Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
farmers growing hardly enough food to feed their families (Sachs 2005). This majority
of “bottom smallholders” have a very fragile and dynamic resource endowment with
little capacity to secure credit, access to subsidies and information to be able to pro-
duce the quality and quantity required by formal markets. What will remain of them
and what their families will do around high-tech commercial farms, supplying, as effi-
ciently as possible, the growing rural towns and the ever-expanding mega-cities? South
Africa has artificially fast-tracked urban and industrial development based on migrant
labour from rural “black reserves.” Could this social buffer function be an example for
the future of the small farms in the rural space of the other middle-income economies?
Other challenges threaten the future existence of small producers in other types of
agro-ecologies. For example, we might consider areas where only extensive livestock
production systems are possible, as in the vast grasslands of South America and Africa,
the cold steppes and mountains of central Asia, the remote semidesert of the Sahel.
These areas have low agricultural potential either because of environmental fragility
or underexploitation because of their remoteness or socioeconomic marginalization
because of politics (Kerven, 2003). Grazing animals in nomadic pastoral systems are
well attuned with nature and adapted to difficult environmental conditions, such as the
domesticated yak grazing thorny shrubs in the treeless highlands of Asia or the muturu
West African dwarf shorthorn cattle in Nigeria tolerant of sleeping sickness (Blench
1999).
The reality of the incredibly vast areas of low productivity and limited use poses
other urgent questions. About 26% of global land area is grassland (Dijkman 2013).
Rangelands in Africa, Asia, and Latin America represent the last reserves of land that
are available on earth to expand agriculture for food production and terrestrial carbon
sink (Tennigkeit & Wilkes 2008; Herrero & Thornton 2009). Large parts of these areas
are suitable only for extensive livestock production for grazing animals, sheep, goats,
and cattle, capable of making use of the fodder sources, in very harsh environments.
Decisions made for the sustainable use of grazing commons will be critical for the future
sustainable management of these vast land resources. Grasslands have a function in
ensuring environmental services, food production, and livelihood opportunities for
their nomadic populations (Mueller 2008).
Extensive animal production systems and pastoralism have great potential for pro-
ducing animal food, supporting local economies, and sustaining livelihoods in sensi-
tive and unique environments, where land is scarce or unproductive. However, radically
changing political and economic frameworks in various countries (e.g., the former
Soviet Union) have threatened livelihoods and herd mobility. Without support for
appropriate pasture monitoring measures, investments in infrastructures or access to
alternative forms of livelihoods, livestock keeping by pastoralists pressed by poverty and
food insecurity has led to degradation of natural grazing resources and contributed to
deforestation. Yet, this important food system has been largely ignored by mainstream
development cooperation in the last 20 years (Tarawali 2012).
A second critical consequence of the industrialization of livestock produc-
tion has been loss of genetic biodiversity, similar to what has happened to crops. The
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