancing measures, and water stations and masks were available to all participants.
After purchase, each animal is microchipped, finished to market specification if needed, and sold to markets in Nairobi. Any margin remaining is returned to Community Conservancies through NRT.