African livestock and pastoral background
An outline of pastoral development efforts
The lessons from development efforts in the past
Three examples of relevance to a pastoral systems research approach
Conclusions
References
Expérience en matière de développement
Stephen Sandford
Economist, Livestock Policy Unit, ILCA, Ethiopia
The purpose of this paper is to set our consideration of pastoral systems research within the framework of the experience of livestock and pastoral development in Africa during the last half century. The paper starts with some preliminary background material and then turns to those elements in past experience which are of particular relevance to pastoral systems research.
I shall start with some statistics on populations (mainly based on Jahnke, 1982). Pastoral systems occur mainly in arid and semiarid zones, which together I call "dry regions". Dry regions occupy about 55 % of tropical Africa's land surface area¹/ and account for 60 % of its ruminant livestock population (expressed in terms of tropical livestock units of 250 kg liveweight equivalent). Not all the livestock of the dry regions are involved in pastoral systems. Depending on one's definition of a pastoral system, the proportion of tropical Africa's total ruminant livestock population involved in pastoral systems probably lies between 30 % (if one counts only the population of the arid zone) and 50 % (if one includes up to 2/3 of the livestock population of the semi-arid zone). The figure for the human pastoral population is even more difficult to determine largely due to problems of definition - but the true figure probably lies between 15 and 25 million people, representing 6-10 % of tropical Africa's total rural population.
(1/ 75 % of its tsetse-free land surface area.)
I now proceed to some data on productivity (drawn largely from Jasirowski, 1973, and de Montgolfier-Kouévi and Vlavonou, 1981). Between 1950 and 1970 Africa's human population grew at about 2.5 % per annum but meat and milk output grew at just over 2 %, indicating declining output per human caput. From 1970 until 1975 the rate of growth of the human population increased while that of livestock output decreased, indicating an even faster decline in per caput output. Effective demand, i.e. demand backed by cash to pay, has been rising faster than population so that the relation between domestic output and domestic demand has deteriorated at an even faster rate than per caput output. The result has been a decline in the export of livestock and their products and a rise in imports.
Increases in the total output from African ruminants has more or less matched increases in total ruminant population. In other words there has been no apparent change in productivity per head of ruminants at least until the mid 1970s. As far as one can tell these figures for tropical Africa as a whole are matched by figures for the dry regions.
I do not want to decry the devoted work of African national statisticians, and of FAO and ILCA staff who have laboured to produce chese statistics. However, they would be the first to agree that these figures are often not well based in reality. The general picture they convey is probably right but might be wrong.
It is very difficult to find firm evidence concerning changes in the welfare of the human pastoral population in Africa. On the one hand there has been an encroachment by non-pastoralists into previously pastoral areas and there has been some population growth among pastoralists themselves. These factors suggest an increase in pressure on resources, with a probable consequent decline in welfare. On the other hand, mainly due to development of water supplies, the extent of the dry region effectively accessible to exploitation by livestock has increased, offsetting some of these pressures.
Most studies by social anthropologists suggest a decline in pastoralists' welfare. However a very recent study (Jamal, 1983) of Somalia suggests that pastoralists, on average, fare significantly better than crop farmers, mainly because of changes in the ratios between the prices of livestock and grain which enabled pastoralists to buy more grain in exchange for each animal sold. But Somalia's easy access to the oil-rich and meat-hungry markets of the Middle East may make it a special case. Although in terms of the welfare criteria traditionally used by pastoralists (e.g. ownership or consumption of livestock, meat and milk), the welfare, on average, of pastoralists has declined, this has been more than matched by increased access to a range of new goods and services. I suspect, therefore, that on average the material welfare of pastoralists has increased. However, most studies agree that inequality within pastoral societies has grown, for a variety of reasons, so that the absolute number of pastoralists below a given level of material welfare, i.e. the number of poor people, may have increased, and almost certainly there has been an increase in both the number and proportion of those who feel themselves to be under-privileged relative to some norm.
