Livestock Futures

An important group of “stakeholders” in India’s biodiversity falls through the gaps of the country’s Biodiversity Act and requires a special tool to document their knowledge and the genetic resources they steward.

India’s biodiversity management strategy and action plan rests on Biodiversity Management Committees (BMCs) –  village level institutions tasked with establishing local Peoples’ Biodiversity Registers (PBRs) that document local biological diversity, including wild flora and fauna, as well as traditional knowledge, especially about medicinal plants.

But a crucial group of biodiversity guardians, together with a significant slice of biodiversity, falls through the gaps of this system: nomadic pastoralists and the livestock breeds they have created over centuries. Moving around in the spaces between villages, they are major producers of food without cultivating the soil, while at the same time conserving and adding value to biodiversity.

India (still) has a large number of pastoralists who migrate with their herds and flocks between different locations – sometimes far apart – utilizing natural vegetation and crop aftermath to support a major part of India’s livestock population. They perform something remarkable:  systematically producing food WITHOUT tilling the soil and WITHOUT replacing bio-diverse natural vegetation with monocultures of crops.  In order to achieve this miracle feat, they have developed, and depend on, domestic animal biodiversity – breeds of livestock that are highly mobile and convert biodiverse vegetation into high value protein.

These people are the holders of immense bodies of  traditional knowledge – about the medicinal uses of plants, about the habits of wildlife, about the effect of plants on animal health, about the interrelationship between them.  In short, they are privy to holistic ecological knowledge that is still our best bet in the practical management of eco-systems and vastly superior to the atomized perspective of scientists who tend to focus on minute aspects and often fail to see the forest for the trees.

Being nomadic, these people who are crucial  for biodiversity conservation as well as India’s present and future food security, usually fall outside the scope of the village BMCs, even of state biodiversity boards, as they routinely wander between different states. In order to record and do justice to their role in biodiversity conservation and to ensure their rights as “Keepers of Genes” , a tailor made approach is required – an approach that captures the fact that they are mobile social groups roaming  over different geographical zones of the country together with  specific livestock breeds that they continuously adapt to changing ecological and economic scenarios.

A group of NGOs working with pastoralists in different parts of India has developed such a tool that is known as “Biocultural Community Protocol” . It corresponds to the “community protocols” that India – and other countries – are mandated to establish by an international legal convention: the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits arising from their utilization. Already a corpus of such BCPs has been developed by pastoralist groups, including the Raika , the Kutchi camel breeders , Rajasthan’s camel breeders   and the Bargur Hill Cattle Breeders . Various others are in progress, covering a significant part of India’s biodiversity.

So far they have not been recognized nor even acknowledged by India’s National Biodiversity Authority. The National Biodiversity Authority may to some extent be aware of the role of pastoralists as stewards of biodiversity as it has been supporting the annual Breed Saviour Awards  promoted by the NGO SEVA.  But these awards are given to individuals, not communities and represent a one-time reward, they do not imply any rights over animal genetic resources as envisioned by the Nagoya Protocol. BCPs would fill this gap and explicitly recognize what these communities do for India – producing food in marginal areas and from crop by-products, manuring fields with organic fertilizer, often supporting wildlife, and providing various other ecological services such as dispersing seeds.

As of 17th July, 2017, 62,502 BMCs had been established in India, covering less than 10% of the country’s 650244 villages. These are very unequally distributed, with some states such as Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh having tens of thousands while a state like Rajasthan only has less than one hundred. This difference is because of the presence of NGOs in that have actively supported and built the capacities of communities to establish People’s Biodiversity Registers. Without NGOs as catalysts and facilitators, village people rarely have the motivation to establish BMCs. It is certainly worthwhile and immensely important to encourage village people, especially youths, to take an interest in the biodiversity around them and to value the traditional knowledge held by the older generations. But rural people are already occupied with a host of issues and are likely to take action only if some component of biodiversity that is crucial to their livelihoods is threatened.

Strategically it therefore makes more sense to aggregate biodiversity at a higher geographical level; acknowledging and supporting (Biocultural) Community Protocols for pastoralists would be an important step towards a more efficient and regional approach to biodiversity documentation and management then relying only on village based BMCs.

