GRAZING LAND TENURE AND LIVELIHOOD SECURITY

This chapter begins with an overview, based primarily on secondary sources, of the traditional land tenure system in rural Gambia. The next four sections describe what was learned in the course of this research about herding practices and tenure at the two study sites. In Section 5.2, herding practices and herd mobility are discussed; in Section 5.3, tenure on uncultivated land and the nature of land as a livelihood asset are discussed; in 5.4, water tenure; and in 5.5, tenure on cattle tracks. The final section of this chapter describes how a rangeland project in another part of the country has subtly altered the tenure system there.

5.1 Overview of Traditional Tenure

Rural land in The Gambia is governed according to the traditional tenure system which is relatively homogeneous throughout the country and across ethnic groups (Country Profiles, 1986:61). According to Eastman (1986:12) rural land in a typical Gambian village falls into four categories: the village-proper, planted or fallow cropland, women's gardens and rice fields, and grazing land. Cropland and rice fields are held by lineages, compounds, or occasionally by individual persons under usufructuary tenure. With the exception of government forest parks, most uncultivated land, while not a perfect example of open access, is more accurately classified as open access than communal, state, or individual property. (Tenure on uncultivated land is described in more detail in Section 5.3, below.)

As in many African societies, original rights to cropland, gardens, and rice fields are gained by clearing the land. Normally, permission must be asked from the alkalo (village head) before clearing any land (Bruce, et.al., 1990:9; Country Profiles, 1986:61; Eastman, 1986:14). Rights to cleared land are maintained as long as the land is farmed and are very secure: "in theory [the alkalo] can appropriate these lands and reallocate them, but in practice almost never does so." (Country Profiles, 1986:61) Generally, rights to farmland are vested not in individuals but in either compounds or lineages and are allocated, and sometimes redistributed, among members of this family grouping. These rights are inheritable but because the rights are vested in the family group the land stays within that group: when a male member of the group dies or when a female member is married (thereby becoming a member of her husband's family group), that person's land reverts to the compound or lineage to be reallocated. Land can be borrowed or, as is becoming increasingly common, rented. In fact, in the village of Darsilami, Upper River Division, where I spent two weeks participating in an Rapid Rural Appraisal case study, rent is actually becoming so expensive that some people without their own land find it preferable to obtain land across the border in Senegal and farm there while still living in The Gambia. Traditionally, land cannot be mortgaged or sold. However, in some parts of the country, with the growing scarcity of land, sales, too, are now becoming more common (Bruce, et.al., 1990:9; Country Profiles, 1986:60). Tenure on farmland does not include rights to trees, which are governed by their own tenure system.

While it may be a tautology to state that usufructuary land tenure systems are heavily influenced by the various uses to which land is put, understanding this point is essential to understanding the land tenure system in rural Gambia. For example, perhaps the most common type of tenure change for rural Gambian land is the change from either open access or communal property to individual property that occurs when a piece of uncultivated land is cleared and cultivated. The tenure on that piece of land does not change due to exchange, since land is not bought or sold; rather, it changes when the land is put to a different use.

A more subtle example of the effect of land use on tenure is seen in the difference between cattle tracks and other types of uncultivated land. While livestock may graze both on cattle tracks and in "the bush," because of the important role of cattle tracks as a thoroughfare for livestock, control over cattle track land and maintenance of its boundaries is governed by stricter rules than those applying to other categories of uncultivated land. Because of the link between land use and land tenure, throughout most of this thesis land is discussed under different categories of use such as cattle track land, cultivated land, and uncultivated land. These categories should be taken to refer to both the land use and the particular type of tenure that applies.

Three important institutions in the functioning of the traditional land tenure system are the alkalo, the chief or seyfo, and the district tribunal. The alkalo, or village head, usually is the oldest male of the founding lineage of the village. Recently, however, some villages have begun electing alkalolu (Bruce, et.al., 1990:27). After the village, the next level of local government is the district, which is headed by a seyfo or chief. The seyfo is elected to the position for life. One of the duties of the seyfo is to chair the district tribunal which hears cases that fall under the purview of traditional law, including disputes over land.