Pastoral development in the past has consisted of a mixture of general programmes, e.g. veterinary services, and of special development projects. It is difficult to summarise effectively the extent of this mixture. On a financial scale we can note that the total cost of government livestock development efforts in all ecological zones of tropical Africa between 1960 and 1975 has been estimated as US$ 600 million (Wissocq, 1978). Funds committed only to those special livestock projects in dry areas of tropical Africa in which one donor the World Bank - was involved between 1965 and 1980 amounted to US$ 600 million and the livestock elements of further mixed crop-livestock projects in dry areas funded by the Bank amounted to a further US$ 200 million (Sandford, 1981). These figures should be viewed in relation to a total annual gross value of livestock output in all ecological regions of tropical Africa of about US$ 6 billion (at 1975 prices) if one excludes the value of traction and transport services supplied by livestock, and US$ 10 billion if one includes them (de Montgolfier-Kouévi and Vlavonou, 1981).
The nature of, i.e. the type of component involved in, pastoral development has tended to change over time with fashion and technology. In the 1920s and 1930s the main emphasis was on veterinary programmes to fight the three major diseases of the dry areas, rinderpest, contagious bovine pleuropneumonia and anthrax. From the 1920s onwards, but primarily from the 1950s, there was a tremendous surge in the development of water supplies. Over the same period there was a growth in commercial ranching in those regions with European settlers. In some cases as early as the 1930s, but more generally after the Second World War, there were attempts to introduce controlled grazing schemes in areas used by traditional pastoralists.
Until the mid 1960s these efforts were financed primarily by domestic resources generated from within the countries of tropical Africa, with some external supplementation by private capital in the case of commercial ranching. The pace of development was rather slow and the main constraint was lack of finance for both staff and other forms of expenditure.
After about 1965 there was a significant quickening in the pace of development with the arrival on the scene of both the World Bank and USAID as important financiers of pastoral development. Since the mid 1970s the EEC/EDF has also become a financier of pastoral development on a significant scale. From 1965 to 1980 finance was no longer the critical constraint but experienced staff (whether local or foreign), viable components and suitable government policies and institutions became the main factors limiting progress.
From 1965 until about 1975 great emphasis was put on the development of ranching, on the model of the European settlers' ranches, by individuals, parastatal organisations and cooperatives of pastoralists. At this time little emphasis was put on general veterinary services other than the Pan African JP 15 rinderpest campaign.
From about 1974 onwards there was a progressive disenchantment with commercial ranching and a determined search for other components. There was some return to favour of general veterinary programmes but these were oriented more than before to problems other than those of the three major diseases which had been the focus of attention in earlier periods. There was some emphasis on "stratification", i.e. specialisation in production by regions and enterprises, with most attention being paid to intensive feedlots and to fattening of livestock on peasant smallholdings. Great emphasis was placed on reforms in land tenure in pastoral areas, and especially on the association of relatively small groups of people with defined areas of land. This association was done on a smaller more detailed scale than the previous general association of one or two tribes with very large blocks of land. Sometimes this association of land and people took the title of "group ranches" (which have seldom behaved at all like commerical ranches) but in recent years the fashion has been to talk of "pastoral units".
From World War II onwards there has been a fairly continuous interest by governments in the reforming marketing systems. This has often involved the introduction of direct trading by government or of government control over a private marketing system. Sometimes these marketing systems have been linked with processing facilities, sometimes not.
Although livestock development in Africa has often been characterised as peculiarly disastrous, in fact from 1963 to 1975 (de Montgolvier-kouévi and Vlavonou, 1981) the growth rate of livestock output was practically identical with that of crop output. The most recent figures show that in the last decade (1969/71-1979/81) meat and milk output grew faster than cereal output (FAO Production Year Books).
However there has been virtually no change in output (productivity) per ruminant; and there seems little reason to believe that there has been any increase in the primary productivity (herbage yield per unit area) of accessible grazing land. The increase in total output has been achieved by increases in livestock numbers, and these increases have been made possible either by grazing a higher proportion of the existing vegetation on land always accessible, or by increasing the area of land accessible. The livestock system has been extended but not intensified.
In extending the system two kinds of improvement have predominated - the control of rinderpest permitting increases in cattle numbers, and the development of water supplies permitting increases in the area of land exploited. In both cases institutional and administrative as well as technological changes were-involved.
Earlier huge losses from rinderpest were initially reduced by an administrative device - quarantine - albeit at high social cost. The subsequent development of a safe, easy-to-administer vaccine made rinderpest control much easier, more reliable and less costly to all, but the problem was already essentially under control, through quarantine, long before the tissue culture vaccine was developed. Improved technology played an earlier role in water development, in the form of hydrological skills, better borehole technology and machines that could move large quantities of earth quicker and more cheaply than could be done by hand. But the use of improved water technology - developed elsewhere - was in most places only made possible by organisational changes which permitted economies of scale in the employment of expertise, the acquisition and use of equipment and the raising of the necessary finance.
