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ABSTRACT
Land-use and livelihood patterns among Eastern African pastoralists have undergone dramatic change in recent decades. The dynamics in East Pokot effectively illustrate these changes. We focus on the spread and intensification of honey production and crop cultivation, describing the patterns of adaptation and diffusion and the current techniques of production. These processes must be understood as dynamics of agricultural intensification, and not as forms of diversification, because current transformations in pastoral communities go beyond temporal strategies of risk avoidance. In the case of East Pokot, intensification is related to population growth, albeit not in the linear manner proposed by Boserup. Rather, this relation is mediated by variables that include markets, labour, technology and the micro-conditions of the agro-ecological environment.
Acknowledgements
We thank Susanne Koch and Irmi Obermaier, who respectively worked on collection/ground truthing and the analysis of the remote-sensing data; Miguel Alvarez and Mathias Becker for sharing their insights during the agronomic field season; and Michael Bollig for his valuable comments and discussions. We would also like to thank our Pokot field assistants, Charles Lorot and Danson Kamama. For editorial assistance we thank Freddy Weck.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
ORCID
Clemens Greiner http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6771-373X
Notes
1 Hogg, “New Pastoralism.”
2 Fratkin, “East African Pastoralism;” Galvin, “Transitions.”
3 Spencer, Pastoral Continuum.
4 Markakis, “Ethnic Conflict.”
5 Spencer, Pastoral Continuum.
6 Ibid., 216–7.
7 Sandford, “Too Many People, Too Few Livestock.”
8 Moritz, “Pastoral Intensification,” 420.
9 cf. Homewood, Ecology of African Pastoralist Societies.
10 Schneider, “Pakot Resistance;” Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer.
11 Lele and Stone, Population Pressure, the Environment and Agricultural Intensification; Boserup, Conditions of Agricultural Growth.
12 Netting, Smallholders, Householders.
13 Mortimore, Roots in the African Dust.
14 Brookfield, “Intensification;” Börjeson, “Boserup Backwards?”
15 McCann, Green Land, Brown Land, Black Land, 22.
16 Widgren and Sutton, Islands of Intensive Agriculture.
17 ibid., 12.
18 Warren, Livelihoods Diversification, 3.
19 Scoones, “Sustainable Rural Livelihoods.”
20 Österle, “Innovation und Transformation;” Bollig and Österle, “The Political Ecology.”
21 Bollig, Greiner and Österle, “Inscribing Identity and Agency.”
22 McCabe, Leslie, and DeLuca, “Adopting Cultivation.”
23 Mace, “Transitions Between Cultivation and Pastoralism.”
24 Boserup, Conditions of Agricultural Growth.
25 Bollig, “Adaptive cycles.”
26 Spencer, Pastoral Continuum, 210; Anderson, “Cultivating Pastoralists;” Little, Elusive Granary.
27 District Development Plan of Kenya.
28 Greiner, “Guns, Land and Votes.”
29 Greiner, “Unexpected Consequences.”
30 Abbink et al., Lands of the Future.
31 The 2009 Kenya Population and Housing Census. Such growth rates are extremely high, and can only serve as a proxy here. In particular, the growth rates from 1999 to 2009 cannot reflect a natural growth rate. We thank Hartmut Lang for a critical assessment of these population figures.
32 Bollig, Greiner, and Österle, “Inscribing Identity and Agency.”
33 Österle, “From Cattle to Goats,” 83.
34 Ibid.
35 Anderson, “Cultivating pastoralists;” Smith, “From Milk to Maize.”
36 Anderson, “Cultivating pastoralists;” Little, Elusive Granary.
37 Dietz, Pastoralists in Dire Straits, 149.
38 Mutsotso, “The East Pokot on the Precipice.”
39 Aklilu and Wekesa, Drought, Livestock and Livelihoods.
40 Greiner, Alvarez, and Becker, “From Cattle to Corn.”
41 Ibid.
42 Mwaka, Bee-keeping and Honey Production.
43 Obermaier, “Spatio-temporal Assessment of Maize Cultivation.”
44 RapidEye imagery was kindly provided by the German Aerospace Center (DLR).
45 Bollig, “Adaptive Cycles.” The present work benefits tremendously from discussions with Michael Bollig, and from the availability of his ethnographic long-term data, dating back to the late 1980s.
46 Mutsotso, The East Pokot on the Precipice.
47 Ibid., 84.
48 Interview with Akudu Makali, at Kokwötotö, August 2011.
49 Interview with the Community Development Project Officer, Arid Lands, 12 August 2011. The needs assessment was undertaken during the first phase of the programme, from 1996 to 2003.
50 GoK, Ministry of Livestock Development, Annual Report for 2009 & 2010 Bee-keeping. The report for 2009 shows the amount of honey produced in Nginyang, Mondi, Tangulbei, Churo and Kolloa to be worth a total of Ksh 6,482,000. The report for the next year shows the amount of honey produced in the same areas to be worth Ksh 10,284,000.
51 Gichora, Towards Realization, 63.
52 Gichora, Towards Realization.
53 Mwaka, Bee-keeping and Honey Production.
54 Hogg, “Water Harvesting and Agricultural Production,” 78.
55 Interview with Ruben Cherindis, at Churo, April 2011.
56 Bollig, Greiner, and Österle, “Inscribing Identity and Agency.”
57 Greiner, Alvarez, and Becker, “From Cattle to Corn.”
58 Bollig, Risk Management in a Hazardous Environment, 273.
59 Gardening will not be further considered in this contribution.
60 Obermaier, “Spatio-temporal Assessment of Maize Cultivation.” The geographical focus of this study covers Tangulbei and Churo Divisions of the former East Pokot District (roughly the area studied by Greiner and Mwaka).
61 Greiner, Alvarez and Becker, “From Cattle to Corn.”
62 Desta and Coppock, “Pastoralism under Pressure.”
63 Österle, “From Cattle to Goats.”
64 Greiner, “Guns, Land and Votes;” Greiner, “Unexpected Consequences.”
65 Desta and Coppock, “Pastoralism under Pressure.”
66 McCabe, Leslie and DeLuca, “Adopting Cultivation.”
67 Spencer, Pastoral Continuum, 21.
68 Mace, “Transitions Between Cultivation and Pastoralism.”
69 Little et al., “Avoiding Disaster,” 403.
70 Lesorogol, “Land Privatization.”
71 McCabe, Leslie, and DeLuca, “Adopting Cultivation.”
72 Smith, “From Milk to Maize.”
73 RoK, Vision 2030 Development Strategy, 63.
74 Leach and Fairhead, “Challenging Neo-Malthusian Deforestation Analyses.”
75 Urdal, “People vs. Malthus”.
76 Tiffen and Mortimore, “Malthus Controverted.”
77 Boserup, Conditions of Agricultural Growth, 105.
78 Ibid.
79 Bollig, Greiner, and Österle, “Inscribing Identity and Agency.”
80 Widgren, “Pre-Colonial Landeque Capital.”
81 Österle, “From Cattle to Goats.”
82 Vehrs, “Changes in Landscape.”
83 Börjeson, “Boserup Backwards?”