Pastoralists almost everywhere in the Old World depend heavily on livestock milk products for nutrition, through both direct consumption and the sale of dairy products to adjacent farmers in order to acquire grains or other foods. The exceptions to this pattern of exchange occur where pastoralists are so remote from arable areas that it is not practical. The pastoral peoples in the centre of deserts, such as the Sahara, and in extremely cold areas, such as Siberia, have no opportunity for sales (for the Hoggar Tuareg, see Gast, Maubois and Adda, 1969). Similarly, the evolution of processing technologies, such as cheese- and yoghurt-making, are driven by climate; in extreme cold, elaborate preservation technologies may be of only limited value. Processing technologies are also driven by breeding seasonality; for example, in most of sub-Saharan Africa breeding is uncontrolled, with the consequence that animals can come into oestrus at any time, so milk is available all year round. In temperate zones, oestrus may be naturally highly seasonal, or herders may control breeding through mechanical means or exclosure. Milk is thus seasonal and, if herders depend on sales to acquire carbohydrates, they must preserve the product and sell it when there is a market opportunity.
Dairy products thus exhibit a wide variety of storability. In an extreme herding economy such as Mongolia, where fresh milk is only available for part of the year, there is a strong need for a diversity of products that meet nutritional requirements throughout the year. Table 5 shows the principal dairy products made by Mongolian herders.
TABLE 5
Mongolian dairy products
Mongolian name |
English name |
Aaruul |
Solidified dried curds |
Urum |
Clotted cream |
Shar tos |
Reduced butter |
Tsagaan tos |
Fermented butter |
Ezgi |
Caramelized curd |
Aartz |
Boiled yoghurt |
Tarag |
Yoghurt |
Byaslag |
Cheese |
Airag |
Fermented mares’ milk |
Huuruulsen suu |
Boiled milk |
Tsurum |
Dried yoghurt |
Source: Blench, 1995a.
In the Islamic Republic of Iran and Afghanistan, a similarly wide range of products is made, essentially from the milk of small ruminants (e.g. Ferdinand, 1969; Martin, 1980; Digard, 1981). Generally speaking, dairy products in Eurasia seem to be far more complex and varied than those in Africa. This probably reflects greater exposure to climatic extremes and, thus, the need to devise products that have differing degrees of storability. There is also considerable variation in attitudes to fresh milk; in Africa and Europe fresh milk production has historically had a high cultural value among livestock producers, although in the Islamic Republic of Iran milk is rarely if ever drunk without processing (Digard, 1981: 198).
All species produce milk, but the culture of dairying varies from species to species. For example, although Cleopatra bathed in asses’ milk, donkey milk seems not to be drunk anywhere in the world on a regular basis, in spite of being a common ingredient in magical remedies.3 Table 6 gives a summary of a variety of dairy products produced from the milk of different species.
TABLE 6
Dairy products by species
Product |
Camel |
Horse |
Donkey |
Cattle |
Yak |
Buffalo* |
Sheep |
Goat |
Reindeer |
Fresh milk |
+ |
+ |
- |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
Yoghurt |
+ |
- |
- |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
- |
Butter |
- |
- |
- |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
- |
Ghee |
- |
- |
- |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
- |
Cheese |
+ |
- |
- |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
- |
Fermented milk |
- |
+ |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
+ |
Source: Collated from FAO, 1990b and other sources.
* Buffaloes are very rarely herded by pastoralists (but see Digard, 1981).
Reindeer milk yields are extremely low, and thus reindeer are only occasionally milked and no products are made from the milk (Fondahl, 1989).
Llamas and alpaca were not traditionally milked, and it seems that Andean populations were lactase-intolerant, pointing to a long history for this situation (Orlove, 1982). Dairying in South America is an entirely introduced culture, and the sale of such dairy products as cheese probably originally developed to supply the market among individuals of European descent. Nonetheless, when herds are mixed, combining llamas with small ruminants, cheese-making represents a significant economic activity (Göbel, 1997).
A constant factor among pastoral populations is the assignation of milk and milking tasks to women (Little, 1994). Men usually only milk animals for their own immediate consumption, but almost everywhere women are assigned the right to milk animals for feeding the family and for sale, where there are surpluses. This has been positive for women where the external market for milk has increased demand, for example in the Sudan where the introduction of rural cheese factories pushed up prices (Michael, 1987). However, where the comparative prices of milk and meat shift in favour of meat, men become more concerned about calf survival and, therefore, put pressure on women to take less milk.