I am afraid that I have to point out here that in these most successful forms of pastoral improvement nothing remotely resembling what this workshop will define as pastoral systems research was employed. Both the technological and the organisational techniques employed were developed elsewhere and largely for other purposes, and very little thought or adaptation with respect to local circumstances were employed.
When we turn from extensive development to the intensification of production, i.e. the application of new skills and inputs to raise yields and values, there has been very little success in tropical Africa on any scale - either in increasing yields per head of livestock or, more importantly, per hectare of pastoral land. Yet yields and values have been raised elsewhere - both in pastoral areas in other countries and in non-pastoral forms of livestock production in the countries of tropical Africa.
The relative failure to itensify production in pastoral areas in tropical Africa can be attributed to a number of causes. In some cases there has been simple neglect. Deliberately or through lack of interest very little effort has been made in many countries to intensify production. In some cases this has been caused by a belief that pastoral production cannot be intensified or that this can only be done at the expense of ecological degradation.
In many cases government policies towards the livestock sector in general - or to the pastoral subsector in particular - have been defective. There may have been wrong policies, or contradictory policies, or simply an absence of policy. By policy in this case I mean some general issue, e.g. land tenure, pricing of commodities, organisation, etc., that is not related to some specific intervention for pastoral development.
In some cases the problem has concerned organisation, and staff for specific pastoral development programmes. Staff have been too few, poorly trained and inadequately motivated. Organisations have been established with the wrong structure and work has been poorly coordinated. Administrative procedures, e.g. for procurement or financial control, have been inappropriate; and funds have either not been provided at all or were provided too late to be of proper use.
However when all other causes have been taken into account the fact remains that in many cases the failure to intensify production arose from attempting misconceived interventions and from a failure to try interventions which would have succeeded. These errors must have been due to ignorance. Ignorance can be put right by general training and by research. It is to research and knowledge I now turn.
Before looking at some specific issues there are some general comments to be made. Three years ago I did a desk review of about 30 livestock projects in dry tropical Africa which were financed by one donor. Two main points of interest emerged. The first was the low expenditure on research of any kind. In general agricultural projects financed by this donor approximately 3 % of total project expenditure was allocated to research. By contrast in livestock projects in dry tropical Africa only 1.5 % was so allocated. The second major point of interest was the indifference shown by project planners to the technical base for their interventions. This was not in general true of veterinary innovations. In the case of veterinary interventions considerable attention was paid in the project appraisal documents to their technical base, i.e. to the evidence that the innovation proposed would have the expected results. But in the case of other innovation,.- especially range management innovations extremely little attention seems to have been paid to the technical base (Sandford, 1981).
I now turn to some particular examples of interventions which have taken place in pastoral development which are relevant to our consideration of pastoral systems research (PSR). I do not want to preempt what my collogues are going to say about the nature of PSR as a member of a general body of approaches more usually referred to as farming systems research(FSR). Let me however stress here four aspects of PSR.
Firstly, PSR is concerned wit-in a production system as a whole. Although particular elements in the system may be the ones on which attention is focused, nevertheless this is in the context of a general understanding of the system as a whole and of the relation of the elements selected to other elements. Secondly, in PSR considerable attention is paid to understanding the whole system before attention is focused on particular elements within it or before attempting to change these elements. Thirdly, PSR, in contrast to approaches more dominated by technological or commodity interests, is characterised by the attention paid to the pastoralists' own points of view. Fourthly, in PSR research is not only carried out on research stations. A crucial element in PSR is the testing of proposed innovations in pastoralists' own enterprises and under the conditions which pastoralists usually face.
I now look at three examples of interventions where, I believe, a PSR approach might have 1ed to greater success or to less costly failure.
In one country the pastoral areas were partitioned into huge "divisions" - of the order of 6 000 km each - which were in turn divided into "paddocks". The range management intervention proposed was one in which a particular set of pastoralists would be associated with a particular range division, water supplies would be developed in each paddock, and the range management activities would then, with the help of a committee of pastoralists, determine which paddocks could be "open for use" at any one time and which "closed" in order to implement a rest-and-rotation system. On the whole this programme has not been successful; and one can identify at least three major reasons for this.