The importance of  Community Protocols will really come to the fore if and when international interest in livestock breeds that are adapted to challenging environmental conditions increases. In times of climate change, this may be sooner rather than later. Already there is a case of Access and Benefit-Sharing with respect to an Indian livestock breed. In 2012, Brasif, a Brazilian agribusiness investor, applied to the National Biodiversity Authority of India for access to 4,000 cattle embryos from Gir and Kankrej breeds. The embryos were supplied by a Trust in Bhavnagar in Gujarat. In 2015, the expert committee on access and benefit sharing of the National Biodiversity Authority set a price of INR 12 million (USD 190,000) which was paid by BRASIF. But apparently the National Biodiversity Authority is unsure who is entitled to receive this money, as it wants to benefit the creators of the breeds. IF A Community Protocol existed, the decision would be much easier.

Such issues are currently also discussed at the Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture at the FAO in Rome. But Africa seems to be taking the lead in pushing for Biocultural Community Protocols, as I will report in my next blog post!

The trouble for livestock started with the publication in 2006 of  “Livestock’s Long Shadow”, the FAO’s detailed study of this sector’s startling environmental impact, identifying it as a major culprit in climate change, besides polluting rivers, oceans, groundwater and the atmosphere, as well as wiping out biodiversity. These widely broadcast results caught the imagination of both the media and the general public. The automobile industry suddenly compared its emissions to that of “farting cows” and prided itself on being better for the environment than the beef industry.

One of the unintended consequences of this game-changing analysis was the wariness of donors to fund any livestock related development projects. It resulted in a dearth of funding for animal husbandry – which suddenly seemed to have become almost a toxic word. Over the years, this scenario precipitated several damage control initiatives, for example the Global Agenda on Sustainable Livestock (GASL), a multi-stakeholder platform anchored by the FAO to lead to “practice change” towards more sustainable livestock, and the Global Livestock Advocacy for Development (GLAD), a project of ILRI, the International Livestock Research Institute. These initiatives are somewhat in an overcompensation mode: while they rightly emphasize the many beneficial effects of livestock especially in poorer parts of the world as source of livelihoods and nutrition, their blanket endorsement of livestock obfuscates a crucial point: livestock can be both “good” and “bad”, and its impact is entirely dependent on us humans and how we manage our farm animals.

It is quite simple: If we keep livestock in a way that it mirrors nature and imitates the herds of wild herbivores that once created the world’s most fertile soils , then its impact is positive. If animals are kept moving, are deployed to convert roughage or waste into protein, raised in family groups contributing to their well-being, then this is an ideal situation. It is the model of livestock keeping exemplified by nomadic pastoralists.

The situation changes when livestock no longer moves around and forages on its own but is fed with especially grown fodder. Although this is the standard that most of us have grown up with, it is  already much less desirable! For one, living creatures that get no exercise and are totally stall-fed cannot really be healthy, as we know from ourselves. Furthermore, it costs fossil fuels to grow and transport the feed and it is usually no longer possible for animals to be in a herd – they are separated  by sex and age. Still, from an environmental and farming perspective, such systems are essential and acceptable as long as livestock remains integrated with crop cultivation, its manure is fed back into the local soils, and animals have the opportunity to exercise.

But it gets really ugly when we intensify this system in order to maximize output, confine and isolate animals, keep them in huge numbers for the sake of “efficiency” and profit, pay no heed to their social needs. We not only turn living beings into processing machines, we have to bring the feed from very far away (other continents), amass the excreta (which have turned from valuable organic manure into a toxic pollutant), dispense antibiotics to suppress diseases, add some hormones to make production even more “efficient”. And then – surprise, surprise – we have to deal with antibiotic resistance, animal rightists, tasteless food, stench in the air, rural poverty, what have you not.

Initiatives such as GASL and GLAD that aim to make livestock more sustainable, or give it a better press, are welcome – but they need to be brave enough to spell out under which conditions livestock is good, bad, and ugly. They should not excuse the ugly systems because they are supposedly “efficient” and necessary to feed the world (which they are not). They need to revisit the efficiency paradigm that they adhere to because efficiency can have many negative side-effects and undermine sustainability.

They must read the writing on the wall: the steep rise in vegetarians and vegans, the fact that supermarket and fast food chains are now the ones pushing for better animal welfare standards, the amount of funding going into developing artificial meat. In such a global scenario, blanket endorsements of livestock are no longer credible. Instead, a more differentiated approach is the need of the hour, even if it alienates some of the stakeholders in the livestock sector. If we try to please everybody, we end up without profile and impact, and will not make progress towards our goal of livestock sector sustainability.

