Mara Beef: value added beef for for improved rangeland management, livelihoods, and conservation. (ប្រទេសកេនយ៉ា)

Mara Beef provides a new direct to market sales approach for pastoralist's in Kenya, in an effort to make livestock production more viable to local landowners. This livestock production model is combined with rangeland management and training in an effort to improve pastoral livlihoods, restore rangelands and prevent degradation, and support biodiversity conservation.

Mara Beef is a limited company that raises top quality beef on the edge of the Maasai Mara, Kenya. The Mara Beef company uses their own private land - Naretoi farm - as well as partnering with the Enonkishu Conservancy, to introduce high quality beef breeds to local herds, and sell the beef onto high end supermarkets and restaurants through their own abattoir. There is a large gap in the prime beef market in Kenya, and Mara Beef is trying to fill this gap. Other cuts, not prime cuts, are sold to other less expensive restaurants. The beef is slaughtered and butchered on site. Mara Beef is engaged in many facets of improved rangeland management; the management of Enonkishu Conservancy and Naretoi farms; through the Mara Training Centre, a training hub for rangeland management; and using the Mara Beef network to link pastoral communities with higher value market.

The Enokishu Conservancy is a conservancy created on the edge of the Maasai Mara ecosystem, and is registered under the Maasai Mara Wildlife Conservancies association. The conservancy is 6,000 acres in size, and is owned by 34 landowners who are Maasai pastoralists. Mara Beef has worked with the conservancy to develop a grazing plan for the conservancy. This plan encourages seasonal rotational grazing that allows grasslands to be heavily grazed for short periods, and allowed to recover over long periods. Conflict between predators and cattle is minimised through the use of mobile bomas (enclousers), to protect cattle at night. Integrating wildlife and livestock management into this conservancy aims to i) provide financial benefits through livestock sales from community cattle to build resilience to stochastic events, such as droughts; ii) to increase food security through supplementary income generation; iii) establish sustainable livestock production, to reduce rangeland degradation in an effort to restore and protect ecosystem functioning. This includes the improvement of soils, watershed protection, carbon sequestration and biodiversity conservation. The conservancy pays each land owner to use the land for cattle fattening, and the average land rent paid to each landowner per year is $20 per acre, spending roughly $119,680 per year. Community members also receive conservancy fees from tourists visiting the area.

The Mara Training Centre was established within the Enonkishu training centre to work with communities to help them create and manage the future they desire. The programs build on three principles: building social participation, governance and participation; creating locally implemented and led planned grazing; and stimulating growth in livestock and wildlife based enterprises. The centre runs a variety of training courses including: boot-camps on rangeland management; extension services; and ecological monitoring.

Finally Mara Beef also provides market linkages for the broader pastoral community to premium beef markets. This service lets pastoral communities from across the region to sell beef at a guaranteed price based on both weight and grade at the animals. This price is often significantly higher, on average around $50, than any price offered by local markets, and the lower transport costs and less weight loss on transport also benefit the seller. The emphasis on high quality beef, with high weight requirements, should have a broader affect on pastoral communities, encouraging improved rangeland management for improved livestock productivity. Although this process will be slow. Mara Beef, for example, was granted a loan from the Agricultural Finance Corporation in January 2017 to purchase malnourished cattle during the drought - where Mara Beef bought 1000 animals from105 individuals at an average of $250 per cow.