Pastoralism or pastoral farming (animal husbandry)

Pastoralism, or animal husbandry, is that part of agriculture that deals with animal livestock such
as goats, chickens, yaks, camels, sheep, and bovine, etc. Not only are they great sources of
proteinaceous meat, but also many provide milk, eggs, leather, and fiber too. There are several
types of pastoralism—the first is nomadic whereby humans move along with their herds in
search of grasslands to grade; then there are the herders who migrate seasonally also in search of
pastures new; and lastly there is the branch of pastoralism called transhumance, which is similar
to the herders in which they move seasonally between higher and lower pastures. Being an
important part of the agricultural sector, pastoralism faces challenges and is especially vulnerable
to natural and man-made risks/disasters. One such risk involves the decreasing availability of
pastures. Moreover, apart from inclement weather, other challenges encountered in pastoral
communities may include competition for land in such things as expansion of sedentary
agriculture or the expansion of other agricultural projects like the conversion of lands to things
such as animal sanctuaries, game reserves, and wildlife parks, thus creating competition for
valuable natural resources. One aspect of which type of pastoralism is considered over another
depends partly by the climatic conditions. Tropical areas, for instance, allow for all types of
pastoral practices, while subtropical and arid environs are limiting because of sunshine, rainfall,
and temperature.

Introduction

The debate on pastoralism and its future has been going on for almost 40 years (Galaty et al.,
1981; Zinsstag et al., 2016). Yet in many scientific, development, and policy debates, statements
still carry connotations that pastoralism has no future, and often imply that it “is an anachronistic
form of land use”, “needs to disappear” or to be “replaced”. As shown in this article, such views
are confounded because they focus on land tenure and management issues (e.g. communal vs
private) rather than on the pastoral system management (livestock and grazing management) and
therefore stand in the way of recognizing and enhancing the current and future value of pastoral
livestock systems in arid and semiarid lands. In the past two decades, research has led to a much
better understanding of pastoral livestock systems (Sun and Naito, 2007; Homewood, 2008;
Galvin et al., 2008) and disproved previous misconceptions that labeled pastoral livestock
production as unsustainable (c.f. Reid et al., 2014).

Pastoral production systems utilize different rangeland biomes (e.g. deserts, dry plains,
savannahs, steppes, tundra, high-altitude mountain ranges) with their indigenous and
heterogeneous vegetation composed of annual and perennial grasses, herbs, shrubs and trees.
Low annual precipitation with high seasonal and inter-annual variability, aggravated by extended
droughts or frost periods, leads to often short, variable, and unpredictable vegetation periods, and
a high temporal variability in biomass production. Geographic, topographic and edaphic
conditions, and man-made infrastructure, add spatial heterogeneity to the variation of resource
availability.

Although highly diverse, pastoral systems all have in common an ability to take advantage of
ephemeral (lasting for a very short time) concentrations of resources typical for rangelands,
where vegetation and water availability is highly variable and short-lived (Behnke et al., 2011).
They can therefore be defined as a specialized production system that “takes advantage of the
characteristic variability of most rangeland environments, where key resources such as nutrients
and water for livestock can be relied on in the form of unpredictable and short-lived
concentrations more than in uniform and stable distributions” (Krätli et al., 2013, p.43). The
exploitation of this resource distribution in space and time, on vast stretches of land, is
economically and ecologically incompatible with stationary land use systems that depend on
high external, fossil fuel-based inputs.

FAO classifies pastoral livestock systems as part of pasture-based ruminant livestock production
systems. Herding livestock is characteristic and “[the] basic strategy for providing year-round
feed for [the] herds is the movement of livestock to pasturage rather than bringing of fodder to
herds” (Dyson-Hudson and Dyson-Hudson, 1980, p.18).

Determining the magnitude and importance of pastoral systems, in terms of land area used,
number of animals kept, and number of livestock keepers faces a number of challenges, as
appraisals are rarely disaggregated by production system and as data collection in the large and
remote rangelands with low population and animal densities and uneven distribution is difficult.
Therefore, more robust figures are only available from a few country-level in-depth studies.

There is agreement that large shares of rangeland are under pastoral management, particularly in
Africa and Central and South Asia. Worldwide rangeland covers about 35 million km2, 26% of
the total land surface. Rangelands have been categorized by the Millennium Ecosystem
Assessment as part of the drylands (41% of the land surface). In drylands, livestock is also kept
in mixed-rainfed and irrigated systems. Part of those are managed by pastoralists who also farm,
or famers who keep livestock under pastoral management. About 35% of the world's cattle and
55% of the world's sheep and goats are kept in the drylands (Hoffmann et al., 2014). Some 12
million km2 of drylands are estimated to be in use under pure grazing systems, and 7 million km2
under mixed systems where pastoral systems can be assumed to be the dominant form of
livestock production.

About 120 million and 600 million people worldwide earn their livelihoods in pure grazing
systems and mixed systems respectively (Thornton et al., 2002). Worldwide, the number of
pastoralists is currently estimated to be 200 million. The real number is likely to be higher. In
sub-Saharan Africa alone, over 120 million people obtain their livelihood from livestock
production, and up to 41 million depend solely on livestock production, while up to 94 million
depend partially but significantly on this production system (de Haan, 2016).