Firstly, the programme did not adequately recognize the enormous spatial variability of rainfall, and the absolute necessity of allowing livestock to move from one division to another according to recent rainfall rather than confining them to particular divisions regardless of conditions. Secondly, the programme treated the livestock as homogeneous and failed to recognize that rotation of livestock between paddocks in a rather inflexible way prevented herders from providing particular species or classes of animals the particular types of vegetation, water and minerals which they needed at particular times.
Both these problems arose from the failure of the authorities to recognize the rationale behind the existing land use system. The third main reason for the lack of success was that no research on range management methods was carried out in that area prior to the project's implementation. The explicit assumption was that range management techniques for rest and rotation developed in the USA would be an improvement on the existing system of land use and that variations in these techniques could subsequently be made to suit local conditions. However, no further local research was carried out for at least the first 10 years of the project; and there is still no evidence that the management techniques suggested - and which the local pastoralists have ignored - would have raised land productivity.
My second example relates to the record of livestock research programmes in Africa in general rather than to a particular project. In a number of cases trials have been carried out on research stations on animal management practices, e.g. breeding seasons, supplementary feeding, and as a result recommendations have been made about practices which appear to be highly profitable. Pastoralists and other livestock owners have not followed these recommended practices because in their circumstances the practices have been unfeasible or uneconomic.
In a number of countries governments have intervened in marketing systems in order to improve their efficiency and provide pastoralists with higher prices for their livestock. Common among such interventions have been restricting permission to trade to those traders able to fulfill certain license conditions, and insisting that all trading takes place in formal markets, that sale be by auction and that livestock to be sold first be weighed. Such marketing interventions have usually been unsuccessful, firstly because no attempt was made to assess objectively the efficiency of the pre-intervention marketing situation - which was just assumed to be costly, inefficient and subject to manipulation by traders for their own profit; secondly, because often it was assumed that the function of livestock marketing was to extract beef animals from rural areas for urban consumption or export, and it was not realized that often the vast majority of transactions were of breeding animals, or animals for draught purposes - transactions for which sale by weight at auction is highly unsuitable. Also the long time interval between market days which may be suitable for the extraction of beef cattle from rural areas is highly unsuitable for transactions in smallstock and in cattle for other purposes. In other words the proponents of the interventions failed to understand pastoralists' or other livestock owners' purposes or needs in marketing stock and failed to have adequate regard for their point of view.
PSR is relatively new in Africa, and I do not want to preempt the discussions of the concluding sessions of this workshop by either wholeheartedly supporting or disclaiming PSR. Let me end by reemphasizing five points.
1. Although increases in livestock production in pastoral areas of tropical Africa have occurred in the past these increases came about by the extension of existing systems rather than through their intensification.2. Intensification of production has not yet been successful in pastoral areas.
3. Part of the reason for this lack of success has been ignorance about which interventions should be introduced.
4. Part of the reason for this ignorance has been the generally inadequate volume of livestock related research.
5. However, part of the reason for the lack of success has been the making of inappropriate interventions due to a failure to carry out some of the stages included in PSR. In particular there has been a failure to understand the present system - both in terms of what people want to do (their ends) and why they adopt the means they do. Also critical has been the failure to test innovations developed elsewhere or those tested on research stations under the specific conditions of the natural and social environment faced by the pastoralists for which the particular innovation is planned.
De Montgolfier-Kouévi, C. and Vlavonou, A. 1981. Trends and prospects for livestock and crop production in tropical Africa. ILCA Working Document No. 5, Addis Ababa.
Jahnke, H.E. 1982. Livestock production systems and livestock development in tropical Africa. Kieler Wissenschaftsverlag Vauk, Kiel.
Jamal, V. 1983. Nomads and farmers: incomes and poverty in rural Somailia. In Dharam Ghai and Samin Radwan (Eds) (1983) Agrarian policies and rural poverty in Africa, ILO, Genena.
Jasirowski, H.A. 1983. Twenty years with no progress ? World Animal Review 5: 1973.
Sandford, S. 1981. Review of World Bank livestock activities in dry tropical Africa. Unpublished report. ILCA, Addis Ababa.