5.2 Herding Practices

The land tenure system as it applies to grazing land must be understood within the context of herding practices. Based on several interviews that were done with herdsmen in the course of this research, it can be said that normal seasonal grazing patterns and herding practice in both study areas can be divided into three phases. Livestock are most intensively herded during the rainy season and early dry season while the crops are still in the fields. During this phase, lasting from June until November or early December, it is the responsibility of the herd owner to keep his animals off of people's crops and he can be fined if he fails to do so. In this phase of the grazing cycle, livestock are usually taken to an area of bush with one or more low-lying areas where temporary ponds have formed. These are used for watering the livestock.

In the second phase, which lasts only for one to two months after harvest, livestock graze on crop residues such as groundnut hay or millet or maize stover. In the past these crop residues were left in the fields to be grazed by anyone's livestock without restriction. However, in recent years, it has become more common for farmers to collect the crop residues for more controlled feeding to their own animals. During this phase livestock also graze in any uncultivated areas near the village. The third phase is the most critical, when finding forage and water becomes most difficult. It is during this phase, starting usually in early January and lasting until the start of the rainy season in June, that many of the cattle herds may be moved some distance from the home village. Most of the cattle herds of Ngeyen Sanjal and area are moved to the Kunjata-Bambali area about thirteen kilometres away. The cattle herds of Sutukunding are not relocated to another site although as the dry season progresses they must walk further each day in search of forage. However, many Fula cattle owners in the neighboring village of Farato do relocate their cattle herds every dry season, trekking for four days to Kuntaur or Niani in MacCarthy Island Division where forage and water are more available.

Usually, sheep and goats are put together in collective herds only during the first phase of the grazing cycle, the main purpose being to keep them away from crops. During the second and third phase of the grazing cycle, the individuals who own sheep or goats either care for them within their own households or leave them in the care of another person who is usually paid with a portion of the offspring. Caring for others' sheep and goats and being paid with offspring is one of the primary ways that poorer people obtain these animals. Most cattle are kept in herds throughout the year although they are intensively herded only while crops are in the fields. Small villages often will have one communal cattle herd. However, Ngeyen Sanjal and Sutukunding, both of which are large villages, each have a number of herds which belong to individuals owning relatively large numbers of cattle. People owning few cattle will leave them with one of these herd owners. Commonly, in the second and third phases of the grazing cycle, the herd owner tethers the herd on his own fields and thereby receives compensation for caring for others' cattle in the form of manure. He may also be entitled to the milk produced on certain days of the week.

5.3 Tenure on Uncultivated Land

5.3.1 ACCESS AND CONTROLS

One of the defining features of communal land tenure is the right of the community to exclude outsiders from the land: "The concept [common property] implies that users who are not members of a group of co-equal owners are excluded. The concept of 'property' has no meaning without this feature." (Ciriacy-Wantrup and Bishop, 1975:715) Uncultivated land in the two study areas, if it is considered as grazing land, is not held under communal tenure. Access to grazing land is open to anyone with any number of livestock, regardless of whether they are from the nearest village or the other end of the country. On the other hand, if other uses for uncultivated land are considered then it cannot be seen as a completely unregulated "free-for-all." Uncultivated land is identified as "belonging" either to a particular village or to the district and permission must be obtained from the alkalo or seyfo before clearing it for cultivation. As stated earlier, African land tenure is often more complex than the ideal types of private property, communal property, state property, and open access suggest.

During the field research it was learned that within the prevailing customary tenure regime, while there are detailed conventions regarding tenure for farmland and for some types of trees, there are very few controls governing the movement of livestock on common pastures or on the number of livestock on those pastures. Of the herdsmen and livestock owners who were interviewed none said that there had been any explicit controls on livestock movements or numbers, either in the past or today, and very few knew of any examples of herd owners undertaking to actively co?ordinate herd movements. One experienced herdsman that I interviewed said that in the past "there were no controls on where people took their herds because there was more than enough grass. . . . Today, there is no control or discussion of where herds go because there is little choice -- the herdsman has to take his herd where the food is." It seems that until recently the amount of uncultivated land relative to the number of livestock was more than sufficient for livestock owners' needs, so that controls on herd movements and intensive tenure arrangements for that land were unnecessary. One old man in Ngeyen Sanjal reported that before mechanization began in the 1950s approximately twenty percent of the land near the village was cultivated; now fifty percent is cultivated (see Figure 5.1).

