30. The economic, social, and biological consequences of range enclosure vary significantly, depending on local conditions. What administrators require is not a general policy for or against enclosure but rather some understanding of the variable effects of enclosure under different circumstances. Eventually, researchers may be able to present policy-makers with a typology of different kinds of enclosure movements, and with a systematic discussion of the probable outcome of each kind of movement. There does not yet exist, however, sufficient case material to undertake a rigorous analysis of this kind.
31. It is, nonetheless, possible to present the major issues which administrators or researchers will need to examine in order to provide an accurate estimation of the costs and benefits of individual enclosure movements. At least three areas of concern deserve attention: questions of technical efficiency and productivity; problems of range conservation; and the related issues of economic equity and economic growth. Each of these topics is discussed below.
The effect of en closure on livestock and range productivity
32. In the pastoral areas of dry Africa enclosed pastures are frequently used for annual deferred grazing. 1 That is, herds are held on the open range during the rainy season, which is also the season of vegetative growth, and they then fall back on enclosed areas as a dry-season fodder reserve. There are, however, certain biological inefficiencies inherent in this pattern of use. African grasslands are at their most nutritious and digestible stage (measured in terms of nitrogen or crude protein and mineral concentrations) when they are growing. Ungrazed pastures which are permitted to flower and reach senescence may produce a considerable mass of vegetation, but this vegetation will be high in undigestible fibre and low in crude protein and mineral concentrations and therefore low in both feed value and palatability to livestock. Unused pastures will continue to deteriorate in quality if they are allowed to remain in place as standing hay. The tropical sun will volatilize valuable constituents of the fodder, while wind, unseasonal rainstorms, termites and ants will remove the more nutritious leaves, until a standing crop of hay has been reduced to a standing crop of relatively useless stems (Breman et al, 1980; Penning de Vries, 1983). Enclosure may therefore result in very dramatic and visible increases in the mass of forage production with no improvement and even a possible decline in the capacity of a pasture to support grazing stock.
1
The principal exception to this pattern are pastures which are handcut and the fodder commercially sold.
33. Given the importance of timing in the optimal use of pastures, enclosure may have a very different impact on total livestock production depending on the area where enclosure occurs and the kind of livestock management system it displaces. Enclosure will always tend to alter the distribution of control over pasture resources within and between pastoral communities, and therefore have a dramatic effect on the performance of individual herds. By capturing a greater share of the resource base, herds with access to enclosures will tend to prosper and herds which are excluded will suffer. But enclosure is unlikely to have a negative impact on regional livestock production levels in areas where the herds are already stationary and use the same kinds of pasture year-round. Protection of pastures during the vegetative and seeding phases may even lead to improvements in fodder and total livestock yields.
34. On the other hand, the factors which precipitate range enclosure suggest that such enclosure may be accompanied by a decline in regional herd performance in nomadic systems. In general, pastoralists will bother to enclose pastures only when heavy grazing or commercial considerations transform good rangeland into a scarce and valuable commodity. In a nomadic production system, however, heavy grazing in a particular zone would indicate that the vegetation in that zone is already a critical bottleneck, possibly the limiting resource in the regional production system. Enclosure and expropriation of this resource by a few producers may disrupt the entire regional system of production. In the extreme case, removal of one grazing zone from an integrated migratory system will make it impossible to sustain throughout the year a regional herd which is large enough to efficiently exploit the remaining grazing zones.
35. If the migratory cycle of herd movements also provided for the cropping of natural pastures at their nutritional peak, it is doubtful if increases in sedentary livestock production will offset declines in nomadic output To reserve standing crop of stems for private use may be attractive from the point of view of the herd owner who has an enclosure, and yet be detrimental to regional livestock production. Initial declines in regional livestock productivity may therefore be a common feature of the shift from open to enclosed systems of range ownership in nomadic areas.
