Causes of poverty among nomadic and transhumant populations
Pastoralists (nomads and transhumant) constitute the majority of the inhabitants of arid, semi-arid and dry subhumid areas and have rarely been considered in the drafting of national policies (FAO, CAOG, 1987). Predominantly smallholders, they are the first to suffer from severe winters or recurrent droughts irrespective of the severity of drought. The small herders often lose all of their reproductive stock during severe drought. According to Ellis (1995), severe multi-year droughts in the Turkana district of Kenya decimated 50% of the stock and caused the temporary migration of 20% of the human population. The magnitude of loss by small herders in northern Africa can reach up to 25% during one year of severe drought and 60% during two consecutive years. Therefore, addressing sustainable measures for the management and development of the dryland areas cannot be undertaken in isolation from food security, welfare and poverty alleviation targets among the highly vulnerable pastoral communities.
In order to understand the plight of the destitute pastoralists, one should observe the following generalities. First, in spite of the noticeable increase in the number of livestock in the dryland areas during the last 30 years (Figure 2, FAO, 1996), the overall holding capacity of the grazing resources has remained unchanged. The increase in livestock population has rarely been associated with improved range and pasture productivity, but has mostly been induced by supplemental feeding using both local (food crops and crop residues) and external resources (grain imported from high potential areas). The use of supplemental feeding, particularly subsidized feedgrain (e.g. in West Asia and North Africa), has modified the traditional fluctuation in animal numbers during drought and normal years and kept more animals on the range. Because natural feed resources are cheap and since grazing is known to improve meat quality, animals are kept continuously on the range, thus disturbing the natural balance and intensifying the degradation process (Sidahmed, 1996). This increase has mostly been in favour of the herds and flocks of absentee and large-stock owners who are able to access remote pastures and supplement their animals at the expense of the poor smallholders who are forced to utilize overgrazed and depleted pastures and roadside vegetation.
Figure 2 - Trends in human/livestock population and permanent pasture in 36 arid/semi-arid developing countries
NOTE: Permanent Pasture: Lands used permanently (five years or more) for herbaceous forage crops either cultivated, or growing wild (wild prairie or grazing lands) - FAOSTAT, 1993. Rangelands in the arid/semi-arid areas include permanent pastures and land not suited for other uses. Livestock: Cattle, goats, sheep and camels. (Source: Sidahmed (1996))
Source: FAO, 1996.
Second, it has been established that range productivity in the dryland areas is primarily influenced by rainfall fluctuations and that severe multi-year droughts are the predominant cause of the high rate of periodic losses in animal numbers (Ellis, 1992; Hienraux, 1995; Sidahmed 1996). There is much evidence that the people most adversely affected by climatic changes are the smallholders. They lose their traditional grazing areas to the cultivation of cash and food crops,1 sell for slaughter, or sell to the wealthier large-stock holders. Even most of those who settle in the higher rainfall areas of Africa (e.g. the Fulbe in the Central African Republic, Sierra Leone, or Nigeria) do not have legal or customary rights to permanent acquisition of land and are moved repeatedly to less productive locations according to the wishes of the settled original owners, especially during the years of drought.
Also, many of the grazing domains used by the small pastoral sector are of poor quality. For example, the savannah pastures of the remote province of Xieng Khoung in Laos are dominated by phosphorous-deficient poor-quality acidic soils; the indiscriminate consumption of poor-quality feed resources causes animal mortality from chronic nutritional imbalance diseases (e.g. limping).
1/
The encroachment of the World Bank-supported Mechanized Crop Production
Schemes in the vast savannah grazing areas of The Sudan during the 1960s
and 1970s is one typical example. Those who benefited from the schemes
were settled farmers or business entrepreneurs, while the smallholders
were practically driven out and lost the right of use of their traditional
grazing domains.