Because access to grazing land is relatively open and because there are few or no controls on herd movements, no investments are made into grazing land. Land is not a resource that people invest in directly. Investment goes elsewhere and the intangible asset of access to land is more important. How important access is can vary between villages and to a certain extent between ethnic groups. Some villages have only small areas of grazing land nearby, so to livestock owners in these villages access to distant pastures is very important. This is especially true of some herd owners of Upper River Division, primarily Fulas and Serahulis, who move their herds several days' journey to the low-lying areas of MacCarthy Island Division every dry season. As stated in Section 5.2 many cattle owners from the village of Farato, near Sutukunding, do this.

5.3.2 OVERGRAZING

If critics of the mainstream view of rangeland ecology are correct in arguing that overgrazing is not as prevalent and not as damaging as commonly thought (see Section 3.2.2, above), it may help to further explain why traditional rules for herding and for controlling access to grazing land never developed. Recurring drought and disease outbreaks, as well as averting any serious overgrazing by periodically reducing livestock populations, may have coincidentally averted the need for any controls on livestock movements or numbers. Even in years of ample rain, access to water is a limiting factor in Gambian herd management. At both research sites, lack of water was considered a bigger problem for raising cattle than lack of forage. Over the years, insufficient access to water especially in the "third phase" of the yearly grazing cycle, the middle to late dry season, may have helped keep livestock populations down.

Evidence from the two study sites supports these ideas. Although it was not the purpose of this research to investigate the existence or severity of overgrazing, the topic was sometimes discussed with herdsmen and livestock owners, most of whom do not accept the existence of overgrazing and show little willingness to destock. Some herdsmen suggested that bush fires do more to destroy grazing resources than livestock. Bush fires are said to be more common now because the vegetation is dry for a greater portion of the year than in the past. Herdsmen at both research sites were also asked to name the varieties of grass commonly eaten by cattle. Some of the varieties that used to be plentiful, including some varieties preferred by cattle, now grow only in isolated patches. However, according to most herdsmen, the primary cause of this is not overgrazing but the dryness of the climate over the past twenty years, and none of these grass species have completely disappeared. On the few occasions when rain is plentiful, these grasses begin growing again.

The cattle cannot do any harm to the forest. The only harm cattle can do is if they get onto someone's field. No, the forest benefits from cattle because when cattle graze, the plants grow back even faster.

-a herdsman from Ngeyen Sanjal

According to an elderly herdsman in a village near Sutukunding, "The varieties of grass still exist -- what is different is how they grow. . . . It is not that the cattle are eating too much. We used to have more cattle than we have now." This herdsman was given a stick and asked to draw lines on the ground to show the quantity of grass available in the past and today, using the length of each line to represent the quantity, in other words, a bar graph. His graph shows pasture grasses declining steadily since 1951. When asked to do the same thing showing rainfall patterns he said it was not necessary: "It would look the same as this." (See Figure 5.2)

While it is possible that herdsmen and cattle owners may have a vested interest in denying the existence of overgrazing, I approached this issue in various ways with different people, and the answers consistently suggested an absence of significant overgrazing. Livestock owners expressed little concern over availability of forage and felt that if water was available in the dry season, livestock nutrition and production would be excellent. In Sutukunding, they also expressed little concern over herds from Senegal that sometimes come into the area to graze.

Although it was minimal, some evidence was found to support the belief that Gambian pastures are overgrazed. At Sutukunding where much of the land used for grazing is a hilly area with rocky soil unsuitable for cultivation, one herdsman stated that because of the large numbers of livestock, plants are being eaten before they have an opportunity to grow back. As a result, the livestock have to trek further up side of the hill than they used to. In general, however, herdsmen at the two study sites do not believe that overgrazing is occurring.

5.4 Water Tenure

At both research sites, during the first phase of the grazing cycle (rainy season and early dry season), water for livestock is obtained from low-lying areas where temporary ponds have formed. Access to these ponds is unrestricted and they are used by herds from several villages. At this time, water is easy to obtain and herdsmen reported no conflict over the use of the ponds. In the second phase of the grazing cycle, livestock are given water from village wells, which are owned by the village as a whole. At Ngeyen Sanjal, in the third phase of the grazing cycle, those livestock that are moved to the Kunjata-Bambali area are given water from privately owned wells. Each herd owner typically has his own well. River water in this area is too salty to use for watering livestock but near the villages of Kunjata and Bambali, the water table is not far below the ground surface and obtaining water is far easier than at Ngeyen Sanjal, where wells can be sixty feet deep. At Sutukunding, in the third phase of the grazing cycle, herds usually move from the village to their grazing areas and the river then back to village every day, and they can be given water both from village wells and from the river. In Upper River Division, where Sutukunding is located, the river banks are steep and ramps or "slipways" must be dug through the banks to give livestock access to the water. There are no controls on the use of these slipways and the slipway that livestock from Sutukunding use is shared between several villages and is sometimes used by herds originating from Senegal. The slipways, which suffer severe water erosion in the rainy season, are maintained through communal labor donated from all nearby villages.

