SummaryPastoralists gain their livelihood by raising stock in areas unsuited to arable cropping, usually because the growing season is too short; it is now rare for potential arable land to be used for extensive grazing. Diets vary a great deal according to production systems and traditions but all pastoralists consume a loot of dairy products. While herding often co-exists with game, wild animals are not usually past of the pastoralists’ diet. Some groups where food is scarce, such as the Turkana, may gather wild plants, fruit and tubers.

The degree to which ethnic groups are now “purely” pastoral varies. The Maasai and their kin were pure stock rearers until fairly recently and lived on livestock products; nowadays cereals, grown or bought from stock sales, form a large part of their diet. Many groups, in both East and West Africa combine some crop production with herding; in most cases millets and sorghum are grown but the Bara of south-central Madagascar cultivate rice.The diet of most pastoral groups now consists of dairy products and cereals; meat is less important as stock are important for trade; weak or injured stock may be slaughtered otherwise slaughter is mainly for festivals.

Blood, drawn from live animals, was once important in the diet of non Muslim groups but this seems to be decreasing.

Processing of livestock products is limited. Milk is usually fermented immediately rather than consumed fresh.There is little preparation for longer storage. Many groups make ghee; the Niger Peulh make a cheese, often for sale, which keeps for about three months; there is no traditional cheese making in East Africa. Surplus meat may be dried, with or without salting, usually by simple processes.

My experience and expertise is in what livestock graze, not their herders, but I will do my best to outline the subject for the sake of completeness at this meeting. I thank fellow members Simon Mack, John Morrison and Jim Sweet for information. The real specialist on pastoral areas is Michael Harrison but after his pastoral work in the Sudan , yet to be superseded (Harrison and Jackson 1958), he decided that maize breeding was more compatible with family life.

Pastoralists gain their livelihood by traditional stock-raising on natural grazing, usually in areas which are unsuitable for crops. Some groups had tracts of good, potentially arable, land but such areas are, increasingly, cultivated and pastoralism is associated with marginal land and often marginal livelihoods. Pastoralism is a land-use, not a well-defined method of stock-rearing, so there are many forms influenced by the available land, the political situation and the traditions of the group. Mobility of grazing is essential for survival of herds in areas of low and unreliable rainfall so pastoral systems must be mobile, have a large area to range over and imply some degree of nomadism or transhumance. Diets vary according to the system and tradition but all pastoralists consume a lot of dairy products. Meat is less important as stock areimportant for trade; weak or injured stock may be slaughtered otherwise slaughter is mainly for festivals.

East African pastoral tribes generally have discrete areas within which they graze and do not enter, or cross, the land of other pastoral or agricultural groups. This is modified in very dry areas, like much of Somalia and adjacent lands, where water ownership may be more important than grazing rights. The degree to which tribes are “purely” pastoral varies; the Masai and their kin were until very recently, but are taking to cultivation and cereal eating. The Karamajong, although essentially pastoral, cultivate some cereals.

In West Africa the main pastoral group, the Fulani (Peulh) are not strictly limited to stock-rearing; many of the richer have been settled in the better-watered areas for a very long time. Even the transhumant groups usually sow millet near the fringe of cultivation during their migration. The transhumance circuit is between the drier areas of the Sahel,during the rains (also the least healthy season in the sudanian zone) and the agricultural areas to the forest fringe in the dry season. This system requires cooperation between pastoralists and the settled, agricultural (non-Peulh) groups; often the latter keep few or no livestock and allow nomadic herds to graze stubbles. In the inland delta of the Niger tradition defined the date when the herds could cross the river on their southward movement, to coincide with the end of rice harvest – also allowing them access to the falling-flood bourgou grazing (Echinochloa stagnina)

Madagascar, politically African although inhabited by Asiatics, has about 10 000 000 cattle which puts it about sixth in ranking.The farmers use oxen for draught and eat beef but neither milk their stock nor consume milk. The West, Middle-West and the drier southern third, apart from the forest of the eastern escarpment, are pastoral and the peoples are milk drinkers. The biggest group, the Bara, in the hills of Fianarantsoa and Tulear provinces,keep zebus but cultivate some rice, mostly by trampling the wet fields with their herds, sowing and coming back for harvest. In the lower lands of Tulear the Antandroy are noted cattle keepers and also have some small stock; their area is semi-arid (either the limestone Mahafaly plateau or dunal sand) so sorghum and sweet potatoes are the main crops. Those on the littoral also fish. Even drinking water is scarce, so cactus is an important source of liquid for livestock (and sometimes man) in the dry season and its fruits a vitamin source in human diet.

In North Africa small stock are raised by pastoralist groups, usually based on the desert edge. They travel north to the agricultural areas, much of which is on a wheat-fallow rotation, to graze fallows and stubbles in spring through summer, moving back to the desert edge in winter. The flocks are usually large and are often nowowned by entrepreneurs – the shepherds work on a share-cropping system.

