You can't go home again: pastoralism in the new millennium
2001
R. Blench
This document argues that the pastoral economic system is under increasing threat due to a series of factors such as:the increasing globalisation of the trade in livestock products unpredictable import policiesa growing trend for governments to declare large regions protected areas leaving pastoralists marginalised from their own landsThe paper states that the future of pastoralism will depend heavily on political decisions made by national governments in countries with extensive grasslands and that conditions for existing pastoralists will become more difficult as both farmers and the conservation lobby expropriates land. The author suggests that work with pastoralists, and a better understanding of their production systems, could act both to protect their lifeways and enhance their capacity to produce protein on otherwise marginal land.The paper concludes that technical inputs will have a very limited impact on overall output and only a major policy re-orientation will protect and support pastoralism during the next millennium. Elements likely to become important are:production of niche products, either unusual species or breeds, and meat and milk free from contaminantscrop-livestock integration, the effective use of pastoral outputs in mixed farming, particularly the extension of work animalsco-conservation, the development of interlocking strategies to link conservation of wild fauna and flora with pastoral productionthe expansion of ecologically-sensitive low-volume tourism, using pastoralists to provide services, particularly in the area of indigenous knowledge
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