Almost everywhere, the milk yields of pastoral herds are very low compared with those of farmed species in modern intensive systems. West African cattle may give as little as 1 litre a day, compared with up to 60 litres in high-intensive stall-fed systems. Experiments on university and research station farms have shown that the capacity of “traditional” breeds is much higher when their nutritional regime is changed. However, pastoralists do not operate under such conditions, and have to contend with a range of subclinical pathogens, constant movement and the need to balance calf survival against human nutritional needs. So, despite the reams of good advice and the countless projects intended to increase yields, the situation has not changed significantly.
Another aspect of pastoral dairying that has frequently been the source of near panic among developers is hygiene. Although hygiene in dairy production represents a major cost to intensive milk producers, pastoral societies have virtually no outgoings in this respect, because they generally take no special precautions. Since the principal consumers and purchasers of the products attach no importance to hygiene, producers can compete effectively with packaged products from intensive systems and see no need to adopt additional technologies that increase costs without also increasing market price. If pastoralists were to operate in countries with onerous regulations concerning dairy hygiene (which were actually enforced), their production systems would be threatened but, almost by definition, pastoralists are remote from such regimes.
It has been observed in various regions of the world that the terms of trade are slowly, but inexorably, moving against pastoral producers (Swift, 1982). In other words, the value of their milk, either exchanged directly against grain or sold to buy grain, is gradually declining. The reasons for this are manifold but can probably be reduced to a single underlying cause: the spread of competing products in a market that was once dominated by milk. For example, in semi-arid West Africa, milk was once the gift of preference to visitors, and the status of an individual was confirmed by the amount of milk he or she drank. The availability and prestige of beer and soft drinks has largely displaced milk and it has become something of a poor person’s drink, thus forcing down the price. In addition, the tendency of Western economies to produce surplus milk has resulted in frequent surpluses of dried milk powder which are either dumped in countries that have a pastoral sector or sent as development assistance. The sporadic and aseasonal availability of such a competing product makes it problematic for pastoralists to predict the market value of their own product.
As well as milk, live animals can also yield blood, and historically this has been exploited in East Africa and the Horn of Africa, although the practice is looked on with distaste by pastoralists elsewhere. Pastoralists such as the Maasai bleed cattle with a special hollow arrow and mix the blood with milk. The Dodoth, and perhaps other pastoralists, also bleed small ruminants, making a cut above the eye. Yields are not high as individual adult animals give about 1 litre a month during the wet season and less in the dry, while small ruminants give only about 0.25 litres (Deshler, 1965). Although nutritious and apparently safe, it seems unlikely that this practice has potential to spread to other pastoral regions.
Meat preservation activities vary widely among pastoralists, reflecting both the seasonality of slaughter and market access. For example, where the majority of animals are slaughtered at one time of year, notably in cold-weather sites such as Mongolia and Siberia, meat must be preserved and can often be kept fresh by freezing. In the arid tropics there is less impetus to slaughter at a particular time of year because of aseasonal oestrus and the consequent significantly reduced intra-annual weight variation. Meat is occasionally smoked, especially for market, but pastoralists usually match the species slaughtered to the occasion and consume all the meat before it goes bad.
Livestock fibres and hides can also be of substantial economic importance. Woolled sheep tend to be found in temperate zones; for example there were hardly any wool sheep in sub-Saharan African pastoral systems or in south-central India. Wool is one of the high-value products that is not facing significant competition from an equivalent external product; the evidence is that globalization of the trade has caused wool and cashmere production to expand. Alpaca, for example, are tending to increase in numbers at the expense of llamas, because their wool commands a better price on the international market. The exact definition of “wool” versus “hair” is somewhat variable; products from camelids are listed under hair in some statistics and under wool in others. Orlove (1977: 205 ff.) gives a useful discussion of this problem in relation to the Andean wool trade. Table 7 shows the main fibre and hide products traded by pastoralists, according to the species.
TABLE 7
Livestock products by species
Product |
Camel |
Horse |
Donkey |
Cattle |
Yak |
Sheep |
Goat |
Reindeer |
Llama |
Alpaca |
Hair |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
- |
- |
Wool |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
+ |
- |
- |
+ |
+ |
Cashmere |
- |
- |
- |
- |
+ |
- |
+ |
- |
- |
- |
Hide |
+ |
- |
- |
- |
- |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
Tail |
- |
+ |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
Antlers |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
+ |
- |
- |
Camelids are defined as having wool, as are sheep. The cashmere produced by goats, yaks and Bactrian camels is also very similar to a wool. When reindeer antlers are mature, they can be harvested and used for handles and other implements that require bone. When they are immature they are prized for medicine, especially in the Republic of Korea and other Southeast Asian countries.
