Fenced and Open-Range Ranching: The Commercialization of Pastoral Land and Livestock in Africa

TL;DRAbstract

This chapter describes the different phases in the commercialization process, from pastoralism to open-range ranching, and from open-range to fenced ranching. Pastoralism requires intense contact between humans and stock, and is labor intensive; commodity production under range conditions requires almost no contact between man and animal, and is labor extensive. In pastoral Africa animals themselves are the first factors in production which lose their local definition of value, their subsistence use, or in-kind value, and are transformed into commodities. Dairy production for local exchange may constitute a stable pastoral adaptation under certain ecological and social conditions, as among the Fulani of the Sahel or among pastoralists of Anatolia and Iran. Subsistence pastoralism is a laborious undertaking predicated on almost continual contact between humans and animals. The characteristic pastoral herd management methods are all labor intensive: shepherding, household nomadism, and m

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