Pastoral Nomadism & Plantations

Pastoral Nomadism

A form of subsistence agriculture called pastoral nomadism is based on the herding of domesticated animals in dry climates, where planting crops is impossible. Pastoral nomads, unlike other subsistence farmers, depend primarily on animals rather than crops for survival. The Bedouins of Saudi Arabia and North Africa and the Masai of East Africa are examples of pastoral nomads.

The animals provide milk, and their skins and hair are used for clothing and tents. Their animals are usually not slaughtered, although dead ones may be consumed. To nomads, the size of their herd is both an important measure of power and prestige and their main security during adverse environmental conditions. Like other subsistence farmers, though, pastoral nomads consume mostly grain rather than meat. To obtain grain, many present-day nomads do raise crops or obtain them by trading animal products.

Nomads select the type and number of animals for the herd according to local cultural and physical characteristics. The choice depends on the relative prestige of animals and the ability of species to adapt to a particular climate and vegetation:

Cattle have traditionally been most common in the dry lands of East Africa, where they can feed on scrub and grasses in land unsuitable for planting crops. They are valued for their relatively high milk yield.

Camels are well suited to arid climates because they can go long periods without water, carry heavy baggage, and move rapidly.

Goats need more water than do camels but are tough and agile and can survive on virtually any vegetation, no matter how poor.

Sheep are relatively slow moving and affected by climatic changes; they require more water than camels and goats and are more selective about which plants they will eat.

Nomads Tend the Flock

Gobi nomadic herders, Mongolia.

Pastoral nomads do not wander randomly across the landscape but have a strong sense of territoriality. Every group controls a piece of territory and will invade another group’s territory only in an emergency or if war is declared. The goal of each group is to control a territory large enough to contain the forage and water needed for survival. The actual amount of land a group controls depends on its wealth and power. The precise migration patterns evolve from intimate knowledge of the area’s physical and cultural characteristics.

Some pastoral nomads practice transhumance, which is seasonal migration of livestock between mountains and lowland pasture areas. Pasture is grass or other plants grown for feeding grazing animals as well as land used for grazing. Sheep or other animals may pasture in alpine meadows in the summer and be herded back down into valleys for winter pasture.

Agricultural experts once regarded pastoral nomadism as a stage in the evolution of agriculture—between the hunters and gatherers who migrated across Earth’s surface in search of food and sedentary farmers who cultivated grain in one place. Because they had domesticated animals but not plants, pastoral nomads were considered more advanced than hunters and gatherers but less advanced than settled farmers.

Pastoral nomadism is now generally recognized as an offshoot of sedentary agriculture, not as a primitive precursor of it. It is simply a practical way of surviving on land that receives too little rain for cultivation of crops.

Today, pastoral nomadism is a declining form of agriculture, partly a victim of modern technology. Before recent transportation and communications inventions, pastoral nomads played an important role as carriers of goods and information across the sparsely inhabited drylands. They used to be the most powerful inhabitants of the drylands, but now, with modern weapons, national governments can control nomadic peoples more effectively and limit their movement within their traditional territories.

Governments force groups to give up pastoral nomadism because they want the land for other uses. Land that can be irrigated is converted from nomadic to sedentary agriculture. In some instances, the mining and petroleum industries now operate in drylands formerly occupied by pastoral nomads. Some nomads are encouraged to try sedentary agriculture or to work for mining or petroleum companies. Others are still allowed to move about, but only within ranches of fixed boundaries. In the future, pastoral nomadism will be increasingly confined to areas that cannot be irrigated or that lack valuable raw materials.

Pause & Reflect 9.3.4

How might the limitations on movement affect nomads’ ability to find food and forage for their animals?

Plantation Farming

A plantation is a large commercial farm in a developing country that specializes in one or two crops. Most plantations are located in the tropics and subtropics, especially in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Although generally situated in developing countries, plantations are often owned or operated by Europeans or North Americans, and they grow crops for sale primarily to developed countries. Among the most important cash crops grown on plantations are cotton, coffee, rubber, tobacco, and sugarcane. Also produced in large quantities are cocoa, jute, bananas, tea, coconuts, and palm oil.

Plantation

Workers weed on sugarcane plantation, Sertãozinho, Brazil.

Until the Civil War, plantations were important in the U.S. South, where the principal crop was cotton, followed by tobacco and sugarcane. Slaves brought from Africa performed most of the labor until the abolition of slavery and the defeat of the South in the Civil War. Thereafter, plantations declined in the United States; they were subdivided and either sold to individual farmers or worked by tenant farmers

Agricultural Regions & Climate

Similarities between the agriculture and climate maps are striking. For example, pastoral nomadism is the predominant type of agriculture in Southwest Asia & North Africa, which has a dry climate, whereas shifting cultivation is the predominant type of agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa, which has a tropical climate. Note the division between southeastern China (warm mid-latitude climate, intensive subsistence agriculture with wet-rice dominant) and northeastern China (cold mid-latitude climate, intensive subsistence agriculture with wet rice not dominant).

Climate and Agriculture Regions

In the United States, much of the West is distinguished from the rest of the country according to climate (dry) and agriculture (livestock ranching). Thus, agriculture varies between the drylands and the tropics within developing countries—as well as between the drylands of developing countries and developed countries.