Wissocq, Y. 1978. Livestock development projects in Africa south of the Sahara: a review of the period 1961-1975. Unpublished report. ILCA, Addis Ababa.
Résumé
Le thème de ce document porte sur l'analyse de la recherche sur les systèmes pastoraux dans le cadre du développement de l'élevage en Afrique au cours du dernier demi-siècle.
Les zones arides sur lesquelles vivent 60% des ruminants de l'Afrique tropicale couvrent 55% de la superficie du continent. La proportion de la population totale de ruminants de l'Afrique élevés dans les systèmes pastoraux se situe probablement entre 30 et 50%. Entre 1950 et 1970, la population humaine de l'Afrique a approximativement augmenté au rythme de 2,5% par an mais la croissance de la production carnée et laitière ne dépassait guère 2%, ce qui indique une baisse de la production par habitant. De 1970 à 1975, le taux de croissance de la population humaine a augmenté alors que celui de la production annuelle diminuait, traduisant ainsi une chute encore plus rapide de la production par habitant. En conséquence, on a observé une baisse des exportations de bétail et de produits animaux parallèlement à une augmentation des importations d'animaux et de produits de l'élevage.
Autrefois, le développement pastoral était synonyme d'un ensemble hétérogène de programmes à caractère général. Après 1965, il y a eu une accélération remarquable du rythme du développement ,notamment avec l'arrivée sur la scène de la Banque mondiale et de l'Agency for International Development des Etats-Unis (USAID), toutes deux grands bailleurs de fonds dans le secteur du développement pastoral. Durant la seconde moitié des années 70, la CEE/FED est entrée elle aussi dans le club des grands bailleurs de fonds des projets de développement. Mais dans l'ensemble' c'est à une extension plutôt qu'à une intensification du système d'élevage qu'on a assisté. Celle-ci se caractérisait par deux types d'améliorations: la lutte contre la peste bovine qui permet d'accroître la population bovine et la mise en valeur des ressources en eau qui permet d'augmenter la superficie des terres exploitées. Malheureusement, dans la mise en oeuvre de ces formes très adéquates d'amélioration pastorale, rien n'a été envisagé en ce qui concerne la recherche sur les systèmes pastoraux.
L'intensification de la production animale en Afrique tropicale ne s'est pas réalisée. Pour certains programmes de développement pastoral, les raisons qui expliquent cet échec tiennent sûrement à la négligence des responsables mais aussi aux contradictions et à l'incohérence des politiques gouvernementales tout comme aux carences en matière d'organisation et de personnel. Dans plusieurs cas, l'échec a été causé par le choix d'interventions inopportunes à la place d'autres interventions qui auraient pu être couronnées de succès.
Dans la recherche sur les systèmes pastoraux, l'accent est mis sur la compréhension de l'ensemble du système avant celle des composantes particulières du système ou avant toute tentative d'intervention sur ces composantes. Contrairement aux approches qui privilégient la technologie ou les produits, la recherche sur les systèmes pastoraux se caractérise par l'importance accordée au point de vue de l'éleveur. L'un des éléments les plus remarquables de la recherche sur les systèmes pastoraux c'est qu'elle prévoit le test des innovations envisagées au niveau de l'exploitation elle-même dans les conditions dans lesquelles vivent habituellement les éleveurs.
Quoique par le passé on ait pu enregistrer des accroissements de la production animale dans les zones pastorales de l'Afrique tropicale, ceux-ci étaient plutôt le fruit de l'expansion des systèmes existants que de leur intensification. L'intensification de la production dans les zones pastorales s'est jusqu'ici soldée par un échec. Cet échec s'explique dans une large mesure par l'incapacité d'identifier les types d'interventions appropriées.
Cette lacune s'explique en partie par le volume généralement inadéquat de la recherche sur l'élevage. Mais cet échec procède également d'interventions inadéquates qui s'expliquent par le fait que certaines étapes de la recherche sur les systèmes pastoraux ont été négligées. En particulier, on ne s'est pas attaché à comprendre le système actuel et à expliquer notamment les objectifs des populations concernées et la raison pour laquelle elles adoptent les moyens dont elles se dotent. Autre aspect important de cet échec: on n'a pas essayé les innovations mises au point sous d'autres cieux ou au niveau des stations de recherche dans les conditions spécifiques de l'environnement naturel et social de l'éleveur auquel ces innovations sont destinées.