5.5 Tenure on Cattle Tracks

It was learned that one type of land where restrictions are more intensive is on the cattle tracks, strips of land that let the herds move between the village, grazing areas, and watering points without crossing cultivated fields. Figures 5.3 and 5.4 are maps that were drawn by groups of men at the villages of Ngeyen Sanjal and Taibatu (just south of Sutukunding) showing the network of cattle tracks in each area. Although the cattle tracks, also known as stock routes or stockways, can be considered an open access resource in that there are no restrictions on whose livestock or how many livestock use this land, they have traditionally been protected from cultivation. Apparently, in the past, seyfolu (District Chiefs) have had the authority to demarcate certain areas for use as cattle tracks, and they have done so. In the Ngeyen Sanjal area, for example, the seyfo reported that the cattle tracks had been established before he was born by the seyfo at that time. He also stated that the network of cattle tracks was further expanded by his immediate predecessor.

Because cattle track land is often very fertile and because there are no fences separating cattle tracks from fields, there is a temptation for those who have fields beside cattle tracks to expand their fields into the cattle track (see Section 7.3.3). The procedure for protecting the integrity of cattle tracks once established consists of dispute mediation at successively higher levels. Livestock owners reported that when a farmer is found to have encroached on cattle track land by increasing the area that he cultivates, the first step taken is to approach the farmer directly and seek an amiable resolution to the problem. If this is not forthcoming, they next approach the alkalo. If the alkalo is unwilling or unable to restore the land to cattle track use, they can then approach the seyfo or make a complaint to the district tribunal. However, currently these local leaders face a great deal of pressure from individual farmers to allow cattle track land to be cultivated.

5.6 Modifications to the Tenure System: The Dankunku Project

Although the tenure system described above is based on observations at only two clusters of villages, it does conform to other descriptions of rural Gambian land tenure (Bruce, et.al., 1990; Country Profiles, 1986; Eastman, 1986). However, in some small areas of the country, state intervention has modified the traditional tenure system. One such location is centred around the village of Dankunku, MacCarthy Island Division. The Rangeland and Water Development Project operated by the Ministry of Agriculture, Department of Livestock Services in the Dankunku area since 1986 has served two districts and has had a number of components, including the establishment of a milk processing plant, the fencing of certain pastures to be used as grazing reserves, provision of three boreholes, rehabilitation of rangelands by transplanting certain grass and legume species, and a bushfire control program (UNDP, 1992).

The components of the project most obviously related to land tenure were the fencing and rehabilitation of certain pastures. These fenced grazing reserves are opened to livestock in the middle to late dry season then closed at the start of the rainy season to allow for the regrowth of forage. Commonly, they would be opened once more during the rainy season then closed again to allow for regrowth before the start of the next dry season. Seedlings produced at specific "Seed Multiplication Plots" are also transplanted into the fenced areas. These aspects of the project represent an intensification of the tenure on the affected pieces of land, as the two districts through their joint Rangeland and Livestock Management Committee have begun to express property rights over certain pastures, have placed restrictions on access to those pastures, and have invested in those pastures. However, the tenure change is not drastic in that it does not apply to all uncultivated land, it does not restrict access to the fenced areas for other purposes such as the collection of gum arabic and of thatch for roofing, and it places no restrictions on livestock numbers.

When I visited the project site I conducted interviews with people living in a few nearby villages and there was a great deal of praise for the project activities: grazing has improved; because of a reduction in bushfires, other resources found in the bush are more abundant; because of the fences, herding is easier; the dairy has generated income; and clean water is available all year. While there was a great deal of praise for the project, the local people interviewed said that since having been handed over to local management the project has begun to fall apart. A number of people stated that more training was needed before local people could run the project properly, themselves. However, in another way the project may have benefited local institutions by fostering unity. According to the seyfo of one of the two districts served by the project, because of the unity generated by the project and because of the work of the local project management committee in overseeing use of cattle tracks, the number of disputes in his district over cattle track boundaries has dropped to almost zero.