Abstract
Driven by population pressures on natural resources, peri-urban pastoralists in the Far North Province of Cameroon have recently intensified livestock production in their traditional pastoral system by feeding their cattle cottonseed cakes and other agricultural byproducts to cope with the disappearance of rangelands typically available through the dry season. Although the crop–livestock interactions in this altered intensive pastoral system seem similar to alterations recently named in mixed-farming systems in West Africa, they are distinctly different and would require a different type of agricultural development support. I use Bourdieu’s theoretical constructs of “habitus” and “capital” to explain those differences.
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Notes
In the far North of Cameroon, they call themselves FulBe, but the speakers of Fulfulde are also known as Fulani in the Anglophone literature or Peul in the Francophone literature. There are about 20 million speakers of Fulfulde, who can be found throughout West Africa from Senegal in the west to Sudan in the east.
For a history of the mixed-farming model see Sumberg (1998).
I have defined “mixed-farming” as those agricultural systems in which households integrate crop and livestock production and “intensive pastoral systems” as those pastoral systems in which labor, capital and/or technology inputs per unit of land and/or animals have been increased (see Galaty and Johnson 1990, p. 18).
However, agriculturalists may have other forms of capital.
I have used the conversion of $1 = 750 FCFA (Franc de la communauté financière d’Afrique). During my research in 2000–2001, the exchange rate fluctuated between 700 and 775 FCFA to one dollar.
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Acknowledgments
The National Science Foundation (BCS-9910557), the Wenner-Gren Foundation (Gr. 6661), the International Studies and Overseas Program (UCLA), the Anthropology Department at UCLA, and the James S. Coleman African Studies Center (UCLA) have supported this research. I thank the University of Ngaoundére, Cameroon for granting research permission and research affiliation during my study in 2000–2001. I also want to thank Parker Shipton and Mats Widgren for comments on an earlier version of this article presented at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Washington DC in 2007. I also would like to thank Jeffrey Cohen, Colin West, the editor Harvey James and three anonymous reviewers for their insightful and useful critiques.
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Moritz, M. Crop–livestock interactions in agricultural and pastoral systems in West Africa. Agric Hum Values 27, 119–128 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-009-9203-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-009-9203-z