Maasai Socioeconomic Conditions: A Cross-Border Comparison

A single round household survey was conducted between October 1997 and May 1998. Information was collected on 1545 Maasai households in Kenya and Tanzania using a standardized questionnaire. These data represent the first large-scale, cross-border comparable survey of socioeconomic indicators for the Maasai. The structure of the study is similar to that of a natural experiment: one ethnic group living in two very different nation-states. The survey results describe a current snapshot of Maasai livelihoods. Living arrangements are described at both the household (olmarei) and multihousehold (enkang) level, together with changes in housing type. The roles of cultivation, transhumant migration, and employment are described, including a consideration of the prevalence of murranism (warriorhood). The implications of rising levels of sedentarization and cash crop production for Maasai economic diversification are explored. Participation by Maasai in the tourism industry is extremely low despite the proximity of Maasai to major international tourist destinations in East Africa. Levels of formal education show a marked sex bias in completed primary school education in both countries, with far fewer women than men having attended school.     

The Distribution of Grazing Pressure in Relation to Vegetation Resources in Semi-arid West Africa: The Role of Herding

In semi-arid West Africa, livestock are increasingly managed by sedentary producers in close proximity to expanding cropped lands. To evaluate the agricultural and environmental implications of this trend, a study was conducted to investigate the effect of grazing management on the spatial distribution of grazing pressure, the forage provided animals during the grazing period, and local herd-forage ratios across three agropastoral landscapes characterized by varying cultivation pressure. During the 19-month study period, data on herbaceous vegetation, livestock populations, and grazing itineraries were collected. These data were referenced to land units averaging 70 ha in area. Using this approach, each of 3,819 grazing itineraries was characterized as to: 1. the sum of the products of the palatable forage mass of a particular land unit and the time spent grazing by the herd within that unit (FAT, expressed in kg-hours ha⁻¹); and 2. the average palatable herbaceous forage mass encountered by livestock across the itinerary weighted by the time spent in the land units crossed (FA, expressed in kg ha⁻¹). The spatial dispersion of livestock grazing around human settlements was found to decline with a reduction in herding labor investment (herded>herd-release>free pasture). Multiple regression analyses of itinerary data demonstrate that both FAT and FA also decline with a reduction in herding labor investment. Herded and herd-release managed livestock were offered more palatable forage and grazed areas of higher forage availability than free-pastured animals. This supports arguments that as the investment of time and effort into herding declines, feed supply to livestock will decline and the potential for grazing-induced environmental change will increase.     

From zomo to yak: Change in a Sherpa village

Transhumant herding of cow-yak hybrids is a specialization of Helambu Sherpa villagers living at altitudes between 7,000– 11,000 feet on the southern slopes of the Himalayas. Hybrids are ideally suited for the climate at this altitude, producing large quantities of rich milk for butter production. Focused on a village in east- central Nepal, this paper documents a shift by some families between 1971– 1989 from the longstanding pattern of herding hybrids to an alternative pattern of producing them. This involves learning to manage yak, establishing new transhumance routes, a switch from dairying to livestock production, and a variety of economic, environmental, and social repercussions. The two types of herding systems are described, and possible causes for the shift are discussed within the context of the economic options available to people in this environment. A special emphasis is placed on the flexibility of options that is both necessary and possible with transhumant agropastoralism as practiced by middle and high-altitude Himalayan peoples.     

Viliui Sakha Post-Soviet Adaptation: A Subarctic Test of Netting's Smallholder—Householder Theory

The Sakha of northeastern Siberia, Russia, are the highest latitude contemporary agropastoralists practicing horse and cattle husbandry. In the last 100 years their rural livelihood has gone from household-level subsistence food production in clan clusters of single-family homesteads scattered across the landscape, to village-level state agribusiness farm production in compact settlements dependent on Soviet socialist infrastructure, to the present-day post-socialist reliance on household-level subsistence food production. This paper explores how Viliui Sakha are adapting in the post-Soviet context. Since the fall of the Soviet Union and the concomitant dissolution of the centralized state farm system, rural inhabitants have developed household and interhousehold food production capacities based on keeping cows and relying on exchange among kin. One of the basic tenets of Robert Netting's smallholder–householder theory is that in times of change, the household system is the most resilient subsistence production unit because of specific qualities including intimate ecological knowledge and implicit labor contracts. This research shows in what ways Netting's householder theory applies for subarctic agropastoralists.