Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
If animals are capital, vegetation is real estate. The owner of land is normally the owner
of all the vegetation on it because the vegetable kingdom has roots in that land and cannot
move. The landowner can, if he wishes, feed that vegetation to animals, so he has the op-
tion to become an owner of livestock - and to accumulate several years of vegetable growth
in that livestock.
The landless, almost by definition, can never own vegetation. They can rent it, or the
land on which to grow an annual crop; they may have some sort of stake, secure or not, in
perennial plants growing on common land; but the landless cannot normally acquire peren-
nial ownership over vegetation, other than by becoming landowners. They can, however,
own animals, because animals are mobile, they have legs not roots and so are not attached
to land. If vegetation is real estate, animals are chattels, and this fact is of immense advant-
age to the poor. Ownership of a cow, a goat or a pig is a way for the landless to sequester
whatever scraps of vegetation may come their way and harvest them, either daily in the
form of milk, or at one final reckoning in the form of meat.
For this reason, although the rich between them own more animals than the poor, if you
are poor or landless, you are more likely to keep livestock than if you are rich. Sixty per
cent of all rural households in poor countries keep livestock, according to the FAO's RIGA
database of households in 12 third world countries, plus Bulgaria and Albania. In nine of
these countries, the poorest households are more likely to keep livestock than the wealth-
iest; and in five countries the poorest households actually own more animals on average
than the wealthiest. Across all countries and income bands, households with livestock de-
rive on average 16 per cent of their income from their animals, while the average number
of animals kept is 0.8 Tropical Livestock Units - the equivalent of 80 chickens, 8 goats or
a cow and a calf. Male members of the household tend to be in charge of cows and other
large animals, while women more often have control of poultry management.
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I have been unable to find out how many rural households in the over-developed nations
keep livestock, but it is nowhere near 60 per cent. One survey shows that in the six poorest
countries of the EU 74 per cent of rural households carry on some kind of subsistence pro-
duction involving vegetable production or livestock, whereas in the 12 wealthiest countries
curity payments cover the unemployed's supermarket bills may need reminding that while
meat is the rich man's luxury, in many parts of the world it is the poor man's necessity.
Not all animals are chattels. Some are wild, and the landless may have access to these
as well, though what that usually means is that they have access to the land those animals
inhabit. Once ownership is established over land, either by private individuals or by state
forestry organizations then ownership over the animals that run on it is usually claimed as
well. However some animals may remain wild and unowned because there is little com-
petition to eat them. A study by the US Quartermaster Corps could only come up with 42
