Pastoralism, Modernization, and the Future
Pastoralism, Modernization, and the Future
by
William Wolfman
For as long as human life exists, so will some form of pastoralism because mankind depends on a diet that includes protein in order to grow, thrive, and reproduce. Looking into the not too distant future, absent any earth shattering calamity that might set civilization back by several thousand years, pastoralism may look so different that it will deserve another name.
If the world's population continues to expand at its present rate, and if global warming and our reliance on fossil fuels persist unchecked, and if our behaviors continue to harm and diminish our natural resources, and if "the organism with the best chance for survival [is] the one that maintains its ability to respond to the environment in a wide variety of ways" (Bates 53), then we may expect to see many changes in 1) our methods of procuring and distributing food, 2) the ways we respond to disease and conflict over natural resources, and 3) the ways we apply science and technology to problems.
Already, modernization has affected pastoralists around the world, pushing them to less desirable pasture lands, drawing them to settle in villages where they can diversify their food supply by cultivating crops, or to dense urban centers where they may find labor. These adaptations, aimed at stabilizing food sources, have created new, sometimes more serious outcomes (Bates 53) such as poor nutrition, an increase in chronic and infectious disease, population growth, economic stratification, dwindling resources, warfare. And so, the process of adaptation continues.
The Maasai of Kenya are representative of the impact of modernization on pastoralism. “Most Kenyans live unloved, unkempt, and under resourced”, marginalized and kept in poverty by competing wealthy business interests who have acquired and developed valuable grazing and browsing lands. Recently, these circumstances have been ameliorated with some degree of success by a unique collaboration in the Naboisho Conservancy. A 50,000 acre tract of land within the Serengeti great migration range has been designated a wildlife conservation zone. Unlike the many Colonial style safari camps which have turned their backs on indigenous populations, Naboisho is leased by the Basecamp Foundation from nearly all 504 of its Maasai landowners (The Guardian, Rushby).
Deciding to lease the land to Basecamp is voluntary, so some landowners who have not yet agreed are still moving their herds through the territory. But those landowners who have agreed to lease say they like having the monthly income which helps soften the loss of animals to drought or predation. At Naboisho, education, healthcare, jobs and training, water projects and bomas, never before made available by outside developers, are being provided for the first time by Basecamp as part of their agreement with the Maasai. Although herding in this case has been relegated to more distant grazing lands, the Maasai are benefiting from their diversified income streams, and their improved standard of living (The Guardian, Rushby). Meanwhile, conservationists have achieved the protection of an important wildlife habitat, which in turn helps guard against multinationals attempting to convert land to agriculture, with its harmful monocultures, pesticides, soil erosion, and water diversion.
By contrast, and proving that the shape of pastoralism depends on local circumstances, the Maasai in northern Tanzania adopted cultivation after the country’s independence and the new government’s implementation of the Villagization Program which was designed to settle rural people into permanent structures around schools, clinics and shops. The Maasai pastoralists soon returned to herding when water and grazing land dictated a move was necessary, but by then, the appeal of cultivation had made an impression (McCabe, Leslie, DeLuca 334). The transition to cultivation was rapid. After a ban on cultivation was ended in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, 90% of the families living there had adopted cultivation within two years. This food source diversification broke “a downward spiral of impoverishment due to the overselling of livestock to purchase grain” (McCabe, Leslie, DeLuca 322).
Throughout the rest of northern Tanzania, most pastoralists have diversified their economies in the last 30 years for a range of reasons that include 1) the further expansion of parks and conservation areas which exclude pastoralism, 2) the change from common grazing land to private property, 3) costly livestock mortality due to drought and disease, 4) an increase in population while livestock numbers stayed steady, 5) to protect themselves against the outbreak of serious disease and loss of working capacity in the human population such as happened in the late 1800’s, 6) because the government stopped supplying herders with acaricides, 7) a desire to eat more maize, 8) they could no longer depend on livestock alone to meet all their needs, and 9) economic necessity (McCabe, Leslie, DeLuca 322, 324, 327, 329).
Adopting cultivation gave pastoralists the sense that they could be more in control of their lives by diversifying their incomes and reducing risk (McCabe, Leslie, DeLuca 331, 334). However, the outcomes have been mixed. There has been an overall decline in wealth and a widening gap between the poor and the wealthy. Planting and eating a diet chiefly of maize causes protein malnutrition (Larsen 192) which, if it is of long enough duration, will lead to a number of serious conditions that effect not only the individual, but the entire community in terms of loss of work capacity and mortality. A family or community, weakened by nutritional deficiencies and the long working hours required of cultivation, living in crowded unsanitary conditions that invite infectious disease, does not have the resilience to withstand epidemics, famine or warfare (Adaptation to Biotic Stressors 224,194).
As the world’s growing population moves to ever denser suburbs and cities to find jobs, the problems of food dispersal, reliance on fossil fuel driven farm machinery, shortfalls in food production, malnutrition (or overnutrition/adiposity) caused by inferior food product, the tendency to cultivate monocrops resulting in loss of plant and animal diversity, pollution, the lack of any desire to curb population growth, and an abundance of general stress which is causing serious and insidious health problems. Taken as a whole, these problems are such recent developments that human genetic adaptation has not had time to respond. “Modernization, Stress, and Chronic Disease” (250) concludes that “with modernization, rapid change seems to be the only constant, and therefore human adaptive abilities may face a serious challenge in the future”.
We are falsely complacent when we romanticize the Maasai, some of whom still move their beloved herds from place to place, and Mark, the dairy farmer in “Holy Cow” who describes his emotional connection to his herd, and especially Dale Lassiter in Colorado whose long range plan is to restore prairie land and create a natural setting for his cattle. While these men are employing or recreating a pastoralism of the past, it will take far more ingenuity to feed the world’s growing population nutritious, healthful food.
Looking to the future, modern industrial (sedentary pastoralism) farming has serious health consequences, and already there are large pockets of resistance to it. It is not likely to persist in its current form. All conflicts, when politics and culture have been removed from the equation, are fought over natural resources, and food is the most elemental and basic of them. However, two recent announcements are examples of the kind of experimentation that is necessary for the production of protein in our diets. A scientific research laboratory in England has cultivated cow stem cells to produce the first ever lab-burger. Presently, it costs $1,000 to create, and its health impact is yet unknown. Yet, this is a promising substitute for pastoralism. The second announcement, the production of potable water from humidity by a billboard size condenser in Lima, Peru, could be essential to providing water to herds in an inhospitable environment.
Unless we address these problems in a holistic, inventive and cooperative way, nature may run its course and decrease human populations with recurrent epidemics and extreme weather patterns. Then, pastoralism may re-emerge as the most productive method of procuring protein.
Sources:
(Bright New Start: How the Masai Are Finally Profiting From Tourism, The Guardian, Kevin Rushby, 2011
(Adopting Cultivation to Remain Pastoralists: The Diversification of Maasai Livelihoods in Northern Tanzania, McCabe, Leslie, Deluca, 2010)
(Human Adaptive Strategies Ecology, Culture, and Politics, Third Edition, Daniel G. Bates, 2005)
(Nature: Holy Cow, PBS Video, 2004
(Adaptation to Biotic Stressors, Kormondy and Brown, 1998)
(Modernization, Stress, and Chronic Disease, Kormondy & Brown, 1998)
(Biological changes with Agriculture, Larsen, 1995)
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