Nearly all of these products can be harvested sustainably, but hides can be acquired only after slaughter. Pastoralists are usually more concerned about animal survival than the quality of hides, so these are often of limited market value. Enterprises requiring quality skins very often prefer to work with specialized sedentary producers. For example, the Sokoto Red goats of the Sahel, whose hides are used to produce morocco bindings, are never drawn from pastoral herds. In West Africa, however, there is a substantial market in hides for human consumption, so much so that leather for shoe production has to be imported. In large economies such as Nigeria, this can lead to quite startling frauds such as the passing off of donkey or camel skins as cattle hides in remote markets.
In the traditional sector, almost all post-abattoir products are of some economic value: blood is dried and sold as fertilizer, while horns and bones are cleaned and ground up as animal feed. However, animals are sold live and this disposition of minor products is in the hands of traders, leaving little room for improving the value added of pastoral products.
One way of gaining value added from pastoral species is through their use as work animals. Working animals are more likely to be found among agropastoralists or farmers, and the boundary between the two is highly permeable. In West Africa, for example, it is not uncommon for farmers in semi-arid regions to use cattle for ploughing or carting produce during the rainy season and then hand the animals to occupationally specialized pastoralists for the remainder of the year. This enables them to exploit the economies of scale that come with the management of large herds or, alternatively, to avoid the labour outlay associated with cut-and-carry management.
Table 8 shows species of animal and the types of work performed by each. The final column notes the importance of the dog, which is a key species used for herding throughout much of semi-arid Eurasia.
TABLE 8
Working animals by species
Uses |
Dromedary |
Bactriancamel |
Horse |
Donkey |
Cattle |
Yak |
Buffalo |
Sheep |
Goat |
Reindeer |
Llama |
Alpaca |
Dog |
Riding |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
- |
- |
- |
+ |
+ |
- |
- |
Portage |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
- |
Cartage° |
+ |
? |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
- |
- |
- |
+ |
- |
- |
- |
Tillage+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
- |
+ |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
Threshing |
- |
- |
+ |
+ |
+ |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
Rotational machines* |
+ |
- |
+ |
+ |
+ |
- |
+ |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
Drawing water |
+ |
? |
+ |
+ |
+ |
- |
+ |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
Herding |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
- |
+ |
° Includes pulling sledges, for both human and agricultural products transport.
+ Includes planting, ploughing, harrowing, weeding and lifting.
* Sugar-cane mills, oil-mills and clay brick-making mortars.
Notes: It should be emphasized that there is a strong negative correlation between the presence of pastoral buffaloes and their use as work animals. Normally in the areas where they are used for work, such as Egypt and lowland Southeast Asia, they have no pastoral role.
Reindeer are used for riding and pulling sleighs, but a recently published photograph of the Dolgan (a Turkic group related to the Sakha in Yakutia) shows reindeer hitched to a crossbar pulling carts on wheels.
Sheep and goats are not usually used as pack animals, but they are essential to the system of vertical transhumance in part of the Himalayas (Downs and Ekvall, 1965). Similarly, goat-carts are used on a small scale in Honduras, although this could not be described as a significant widespread technology. The use of reindeer for herding is a key element in the entire production system; reindeer reared in the household can be trained to round up and lead the semi-wild herds. Much the same is true of goats, for example among the Bedu, where a trained goat will manage a flock of goats and sheep.
Pastoralists’ orientation towards the market has been extremely variable across the world, according to accessibility and ecology. Pastoralists have always had to exchange some products with outsiders in order to acquire basic foodstuffs and minor household goods. Extreme-weather pastoralists have generally reduced this to a minimum because of the difficulties of such trade. However, West African pastoralists seem to have co-evolved with highly sophisticated long-distance trade networks, and make use of these networks to pass information about both market conditions and forage resources (Blench, 1996).
Until recently, many pastoralists functioned essentially without cash, exchanging livestock products directly for external goods. In the command economies, prices were completely arbitrary, fixed at the centre without regard to availability or access costs, and thus the inverse of a market system. In the sheep herding systems of Central Asia, the former Soviet Union’s demand for wool caused hardy breeds to be replaced by Merino varieties, which could be kept alive only with high levels of external inputs (see Van Veen, 1995 for Kyrgyzstan). As monetarized systems and commoditization have penetrated the region, this has caused major adaptation problems. In Kyrgyzstan, the system is expected to revert to coarse wool and meat as more traditional breeds gradually replace the exotics.