36. Policy-makers must therefore exercise caution in evaluating the apparently positive results of range enclosure in nomadic areas, for the drawbacks are not always immediately visible. For example, visiting delegations can walk through impressive enclosures of standing hay which is low in feed value and therefore contributes less to overall regional livestock production than the denuded pastures outside the enclosure. At a more sophisticated level, measures of improved herd performance can be deceptive unless the productivity gains of herds using enclosures are matched against the declining performance of excluded stock.
Range conservation
37. Overgrazing has long been viewed by range ecologists as an unalloyed disaster, precisely the disaster that range projects and government programmes were designed to forestall. It can be argued, however, that overgrazing is merely a symptom of more fundamental demographic and economic problems which currently beset pastoral communities. To focus all of our attention of alleviating a symptom may not be the best way to address these problems or to protect the range.
38. In this context, the prospect of substantial private range enclosure undermines and complicates the conventional wisdoms which have thus far guided African rangeland conservation policies. The case material presented in this paper certainly underlines the negative impact of overgrazing on the interests of livestock producers. But these cases also suggest that overgrazing may have a critical role to play in restructuring the African livestock industry since it can serve as a catalyst to the eventual creation of enclosed, more intensive systems of stock and pasture management. Spontaneous range enclosure thereby calls into question the objective of almost all current African range development projects - the control of livestock numbers on the common range.
39. While range enclosure may provide a long-term remedy to the overstocking problem, it must also be emphasized that it provides little hope for any immediate improvement. At present enclosed ranges in Africa are grazed on a seasonal basis, with herds spending most of the year outside the fences on the open range. Under these circumstances, private range tenure provides no necessary check on herd growth because herders are able to adjust either the number of animals or the period of time they spend inside the fenced area. Nor does the improved condition of the range inside the fences insure an overall improvement in range quality throughout a region, for stock excluded from private holdings will be dumped on the common range.
40. In terms of range monitoring, balanced assessment of the impact of enclosure must therefore take into account conditions both inside and outside of the fences. In terms of development policies, the immediate conservation benefits arising from spontaneous enclosure do not pertain to the control of stock numbers, but rather to the possibility that herders will use improved fodder production and range management techniques inside their enclosures. This possibility is discussed in the closing section of the paper.
Issues of economic equity and economic growth
41. Inequality and economic growth are closely linked in the commercialisation of pastoral economies. Because labour is displaced by capital and because commercially viable units of production tend to be larger than viable subsistence operations, the commercialization of a livestock industry may entail the exclusion of large numbers of former pastoralists. This exclusion can be achieved in two different ways: either through rural-urban migration and/or through the dispossession and impoverishment of the mass of pastoral producers (Behnke, 1983; Toulmin, 1983). In either case large numbers of pastoralists will lose their traditional rights to land.
42. It would therefore be inadequate for policy-makers to evaluate the desirability or undesirability of an enclosure movement by examining only the movement itself. If research attention focuses exclusively on the enclosures and those who operate them, then enclosure will, almost invariably, appear in a favourable light. To reverse this assessment, one need only shift attention to those who have no enclosures and whose traditional livelihood is threatened by their declining access to the range. In order to mediate between these conflicting points of view, objective evaluations of enclosure movements must estimate the costs and benefits of enclosure to the overall economy of which the pastoral sector forms one part. If the national or regional economy is buoyant, it may absorb displaced pastoral labour with an increase in the overall productivity of the economy and at no economic loss to individual migrants. If the local economy is stagnant or if opportunities for productive employment do not exist elsewhere, the pastoral sector may grow and modernize, and individual pastoralists may become wealthy, at the expense of both their neighbours and the national economy. In this case, the potential for individual hardship, increased income mal distribution, and reduced opportunity for economic growth are obvious.
43. Information on human migration, rural and urban incomes and employment opportunities are, therefore, essential for any impartial evaluation of the economic impact of range enclosure. Guidelines for the design of applied research programmes on human migration and agricultural and pastoral development are provided in Kerven (1983 and 1986).
