Pastoralists’ Coping Strategies to Food Crisis

i. Generation of food stores. In anticipating shortfalls in food, pastoralists attempt to store some foods in order to fill gaps and to avoid distress sales. These include, among others, cereal stores to prevent distress sales of livestock; stores of butter, meat and fat; collecting and storing wild foods, etc (Sommer, 1998:11). In Ethiopia, the Afar pastoralists often prepare and preserve various foods from meat and cereals for drought periods and/or for long journeys. This will be elabourated in Chapter 6.

Some authors reported that wild foods feature as famine foods in almost all parts of Africa (de Waal 1989a, and McGlothlen et al., 1986 cited in Blaikie et al., 2004:119; Mohammed Salih, 2001). Gathering of wild foods, however, is adversely affected by drought conditions.

Consequently many bush products (e.g. berries, roots) may suffer from the impacts of recurrent and prolonged droughts, and they may not be available. In relation to this

Mohammed Salih (2001:210) states that “building up stores of food and diversification of production are climate dependent”. He further noted the need to “understand the consequences of drought and other climatic variables on horticulture, wild edible plants and watershed cultivations since they constitute the main sources food during drought”.

ii. Reduction of food intake and changing composition of diet. Adjusting consumption patterns is often made very early when food shortages are anticipated. Reducing the number of meals and the amount of food, and resorting to less preferred foods⁷² are the common consumption smoothening mechanisms in times of food shortage. The immediate impact of drought in pastoral areas is decline of milk supply which is the most important source of calories. Thus pastoralists tend to take more cereals than milk, and reduce their food intake.

The food related responses of Borana pastoralists in Ethiopia during the 1983-86 hunger period can be an illustrative instance. At the time the Borana pastoralists responded through household diet adjustments: These were: (i) giving priority to young children to receive milk;

(ii) shifting diet composition for other age groups to include more cereals, meat and blood to accommodate the needs of children and; (iii) reducing the size and frequency of meals to adults and older youths (Coppock 1994:163 as cited by Ahmed et al., 2002:35).

iii. Sale of non-livestock assets. When there is a potential food shortage or possible famine, households or communities attempt to mobilize assets or resources which are at their disposal in order to cope with food crisis. For instance sale of easily disposal assets is pursued. Sale of non-livestock assets (jewellery and other non-productive items) takes place in order to help bridge a temporary shortfall in subsistence supplies. In this case wealthy pastoralists are usually in a better position as they have certain assets that may be sold for buying grain, and therefore postponing the moment at which they will be forced to sell productive assets such as livestock (Ahmed et al., 2002). However, some evidences from Darfur and Ethiopia show that

“even poor people also attempt to preserve future livelihoods by reducing current consumption in order not to sell productive assets” (Turton, 1977 and de Waal, 1989 as cited by Davies, 1996:38). On the other hand such coping is criticized by some reports. It is argued that poor or vulnerable people can survive almost any livelihoods crisis by their own resources. However, the reality is that malnutrition and child mortality rates in many places are unacceptably high even at ‘normal’ times (e.g. Bradbury, 2000 cited in Devereux, 2006).

iv. Mobilizing social support networks and claims. These involve a wide variety of rights and obligations which members of household, or extended families or kinship groups claim upon their groups in difficult times. Claims may be by individuals or households upon kin groups or local patrons. Household links to larger social groupings are vital for survival in pastoral communities. Within groups these links provide support networks that assist households in times of crisis (Perrier, 1996; 55). Some sources presented “village level associations as being one of the key components in overcoming famine in a number of African countries” (Walker, 1995:153). Walker added that the possession of structures to organize locally on both a kinship and peer-group basis seems to be of paramount importance in facing adversity.

Claims can also be made upon government and international relief agencies (Walker, 1995:153). This, in fact, requires strong local associations by which local people can assert their claims and rights to access external resources in times of crisis.

72 A common example is substitution of lower quality and wild foods (famine foods) for more expensive staples.

On the other hand some authors indicated that throughout the LDCs such networks and moral obligations are in decline (Blaikie et al., 2004:119). The ‘moral economy’ (e.g. ‘non-economic relations between patrons and clients or between rich and poor, which is called ‘a subsistence ethic’ based on the norms of reciprocity) may offer a minimum subsistence and marginal security in times of hardship. However, some authors reported that “such obligations are being eroded, for instance in South Asia (Agarwal 1990, Fernandes and Menon 1987 as quoted by Blaikie et al., 2004:118) and in Kenya during 1971-1976 (Wisner 1980, Downing et al.,1989 as cited by Blaikie et al., 2004:118).

In addition during some droughts/famine times, there were cases from India where some groups of people (caste) took up demeaning activities (thus to loss respect), and certain activities prescribed or discouraged by membership of a social group or caste or gender (thus below their dignity) to secure minimum food supply (Rao 1974, Agarwal 1990 as cited by Blaikie et al., 2004). Blaikie et al. (2004:114) also postulated that “despite economic and emotional support that it provides, family may break up to allow its individual members to survive” during famine disaster. In this case the authors suggested that “famine may be unique or at least extreme among disasters in often provoking social tension and break down of this kind” (Blaikie et al., 2004:114). Yet sociological studies on “community responses to disasters (earthquake and floods)” found out that “emergent organization is much more common than social chaos, and that altruism and stoicism are more common than selfishness and panic” (Qaurantelli and Dynes, 1972, 1977; Qaurantelli, 1978, 1984; Dynes et al., 1987 cited by Blaikie et al., 2004:114).

And yet a recent study (Doss, 2001:1) conducted on 323 pastoral households in northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia found that transfers of money, food and livestock among pastoralists as part of a social safety-net system was very limited during the drought year of 2000. The same study concluded that “there is less of a social safety net than we had expected to find based on the ethnographic literature” (Doss, 2001:2). This indicates that local level informal safety nets are less able to buffer against stresses or shocks. Therefore, without such informal means of insurances, people whose animals die or who lose the sources of livelihood are likely to drop out of the pastoral system. This often has detrimental consequences for dropouts since they are usually ill-equipped to succeed in more urban settings. In addition, there can be detrimental effects to smaller towns and villages in pastoral areas (Doss, 2001:2).

v. Income generation from non-pastoral activities. Livestock raising faces multiple risks (drought, epidemics, raiding) that undermine food security. Thus pastoralists use alternative sources of income to overcome risks and economic shocks. Some of these activities include, among others, charcoal making, handcrafts, hunting, fishing, petty trade, working in urban areas, and migration to neighbouring countries for labour (Scoones 1996; Ali 1996; Sommer 1998; Fasil et al., 2001). These and other sources of income have been of varying importance for different households or pastoral groups in providing additional income in normal times and a fallback source of subsistence during times of crisis. On the other hand some authors remarked that some activities pursued as income source (e.g. charcoal making) may undermine the basis of livelihood in the long run (Grainger, 1990, and O’Brien and Gruenbaum, 1991 as cited by Blaikie et al., 2004:117). A case in point is deforestation resulted from cutting trees for charcoal-making.

In general the above strategies are used mainly as risk reduction and/or adaptive responses.

They involve a variety of actions taken by households or social groups before or during an event in order to avoid risks or mitigate their effects. In fact, as stated earlier, some recovery activities may overlap with coping or adaptive strategies which are already discussed in the above sections. Pastoralists in the Horn of Africa and elsewhere use a variety of strategies of herd recovery after drought or crisis period. These include systems of restocking (stratification or stock lending), mobilizing social networks, migration or mobility of wage labour, small business, sedentarization, etc (Ahmed et al., 2002). As a strategy of drought recovery, some of these are briefly described in the following section.