Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 7-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Living Off Uncertainty: The Intelligent Animal Production of Dryland Pastoralists

Living Off Uncertainty: The Intelligent Animal Production of Dryland Pastoralists Despite important advances following the challenge to equilibrium-based models in range ecology, pastoralism is still largely seen as a coping strategy that allows herders to get along with an ‘inadequate’ resource base. This stance can be traced to a long-established approach in the disciplines that inform pastoral development planning (natural resource management, range ecology, animal science) to rely on analytical tools based on standard statistics and average values. However, pastoralism is better understood as a sui generis production system, that deliberately exploits the transient concentrations of nutrients that represent the most reliable feature of dryland environments; a system geared at maximising the production of economic value while stabilising its performance in environments where ‘uncertainty’ is harnessed for production. As average values and standard statistics fail to capture non-uniform distribution (relied upon for production in dryland pastoralism), they should not uniquely or uncritically inform pastoral development planning. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png The European Journal of Development Research Springer Journals

Living Off Uncertainty: The Intelligent Animal Production of Dryland Pastoralists

Download PDF
18 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/springer-journals/living-off-uncertainty-the-intelligent-animal-production-of-dryland-Ok5U5uW7Sc

References (78)

Publisher
Springer Journals
Copyright
Copyright © 2010 by European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes
Subject
Social Sciences; Social Sciences, general; Development Studies; Development Economics; Development Policy; Development and Social Change
ISSN
0957-8811
eISSN
1743-9728
DOI
10.1057/ejdr.2010.41
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Despite important advances following the challenge to equilibrium-based models in range ecology, pastoralism is still largely seen as a coping strategy that allows herders to get along with an ‘inadequate’ resource base. This stance can be traced to a long-established approach in the disciplines that inform pastoral development planning (natural resource management, range ecology, animal science) to rely on analytical tools based on standard statistics and average values. However, pastoralism is better understood as a sui generis production system, that deliberately exploits the transient concentrations of nutrients that represent the most reliable feature of dryland environments; a system geared at maximising the production of economic value while stabilising its performance in environments where ‘uncertainty’ is harnessed for production. As average values and standard statistics fail to capture non-uniform distribution (relied upon for production in dryland pastoralism), they should not uniquely or uncritically inform pastoral development planning.

Journal

The European Journal of Development Research – Springer Journals

Published: Nov 11, 2010

There are no references for this article.