Pastoralists’ food

Subsistence herders are the only secondary users of vegetation who depend on milk and not meat. All others from carnivores to ranchers and capitalist herders, depend on meat.No commercial dairy producer would choose African arid and semi-arid grazing as the base for their production. The logic behind this reliance on milk is that it is available daily, meat only sporadically; also it allows a system which provides subsistence for far more people per unit area than any other arid zone production method. It has been estimated (Jahnke 1982) that if arid countries like Mauritania and Somalia organized their land use as modern ranching they would have to reduce the human population by a factor of fifty. The composition of milk of the main pastoral livestock is shown in Table 1 – of course values vary considerably.

 

Table 1: Composition of milk of the main species kept by pastoralists
Species	Fat g/kg	Protein g/kg	Lactose g/kg
Bos indicus	54	32	46
Bos taurus	44	38	49
Yak	65	55	55
Buffalo	74	38	49
Ewe	85	67	47
Goat	45	37	42
Camel	54	39	58
Mare	12	20	58

Most groups co-exist with plains game which share the same pastures but these are not usually hunted nor eaten. In some areas, especially those where food supply is marginal like Turkana bush food such as wild weeds , fruits, tubers and small animals may be gathered to supplement the diet.

Blood from live animals is eaten by several pastoral groups, notably the Masai and their associated groups the Karamajong, Turkana and Dodoth and the Borana; it is, of course, forbidden to Moslems. It is obtained by shooting an small arrow at close range into the cattle's jugular vein, then capturing the blood in a gourd (where it can be mixed with milk); the wound heals.Blood is eaten fresh, alone or mixed with sour milk

Seemingly old dietary habits are changing fast. An ILCA study (Nestel 1989) states:

“Today, the staple diet of the Maasai consists of cow's milk and maize-meal. The former is largely drunk fresh or in sweet tea and the latter is used to make a liquid or solid porridge. The solid porridge is known as uoali and is eaten with milk; unlike the liquid porridge, uoali is not prepared with milk. Meat, although an important food, is consumed irregularly and cannot be classified as a staple food. Animal fats or butter are used in cooking, primarily of porridge, maize, and beans. Butter is also an important infant food. Blood is rarely drunk.”

Studies by the International Livestock Centre for Africa (Bekure et al. 1991) shows a very great change in the diet of the Maasai towards non-livestock products with maize comprising 12 – 39 percent and sugar 8 – 13 percent; about one litre of milk is consumed per person daily. The ILCA study found that women consumed far less than the quantity of energy estimated by FAO to be their requirement, but seemed to produce and suckle normal babies on this level of intake. This could mean that at least half the energy requirements is being be met by cereals.

Processing. African pastoralists’ dairy preparations are simple. Milk is usually fermented immediately rather than used fresh, by spontaneous lactic souring which prolongsthe period it can be conserved in a palatable state in warm climates to several hours. Starter cultures are not generally used, those present in the container suffice. Traditionally the Masai wash milk gourds with urine, presumably because it is sterile and cleaner than the surface water available. Smoke is also used to cleanse milking receptacles and for the containers in which Somali ferment camels’ milk. There is little preparation of dairy products for longer storage in Africa (as opposed to the practice in Asia); many groups produce ghee[2] for later use or sale. In East Africa there is no tradition of cheese-making, but in West Africa the Peulh in Niger make Tchoukou,a dry cheese which keeps for over three months and is often sold.

Meat surplus to immediate requirements may be dried, for later use, or in West Africa, for sale. The meat may be salted before treatment but in the simplest systems, as with the Niger Peulh, it is cut thinly, beaten even thinner and spread over bushes. This is the only processing of meat done by pastoralists but, as Heinz and Dugdill (2000) point out, quality dried meat is mainly produced in cool, dry mountain climates.

Pastoralists’ stock needs for subsistence

The problem of stocking rates on communally accessible pasture is related to the number of humans who depend on it for their livelihood. Leslie Brown was one of the first to point this out in the sixties. He tackled the number of stock needed to support a pastoral family following a system like that of the Masai in his chapter “The ecology of man and domestic livestock” , pp 35 - 40, in Pratt and Gwynne (1977). The data is probably from the early sixties when Masai diet was almost exclusively of animal origin. He calculated,on the basis of calorie requirement of an average pastoral household (adults + children etc.) and a predominantly milk and blood diet and some sound estimates of herd composition and fertility, that 14 lactating cows would be necessary to meet household needs. To ensure 14 lactating cows a total cattle herd of 44 as broken down in the Table 2 would be required.

