Having herdsmen in the 21st century should be discouraged; potential herdsmen should be in school like the children of the owners of cattle they are hired to herd
The recent picture of cows in President Buhari’s Daura ranch speaks volumes. The cows look good and comparable to cows in Argentina and Texas. Similarly, the recent decision of government leaders to start exchanging ideas with communities of herdsmen and farmers also indicates government’s readiness to deal with culture clash that may water down achievements in the country’s bid for economic diversification. I am republishing today’s article, first to congratulate President Buhari’s efforts to demonstrate that ranching produces better cattle than nomadism, and second, to encourage herdsmen to press governments in cattle-producing states to assist them to migrate from the nomadic to the ranch model of animal farming.
Today’s title is borrowed partly from the current minister of agriculture who said recently that most of the cows in the country cannot produce milk because they do not have enough water to drink. This observation by Chief Audu Ogbeh captures the contradictions in the country’s agricultural system, just as it does for every aspect of the country’s way of doing things. Under the regime of diversification, it is appropriate to juxtapose preoccupation with development on the steam of tradition with development on the battery of innovation in respect of agricultural revolution.
When people try to have milk without the cow, goat, or sheep, such people attempt to achieve the impossible. But when people have cows but cannot get milk, then the problem is one of relying on wrong ways of doing things. Nigeria is in a good position to be the epicentre of dairy production in West Africa, in addition to producing enough beef for its huge population. But the country has increasingly been constrained by the fast pace of desertification that has robbed cattle, goats, and sheep access to adequate feed and water. This challenge is not unchangeable if the political will is there. But the kind of will needed does not include being beholden to outmoded methods. It requires a sincere commitment to modernisation and belief in new technology and techniques as a way of overcoming constraints imposed by nature and culture, especially outmoded tradition.
Of course, desertification is not peculiar to Nigeria. About 900 million people in the five continents live in zones that are threatened by desertification. But there are new techniques to arrest desertification in other parts of the world, and Nigeria must find ways to acquire such knowledge in order to save itself from expending energy in pushing easy solutions towards complex problems and, in the process, create new, and perhaps, bigger problems. If United Arabs Emirate, Quatar, and Las Vegas can get modern, cattle producing states in Northern Nigeria should have no excuse. Indiscriminate animal grazing has not always been a problem in the country. Those who were born before independence would know that up to the 1970s when the Sahel had not moved down as radically as it has in the last twenty years, it was unheard of that herdsmen harassed farmers in the South, a point made recently by General Obasanjo when he said that “cattle grazing was a rare sight except when a big person died in the community.” In those years, cows were brought to the south to sell, not to graze. But with raging desertification in the picture, all states are becoming cattle producing or feeding stations. The problem of desertification is not going to go away by itself; it requires sincere intervention that includes borrowing ideas and techniques of reducing desertification from other countries. In other words, policymakers need to think less about traditional ways of cattle farming and more about new knowledge that could allow cattle farmers to do so with relative ease than having to walk cattle through cities and villages.
By cultural economy, I am referring to the role played by various forms of material and non-material cultural practice in the organization of the economy or to cultural dimensions of economic activity—the design or marketing of any product or service. The fact that herdsmen in the past had moved from one area of the north to another before the spread of the Sahel to over 10 most northern states does not mean that herdsmen should continue to be encouraged to keep moving all over the country in search of pasture and water for their cattle. When some people argued that many of the herdsmen that caused trouble in many parts of the country came from outside Nigeria, many pundits dismissed this idea. It is conceivable that some of the herdsmen could have been foreigners from countries north of Nigeria with worse experience of desertification. Regardless of the nationality of herdsmen, it is the menace they cause to farming communities and the not-easy-to-foresee consequences of incessant clashes between herdsmen and farmers that needs to be addressed rationally.
At the rate herdsmen are searching for food and water for their flock, the tendency is high that most cattle farmers may end up moving to the south, should the Sahel continue to inch further south, and no serious intervention comes from those holding levers of power to respond to a serious environmental problem. Anti-grazing statements may not have been put in a politically correct manner in some areas, but grazing is a serious economic problem that must not be allowed to transform into a political one. Solution to the problem of grazing must not be borrowed from the model of creating NECO when policymakers thought that WAEC was not working well for Nigerian students. Transferring problems created by desertification to other states is not a solution. The challenge for the ministries of agriculture and the environment is how to fight desertification frontally and how to adopt new ways to do animal production.
To put this differently, moving away from the limitation imposed by traditional animal farming at a time that over 10 states in the North are experiencing shortage of water requires embracing what is referred to as Knowledge Economy in this piece. By knowledge economy, I do not mean just the digitization of experience made possible by artificial intelligence in what is considered by sociologists as the third Industrial Revolution. Knowledge economy in the series under this title refers to the culture of relying on advances in science, technology, new ideas and techniques for increasing production, improving quality of products and services, and reducing the use of human or animal muscles to create value or add value.
With respect to calls for a new look at the way of raising cattle, it is the view of this writer that the time has come to find out how other countries that once used the model of moving cows and goats to wherever they can find food and water shifted to a new way of animal farming that takes whatever the animals need to them in ranches. If herdsmen were children of upper or middle-class men and women in our country, they would have cried foul for being hired to nurse cattle for the rich at great risk to their well-being. If the country had created an educational system akin to what exists in Kaduna today—free and compulsory basic education for all—it would have been impossible for current owners of cattle to find herdsmen to follow cattle to the length and breadth of the country. Such difficulty must come to cattle owners if part of the goals of national development and integration include ensuring equality and equity. Having herdsmen in the 21st century should be discouraged; potential herdsmen should be in school like the children of the owners of cattle they are hired to herd.
The most reliable way to stop reproducing herdsmen is for the governments to commit to replacing imperatives of tradition with principles of knowledge economy in planning, designing, and organizing animal and other forms of farming. It must be part of the remit of a government of change to prepare all citizens for competitiveness in a global village that is already experiencing third industrial revolution.
The pictures of President Buhari’s mini ranch illustrate that new knowledge and method can also improve on products that used to be driven by old knowledge and method. A special re-orientation for herdsmen sponsored by the federal ministry of agriculture can change the worldview of herdsmen hobbled by tradition. Instead of creating grazing corridors, we need to create ranches that can make Nigeria more competitive in cattle production. To avoid the pain of blockade or sanctions from sister Arab countries, Qatar is already running a modern ranch with imported cows, and the cows are producing rich milk and tender beef.
