Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
luvial flats at 1,500 m (5,000 ft). Sedentary farmers in this low area depend on irrig-
ated wheat, maize, and rice. To guard against crop failure, they settle and plant the
valley only up to the elevation where they can raise two crops per year. Directly above
this group is another cluster with a different strategy. Here the valley narrows, so ir-
rigated terraces compensate for the lack of flat land. As the shorter growing season al-
lows only one crop per year (usually maize, millet, wheat, or rice), transhumance with
sheep, goats, and cattle enhances the single annual crop. The herds ascend to sum-
mer pastures at 4,200 m (14,000 ft), passing through seasonal camps along the way.
Only a small contingent of people remains behind to tend the fields, or in some cases,
they travel back and forth to maintain both endeavors. Thus, by employing two distinct
strategies, they earn a satisfactory living from the higher and less productive environ-
ment. The uppermost occupants in the Swat Valley are nomadic pastoralists. They de-
pend almost exclusively on livestock, and acquire some grain and necessities through
trade with the lower groups. During winter, they graze livestock on surrounding hills
that sedentary farmers in the lower watershed use only to gather fuelwood. The nomads
pay grazing fees and gain tolerance because they provide milk, meat, and other animal
products (including manure) necessary to the village economy. They also look after vil-
lage animals and serve as laborers during the peak agricultural season.
This vertically integrated land-use system, practiced in Swat and throughout the
Karakoram Mountains for centuries in one form or another, is currently reorganizing.
Kreutzmann (2000) and Azhar-Hewitt (1999) link the decline in animal husbandry to
new opportunities for off-farm resources earned from military and civil service, trade,
tourism, and foreign migratory labor (i.e., everything from oil wells to domestic ser-
vice). These more lucrative external opportunities, combined with a rise in school en-
rollment, leave the subsistence agricultural and pastoralism chores to women and the
elderly who, on their own, cannot maintain the previous numbers of livestock.
In North America, transhumance began in the mid-1800s, about the time it started
to decline in Europe, and thrived until the 1920s. It was common (and still occurs)
where western mountains rise above semiarid lowlands. Immigrant shepherds, initially
Basques from the Pyrenees, but later joined by Spanish, Peruvian, and Mexican men,
drive cattle, sheep, goats, and horses to the largely unsettled high country during sum-
mer, and back to the lowlands in late fall. The San Juan Mountains of Colorado provide
a good example. Winter grazing initially depended on the availability of extensive low-
land areas. With the rapid population increase, crops and fenced pastures are used to
feed and contain livestock in the valleys. The high mountain grazing occurs almost ex-
clusively on government land, for which a small (and politically charged) fee is charged.
By the early 1900s, it was apparent that sheep and cattle grazing were eroding alpine
grasslands and threatening native species. In response, the U.S. Forest Service began
restricting livestock permits and herd movements. The addition of more national parks
between 1900 and 1970 and the passage of the 1960 Wilderness Act, which further lim-
ited commercial grazing in the mountainous west, all worked against transhumance in
the United States. By the late 1980s, the economics of the operation began to swing in
favor of year-round fenced pastures at lower elevations, some with supplemental feed.
Today, it is the exception rather than the norm to see cattle and sheep moving to and
from the high mountain pastures. Where this does occur—mostly in the Rocky Moun-
tains and other western ranges in the Great Basin of Nevada, Utah, and eastern Cali-
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