It is often said – and given as a reason for disparaging pastoralism – that young people do not want to become pastoralists. Unfortunately, and unsurprisingly, that is often the case. Pastoralism is hard work, and in the absence of pro-pastoralist policies while populations grow, it is coming  under increasing pressure and in conflict with farmers, roads and urban sprawl. To make matters worse, school education seems to be at odds with herding culture, projecting it as backwards and instilling a sense of disdain of this way of life. This in turn is a consequence of government determined curricula – and we know that hardly any government appreciates pastoralism.

However, the opposite is also true: there are young people that do want to be pastoralists. In developing countries, the motivation may be the absence of better options for making a livelihood. In Rajasthan, I frequently come across young pastoralists who have tried out urban existences but decided that they preferred the independence of pastoralism, despite all the associated hassles. In developed countries, this can also be observed – spending summers up in the Alps looking after goats or cattle and making cheese is quite an attractive proposition for many. Then there are urban shepherds or conservation shepherds who make a living from payments for ecological services or keeping urban lawns short. Or read the bestselling book “A Shepherd’s Life” by James Rebanks, an ode to centuries of rootedness in England’s Lake District.

The world needs pastoralistst, and without pastoralism many countries would starve, especially those with large proportions of uncultivable land. So why is this role of pastoralism not recognized by governments? Why do they not put in place policies that protect pastoralists and make their lives easier, instead of squeezing them out?

I have come to the conclusion that this is because pastoralism operates according to different principles than the animal science based kind of livestock production. Scientific livestock production works under controlled conditions, where everything is predictable – except outbreaks of diseases and prices.  There are standardized genetics, standardized feeds, standardized houses and the goal is to maximize output. By contrast pastoralism goes with the flow, it uses the resources that are available and it recycles nutrients into the soil. Pastoralists provide organic fertilizer, they steward livestock genetic diversity, they maintain wild biodiversity. They are usually pleasing to look at while the other type of livestock production has to be secured behind closed doors because people get upset about it.

 

So how to change the mind of policy makers about pastoralists? Well, the only way to do this is to demonstrate and make visible the enormous contributions pastoralists make in terms of food security, biodiversity conservation, and – at least in South Asia – organic fertilizer production. Scientific papers have made a stab at depicting this in numbers, but which policy maker reads them? I believe the most effective way of all is if pastoralist groups or communities  themselves record and document what they do for humanity by making use of a tool called Biocultural Community Protocol. Community Protocols are a legal instrument under the  Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit-Sharing to the Convention on Biological Diversity, a legal framework that practically all governments of the world are a party to. The Nagoya Protocol  commits countries to support communities  to develop protocols in which they state under which conditions they would grant access to their genetic resources and traditional knowledge. Now, such “access” can only be provided if these genetic resources (i.e. livestock breeds) and associated knowledge still exist – and without pastoralists managing them in-situ, they certainly will disappear. Ergo, this is the credo of my organization, the League for Pastoral Peoples and Endogenous Livestock Development (LPP) , Community Protocols are a means for pastoralists to firstly describe the resources they manage and secondly to stae te conditions under which they are able and willing to continue this important role for humanity.

Already, more than a dozen of pastoralist communities have developed BCPs, most of them in India, but also in Pakistan, in Kenya, and soon to come in Niger and in Argentina.  The more BCPs, the more powerful and difficult to ignore they will become. In September, LPP is organizing a workshop to streamline the metod and process of BCPs, while in late September the Woodaabe of Niger will embark on developing their BCP, using innovative mobile technology. One of these days, governments, international organizations and livestock scientists will listen!

Kenya’s camel population has been sky-rocketing in recent decades – from less than one million around the turn of the millennium to an estimated 3.1 million currently. So what’s the secret? Why does the Kenyan situation differ from that in India where camel numbers continue to plummet  – despite protection as state animal of Rajasthan and the rescue efforts of animal welfare people?  My partner in camel affairs, Hanwant Singh Rathore, director of Indian camel support organization LPPS, and I travelled to Kenya to find out.

