Crop farming is either rain-fed or irrigated.
Crop farming is also a major livelihood that has been taken up by settled communities.
Crop farming on steep slopes would lead to soil nutrient loss and high erosion rates.
Livestock grazing thrived in the sparsely populated north, but crop farming was mostly limited to the south.
"Winters are long," he said, adding, "Two speculative ventures — writing and cash crop farming — well, that makes a man who goes to Vegas look like a choirboy".
"These villagers have always practised a unique lifestyle: most of them are cave-dwellers and find their livelihood in sheep and goat-herding and small crop farming.
They razed the forest to accommodate crop farming, and local tribes were reduced to selling trinkets at the oil camps, or to retreating further into the bush.
Smallholder dairy farming is a good solution to these problems, Kawonga says, because it provides year-round income, whereas crop farming employment is seasonal.
Irrigation in a few areas sustains limited crop farming; otherwise, pastoralism constitutes the economic base, with a focus on yak and yak crossbreeds, sheep, goats, and occasionally cattle.
About three-fifths of Somalia's economy is based on agriculture; however, the main economic activity is not crop farming but livestock raising.
The town of Wanaka, at the southern tip of the lake, is the centre of a resort region that also supports some sheep grazing and crop farming.