The general problem of operating in a monetary economy is that pastoralism is essentially a slow-response system; the reproductive cycle of livestock is not adapted to making major changes in strategy over a short period. Thus, if the price of dairy products falls dramatically, a herd cannot suddenly be switched over to meat production. It is no accident that livestock producers in the developed world are usually enmeshed in complex webs of subsidies and price-support mechanisms; they would otherwise soon go out of business in a world of rapidly changing market conditions.
Although agencies dominated by economists are prone to forget this, pastoralism is above all a cultural system, and the close relationship between people and animals is essential to its persistence. The theoretical literature on pastoralism was dominated by an argument about the rationality of pastoral strategies. As far back as the 1920s, Herskovitz (1926) argued for the existence of a “cattle complex”, in other words a skein of close cultural ties between herders and their animals that meant that management practices were remote from rational economic strategies. In particular, argument focused on the maximization of herd size through the retention of “useless” animals such as barren females. The rise of development economics meant that this anthropological view was regarded as unacceptable and much ink was expended trying to show that whatever pastoralists did was somehow “rational”.4 The debate itself now seems outmoded; pastoralists have their own cultures and their management strategies develop within their cultural frames of reference. The result is often at cross-purposes with outsiders’ views, but the recommendations of experts are often contradictory over time, as changing attitudes to biodiversity and minor breeds demonstrate. Box 2 illustrates a case in which customary management ideas seem very remote from modern ideas, but also underlines strongly the importance of a profound anthropological understanding of cultural constraints as a prerequisite to effective development.
A series of recent analyses show the remarkable speed at which worldwide demand for animal protein is rising and project its likely increases over the next two decades (e.g. De Haan, Steinfeld and Blackburn, 1997; Delgado et al., 1999). Table 9 shows projections for meat consumption based on FAO annual data since 1982.
TABLE 9
Actual and projected meat consumption by region
Annual growth of total meat consumption |
Total meat consumption | ||||
Region |
1982-1994 |
1993-2020 |
1983 |
1993 |
2020 |
(percentage) |
(million tonnes) | ||||
China |
8.6 |
3.0 |
16 |
38 |
85 |
Other East Asia |
5.8 |
2.4 |
1 |
3 |
8 |
Southeast Asia |
5.6 |
3.0 |
4 |
7 |
16 |
India |
3.6 |
2.9 |
3 |
4 |
8 |
Other South Asia |
4.8 |
3.2 |
1 |
2 |
5 |
Latin America |
3.3 |
2.3 |
15 |
21 |
39 |
West Asia and North Africa |
2.4 |
2.8 |
5 |
6 |
15 |
Sub-Saharan Africa |
2.2 |
3.5 |
4 |
5 |
12 |
Developing world |
5.4 |
2.8 |
50 |
88 |
188 |
Developed world |
1.0 |
0.6 |
88 |
97 |
115 |
World |
2.9 |
1.8 |
139 |
184 |
303 |
Source: Delgado et al., 1999.
The suggestion is that demand will rise, particularly in East Asia and Latin America. This is consistent with a more general understanding of the increasing wealth and growth of cities and market-driven economies in these regions. Projecting demand in the developed world is more problematic, since fashion and levels of confidence in the safety of intensively produced livestock products have an increasing influence on consumption. Changing societal patterns can often make new domesticates attractive; demand for stronger-tasting meat with a low fat content has accelerated the supply of antelope and ostrich, for example.
Similar figures are given for milk; by 2020 projections suggest that developing countries will consume 100 million tonnes more meat and 223 million tonnes more milk than they did in 1993. At present, people in the developed world obtain 27 percent of calories and 56 percent of protein from animal food products, compared with 11 percent and 26 percent, respectively, in the developing world. A well-known relationship between increasing income and meat consumption suggests that these percentages are set to rise in the developing world.
In terms of the sources of meat, the fastest growth areas are in pork and poultry; production costs fall more rapidly for monogastrics wherever land costs are high. Monogastrics are also more efficient at converting feed and can typically be supplied with agro-industrial by-products from the cities. Sere and Steinfeld (FAO, 1996a) give the rates shown in Table 10 for the increase of different livestock production systems in recent decades.
