Agro-Pastoral Integration in NW China: A New Paradigm?

Synopsis

The local agro-pastoral economy is changing in NW China; farming activities seem to be very instrumental to livestock development, rather than the other way around. Furthermore crop production has expanded to meet the increasing demand for fodder (and grain) for animal feeding and herd growth. In some areas agricultural activities seem often to represent strategies to claim user rights to plots of land by converting rangeland to cropland.

It is clear that the process of modernization of the region has changed patterns of natural resource management in critical ways, increasing dependency on market-based dynamics and important out-migratory fluxes and reliance on off-farm income, with remittances playing an important role in the local economy, together with revenues from the tourism sector in some selected areas.

Key Points

• 1. The people-livestock-environment that operated in the NW region of China for centuries changed dramatically in the 1950s and continues to change in ways that are irreversible. The balance has shifted from herders, who traditionally controlled access and utilization of rangelands, to others (farmers, government agencies etc) through the process of individualization of natural resources. This process has undermined the customary institutional environment on land encroachment practices.

• 2. The local agro-pastoral economy is changing. The overall relevance of cropping activities within the local agro-pastoral system has increased. Recent trends indicate a shift from rangeland-related animal feeding, towards an increasing relevance of cropped forage and fodder, and to the purchase of fodder (hay, straw, grain, by-products). In some agro-pastoral counties, rangeland grazing provides about half of forage needs, ensuring about 40% in the animal requirements in dry years and up to 60% in wetter years.

• 3. Traditional transhumance mobility patterns through the NW region is nowadays confined within defined administrative boundaries, and many herders inhabit settled villages and are highly dependent upon commercial exchanges with other regions and communities.

• 4. As a result of these trends nowadays a decreasingly mobile, growing number of animals subsist on a shrinking land resource base. Overall these trends have distorted the people-livestock-environment balance which characterizes pastoral systems, contributing to a greater dependency on external resources to ensure the viability of the livestock sector. This has also weakened the social and institutional mechanisms behind pastoral resource management.

• 5. The growing reliance on supplementary feed is part of the government-sponsored policy to modernize animal husbandry but it has a tendency to lead to the development of investment schemes – such as the expansion of crop production on marginal rangeland – often represent a way to encroach on communal grazing lands.

• 6. Due to increasing population on one side (which results in less grazing land available) and increasing political and administrative limitations on the other, the space and time dimensions of pastoral mobility have contracted dramatically. Government policies have further contributed to rising livestock figures on local rangelands, favouring the building up of flocks and herds thus triggering overall communities’ dependence on policy and on market dynamics for production inputs as well as outputs.

• 7. Rural livelihood strategies in the regions are changing. At the household level the income generated through agriculture and rural activities seems increasingly unable to satisfy the economic needs of a family; as much as labour opportunities provided do not inspire the younger generations. As a result the importance of income sources produced off-farm are becoming of utmost importance.

• 8. The main failure of the efforts to modernize agro-pastoral resource management is reportedly the limited capacity to self-provide for adequate stored stocks of food and feed, both for people and for pen-fed animals. This is perceived as a weak link in the rural livelihood chain, as it does not allow proper utilization of locally available resources while inducing dependencies on market-based dynamics.

• 9. The easiest innovation to offer to both farmers and agro-pastoralists is the stall fattening of a few livestock. It has the advantage, in a relatively short time, of increasing saleable beef or lamb production, producing better finished carcasses, stimulating off-take of surplus males at a younger age, utilizing crop by-products and introducing the agro-pastoralists to commerce and credit.