We had the good fortune of being hosted by Anne Bruntse, a Danish agronomist who has been residing in Kenya since 34 years, and is a pioneer in camel cheese making.  (Her feta, halloumi, and cream cheeses made from the milk of the Kumbhalgarh camels were a hit with Delhiwalas and connoisseurs during the Living Lightly exhibition about pastoralists in India last year). Anne lives on a farm in Gilgil in the Rift Valley and for many years was running a cow dairy and cheese making unit before taking a scientific approach to camel cheese making with a camel-specific rennet invented by the Danish company Chr. Hansen.

Our first port of call was the Anolei women’s cooperative in Isiolo, a crowded town of mostly Somali residents, about 235 km north of Nairobi.

Somalis are gluttons for camel milk, their whole culture traditionally revolved around the camel, and camel milk is important for their well-being. The Somali women that formed the Anolei cooperative turn over about 3000 liters per day. The crux of the system is the clan system. Somalis sell camel milk only to their clan members and the collective is the link between rural producers and urban consumers. The cooperative organizes the transport to Nairobi and, with the help of donors, has obtained a chilling tank where the milk is cooled down before onward transportation by bus. This makes a big difference to the quality of the milk. The Anolei women also own a pasteurization and filling unit which they are awaiting to operationalize as soon as they receive the necessary certification from the authorities. And, chair woman Sofia Kulow was really excited to share that the cooperative would soon have its own chilling truck to take the milk to Nairobi.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A similar set-up exists in Garissa, another Somali stronghold.  Setting up a chilling facility combined with training in hygienic milk collection enormously increased the availability of good quality of camel milk and thereby the demand for it. Local demand by the Somalis is so high that no milk is left over for export to Nairobi!

This is not the only case of camels serving to empower women in Kenya. Laura Llemeneite who has lived among the Samburu tribe for more than 20  years tells the story of how the originally cattle keeping Samburu have been switching to camel keeping in recent decades. Because of a series of droughts as well as climate change, cows are no longer providing enough milk or need to be herded to very distant locations for grazing and can no longer provide milk in the settlements. For the sake of food security, development agencies have been supporting the adoption of camels and distributed over a thousand heifer camels to Samburu women groups.

This has resulted in Samburu women becoming livestock owners for the first time, a change that has considerably strengthened their status in the community. According to Laura,  this has led to more eye level marriages, and while the men initially had difficulties accepting that women would attend meetings, they now often even offer to do the cooking so this can happen!

Near Rumuruti we visit Amanda and John Perrett who farm 200 camels on Ol Maisor, a large ranch.  Amanda’s father, Jasper Evans, a camel aficionado and visionary established a camel herd in the 1980s, seeing the advantage of combining them with cattle herds to intensify land use: camels and cattle utilize different types of vegetation. In the 1990s, Ol Maisor became a hub of applied research and  Jasper also had the foresight to import 60 or so high yielding dairy camels from Pakistan, keeping detailed records about their reproduction, health and veterinary treatments for more than twenty year. This tradition is faithfully continued by Amanda.

Rumuruti is at the southern end of Laikipia district, a place much in the news these days because of conflicts between predominantly white ranchers and conservationists and Samburu or Pokot herders desperate for grazing, with politicians also taking advantage of this situation. So there are security concerns and the camel safaris that were once a major source of income are currently down.

So what is the difference between Kenya and India?

1. There is a large Somali community for whom camel milk is an essential food that they don’t seem to be able to do without. Thus there is a significant market for camel milk, providing economic incentives for breeding camels..
2. Development organizations have been supporting transition from cattle to camel as a means of drought resilience and climate change adaptation.
3. There has been sustained investment in applied camel research and, more recently, in setting up of cool chains to move camel milk from rural to urban areas.
4. Women are important actors, including the Somali dairy entrepreneurs, the Samburu household managers, Amanda Perrett, and Anne Bruntse who has not only developed cheese but taught endless courses in hygienic milk collection and processing.

Can some of these approaches be transferred to India? Well, India probably does not have much of a Somali population and thereby an in-built demand for camel milk. On the other hand, people with diseases that can benefit from camel milk (such as autism and diabetes) are numerous there. While switching from cattle to camel is not likely to happen, it is absolutely essential and urgent to invest in the cool chains that link producers with consumers. And an effort should be made to involve women from camel breeding communities. While Indian pastoralist women traditionally have not had much to do with camels (except when going on migration), they have always played the role of “family finance ministers” and may have more of the business sense and attention to detail (hygiene) that are prerequisites for getting India’s camel dairy sector going!