Seven cows should assure the family’s needs at any one time, but lactations are short, so fourteen will have to be in milk during any year. A family’s needs were taken as 5 480 litres of milk; 876 kg of meat would also be required, much from small stock. About a hundred sheep and goats would be needed and there would probably be some donkeys, so the herd would be of the order of 150 head. He went on to argue that, if purchased grain replaced milk and blood, supported by the sale of male animals for meat, that range areas might support a greater human population.

 

Table 2 Composition of a subsistence herd assuming 14 cows needed in milk during the year
	Av. weight	Adult.	Numbers
	Kg.	Equivalent	Female	Male	Total
Breeding cattle	249	1.00	20	2	22
Calves < I year	60	0.25	7	5	12
Immatures 1 – 2 yr	120	0.50	4	2	6
Immatures 2 – 3 yr	180	0.75	3	1	4
Total			34	10	44

Brown stated that “where the rainfall permits cropping, the pastoralist is such by choice and not, as in arid areas, by necessity” and points out that if half the milk ration is replaced by grain, then half the number of breeding females is required and the land requirement per family halved. He reckoned that this could be achieved by the sale of one fat steer per family. Circumstances may be forcing the Masai to move in that direction. Such calculations, of course, only apply where the soil and climate are suited to arable cropping and are not true in country where extensive livestock rearing is the only rational land use.

Jahnke (1982) suggests that the prevailing terms of trade for African pastoral systems in general are 1,7 kg of grain for 1 kg of milk, and 4 kg of grain for 1 kg of meat, so that a pastoralist significantly improves his subsistence basis by trading, Many examples of this can be found in West Africa among the Fulani who trade milk particularly for grain, while in East Africa the volume of this trade is rapidly increasing.

Cossins (undated) reports that dairy products and milk comprised 59 percent of the diet of the Borana of Southern Ethiopia, with the balance increasingly made up by cereals.

Steers are frequently retained to full maturity in systems which use blood as food, as inBorana “dry herds”; labour needs for herding male stock is far less for that of cows and calves. An average Borana family consists of 3.5 adult equivalents has access to eighteen head of cattle and some small stock. The average offtake of milk per cow for human consumption is 312 litres per lactation. They consume 150 kilogrammes of meat from small stock and fallen animals and some blood is eaten by herders looking after male stock. The balance of their food needs (cereals, sugar, coffee and so on) are purchased with the proceeds of livestock sales. Some wild plants and bush food are consumed.

Some information from “restocking” projects, these may reflect more on the project budget than true needs.In Botswana the figure of 8-10 head of cattle was quoted in context of being able to field a draft pair for ploughing in an agropastoral situation. In Isiolo district 40 small-stock and a donkey (plus some animal health training) were supplied to each beneficiary family. Oxfam's Kenya restocking projects reckoned that 70-100 sheep and goats were needed depending on family size (but it is not thought that projects actually gave out that many).

It would be pointless to go into more detail or proliferate calculations based on hypothetical families and herds (far less to add rainfall ranges to the arithmetic), especially since a large area of access is needed to assure mobility for avoidance of weather events. Livestock production from grazing has to take into account the realities of the land on a case-to case basis. Also livestock within a group of pastoralists is rarely evenly distributed; the bulk will belong to a few rich for whom the less fortunate supply part-time herding assistance.

Pastoralists’ food in Asia

References

Bekure, S., PN de Leuw, BE Grandin and NJH Neate (1991) Maasai herding, ILCA, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Cai Li & G. Weiner 1995 The Yak FAO RAP Bangkok ISBN 974.89351-0-8

Cossins, N. (undated) Production strategies and pastoral man www.fao.org/wairdocs/ilri/x5542b/x5542b0d.htm

Harrison, M.N. and J.K. Jackson (1958). Ecological Classification of the Sudan. Forest Department, Forest Bulletin No. 2. Ministry of Agriculture, the Republic of the Sudan.

Heinz G., and B. Dugdill (2000) Highland livestock systems – is there a need for specialised product processing and marketing. In Contribution of livestock to mountain livelihoods. Tulachan et al 2000

Jahnke, H.E. 1982. Livestock production systems and livestock development in tropical Africa. Kieler Wissenschaftsverlag Vauk, Kiel.

Nestel, P 1989A society in transition: developmental and seasonal influences on the nutrition of Maasai women and children ILCA, Nairobi

Pratt D.J.& M.D. Gwynne (1977), Rangeland Management and Ecology in East Africa, Hodder and Stoughton, ISBN 19766 8

Suttie, J. M.2000 Pastoral resource profile for Mongolia http://www.fao.org /WAICENT/FAOINFO/AGRICULT/AGP/AGPC/doc/Counprof/mongol1.htm

Tulachan, P. M., M. A. Mohamed-Saleem, J. Makki-Hokkonen and T. Partap (eds) 2000. Contribution of livestock to Mountain livelihoods. International Centre for Mountain Development, Kathmandu, Nepal. ISBN 92-9115264-1