TABLE 10
Source of increases in world meat supply
System |
% increase |
Industrial livestock production |
4.3 |
Mixed farming |
2.2 |
Extensive grazing |
0.7 |
There is little doubt that these trends will continue; however, this is misleading in terms of determining the attention that should be paid to each system. Industrial production is monomorphic; it has only a single output goal. Both mixed farming and extensive grazing are polymorphic; they provide work animals, supply rural households with protein, function as a store of wealth in areas where banks do not penetrate, and often play a key role in ceremonial life. Moreover, they frequently make it possible to produce protein on terrain and in ecoclimatic conditions that could not be used for industrial production.
GLOBALIZATION OF THE TRADE IN LIVESTOCK PRODUCTS
A major factor transforming the situation of pastoralists in the twentieth century has been the globalization of the trade in livestock products. In the pre-modern era, pastoral products could be divided sharply between those that required rapid consumption, such as fresh milk and meat, and those that withstood relatively long-distance movement, such as live animals, fibres and skins. The comparative advantages of extensive producers have meant that they have always had an advantage in agricultural regions, and this has stimulated a lively trade. Long-distance commercial networks are common in pastoral areas, and pastoralists are frequently involved in these.
However, enclosures in Europe and the gradual spread of both new transport, notably railways and steamships, and subindustrial livestock production, especially in the area of fibres, created both an opportunity and a threat for pastoral producers. Roads opened up new markets for such products as wool and cashmere and brought increased numbers of potential buyers, but they also allowed the movement of products that had previously been confined to local areas, such as milk and meat. As urban consumers became more demanding, especially with regard to hygiene, the balance of the market shifted against pastoralists and towards enclosed systems. This trend reached its peak in the 1990s, when a sequence of health scares in intensive production systems forced the imposition of hi-tech traceability so that all livestock products can be tracked from source to consumer. No pastoralist can compete in this market.
The other consequence has been that the large-scale livestock production characteristic of developed economies frequently produces unsaleable surpluses, often as a consequence of an intricate nexus of subsidies. Frozen meat and milk powder periodically glut world markets and eventually end up being sold in developing countries at unrealistic prices or distributed as food aid. National governments usually accept this situation because it partially satisfies urban demand; cities are close at hand and pastoralists are usually faraway. Dairy products imported into sub-Saharan Africa rose by more than 300 per cent between 1972 and 1982, while dairy consumption as a percentage of total consumption increased from 1 to 27 percent (Von Massow, 1989: 7-9). However, the inevitable impact is to depress production in the pastoral zone. Ironically, these processes are affecting European livestock producers in much the same way; hill farmers in Wales are going out of business because of a catastrophic decline in prices caused by international competition.
In the case of fibres, the situation is more encouraging, as the international market for high-quality fibres remains quite buoyant. For Andean pastoralists, penetration of the international wool trade came relatively early, and wool was being bought for export by the middle of the nineteenth century (Orlove, 1977). Falling demand for the coarser llama fibres and increased demand for fine wools has resulted in alpaca production, which was previously of minor significance, becoming far more important.
One of the common arguments against extensive livestock production systems is framed in terms of low productivity; to a certain type of economist, measuring offtake from pastoral herds or milk yields from ruminants and comparing them with industrial levels suggests that pastoralism is an ineffective use of land and resources. More attractive is the relative output argument; high-input, high-output exotics are usually measured over a short time span, which gives them attractive characteristics compared with landraces. In the longer term, however, when subjected to environmental stress, subclinical pathogens and unpredictable feed supplement costs often make them less economic, if only because mortality is almost inevitably higher. In the case of large ruminants, for smallholders even one dead animal can be a catastrophic economic loss, because accumulated profits from outputs are unlikely to allow another animal to be bought. Collecting data that demonstrate this is difficult, because project cycles are typically three to five years long – barely enough time for exotics to be introduced and reach their productive phase. The typical structure of evaluations does not allow sufficient time to elapse for a true comparison to be made, which would require a period of at least a decade in the case of slow reproducers such as cattle, camels and yaks. No absolute figure for such a period can be given as it follows the reproductive cycle of individual species, but it should allow a female to develop from birth to maturity as represented by several parturitions.
3 Apparently, fresh donkey milk was widely available in nineteenth-century London as an alternative to the highly adulterated cows’ milk sold by dairies.
4 Much of this argument was entirely circular; for example, pastoralists’ maximization of herd size was claimed to demonstrate their rationality, because it would leave them with a higher number of animals post-catastrophe. However, if they rid the herd of unproductive animals this too was seen as rational in terms of classical economics.
