GRAZING LAND TENURE AND LIVELIHOOD SECURITY

This chapter answers one of the major questions raised in the review of literature:

o What is the nature of the relationship between land tenure and livelihood security in the Gambian context?

In Section 7.1 it is argued that the land tenure system and household security strategies can be seen as one system. This section also begins to address another of the unanswered questions:

o It is clear that differences in land tenure systems will affect security strategies, but how does the actual process of tenure system change affect security strategies?

The two sections that follow examine some aspects of the relationship between land tenure and livelihood security, 7.2 discussing access to the bush and the "first line of defense," and 7.3 discussing the role of livestock in the "second line of defense and access to land for grazing.

7.1 The Tenure-Security System

A holistic understanding of livelihood security strategies cannot be limited to knowledge of the activities that individual households engage in and knowledge of the physical components of security. In addition to knowing what types of animals people keep, what resources they collect from uncultivated land, and what they do to earn a living, it is essential to know about the social system that the security strategies are embedded in. Of course, the particular aspect of the social system of concern here is the land tenure system. It was argued above that land tenure systems have a profound influence on livelihood security strategies and are an integral part of the way that rural livings are made. The way that livings are made, security strategies, and the land tenure system can, in fact, be seen as one system. Some of the elements of that system in the Gambian context were described above, but the whole system was not described.

The most important thing to be said about this system, called here the tenure-security system, is that it is an adaptation to the environment in which it is set. As such, it is consistent with some of the essential characteristics of its physical, economic, and social environments -- characteristics such as a highly variable physical environment, poverty, and a peasant social structure whose basic unit is the household. The traditions, rules, and behaviors, that make up the tenure-security system help in turn to reproduce the environment in which they are set. However, this environment is not static. Other changes such as rapid population growth and a climatic drying trend are disrupting the tenure-security system.

For The Gambia, situated as it is on the southern edge of the Sahel, rainfall is highly variable across both time and space. Over the last fifty years for which records are available, the annual rainfall at Ngeyen Sanjal has ranged from 543.2 mm. to 1178.2 mm. At Sutukunding it has ranged from 704.9 mm to 1577.4 mm.³ Unreliability in pasture resources is also caused by bush fires which destroy huge amounts of forage every dry season. This variability in the physical environment influences the investment decisions that must be made by rural smallholders. It makes little sense to invest in the land, by planting fodder crops for example, when the rains may fail, or to invest in fencing grazing land to keep out cattle from the next village when access to that village's land may be crucial next year. The physical environment thereby influences the social environment, compelling rules that allow extensive access to pastures, that is, open access tenure.

The combination of poverty and a physical environment characterized by highly variable rainfall makes it necessary to hold ready some liquid assets for security. In The Gambia, because land cannot normally be bought and sold, any investments that are made to improve the land are not an accessible source of emergency funds. Even in societies where land is a commodity, it is not very convertible and therefore not very useful for short or medium term savings. Because having an accessible source of emergency funds is a high priority for the rural poor, investment tends not to go into the land. Instead, the most viable and profitable alternative is livestock. That investments go into livestock rather than land and the fact of open access tenure reinforce each other. Access to grazing land is open and outsiders are not excluded; therefore, neither individuals nor communities have much incentive to invest in that land; therefore, investment goes elsewhere (into livestock) and pasture resources remain limited to what occurs naturally; therefore, pasture resources continue to be highly variable; therefore, extensive (i.e., open) access to grazing land is needed.

Cropland, unlike the forest and other uncultivated land, is held under individual rather than communal tenure or open access. Unlike Western private property regimes, the "individual" is usually a compound or lineage rather than a single person or a corporation, and the land is held in usufructuary rather than freehold tenure. That is, the "owner" of the land has the right to use it for a specific purpose: growing crops. If the land is left idle for too long it can revert to being communal property or open access. However, as long as the land is being cultivated, it is held under individual tenure; it is not the common property of the village as a whole. This aspect of the land tenure system has repercussions for reinvestment and security strategies. Individual property in livestock can be seen as an extension of individual property in cropland: rather than being left in the form of produce or money or being invested in the land, any surplus from agriculture is stored largely in livestock.

The basic economic unit in rural Gambia is the household rather than the individual, the lineage, or the village. Agricultural production in rural Gambia is not a communal, village affair. There is some division within the household -- between men and women and occasionally between more than one production unit (Mandinka: dabada) -- and each of these divisions has some degree of independent ownership over what they produce. Nevertheless, the main economic unit is the household: men and women within the household share labor and draft animals, the household usually has one central food store, and in times of hardship assets are shared quite freely.

Despite individual tenure in cropland, private ownership of livestock, and an economy whose basic unit is the household, rural Gambian households are not autonomous. The economic environment, especially the fact of poverty, necessitates risk sharing practices. These practices can be seen in the ways that livestock are used in rural Gambian society. For example, various ceremonies that require the slaughtering of livestock ensure that meat is frequently shared within the community. When animals are lent to relatives, as they often are, both borrower and lender benefit. The borrower may benefit from any of milk, manure, traction, and offspring. As well as sharing risks, people also attempt to spread risks. Because rainfall shortages and bushfires are often localized, the person who lends livestock can spread his risk by having some animals on distant pastures. The lender also establishes a moral claim on the borrower to return the favor if it becomes necessary.

It should not be inferred from this discussion that rural Gambian society is monolithic. Some people are destitute, while others have very large herds of cattle. The interests of the poor and the wealthy, furthermore, are often at odds. For wealthy livestock owners, uncultivated land is most important as a source of forage; for the very poor, it is most important for other resources such as firewood and raw materials for construction and handicrafts. The details of how differences in wealth affect the tenure-security relationship is a topic for future research.

In summary, at both study sites, the tenure-security system is adapted to the physical and social environments and functions reasonably well. Furthermore, the fact that it influences and is influenced by many factors suggests that any imposed change to the land tenure system could have dramatic consequences for security strategies. Earlier, Figure 3.4 showed how two different land tenure systems might affect investment in livelihood assets (see p. 29); however, it did not address the possible effects of the process of changing the tenure system. Because the tenure-security system is so intricate, an imposed transformation of the land tenure system could interrupt the production of livelihoods and could force households to consume many of their livelihood assets until such time as the new system was fully in place and they have adjusted to it. In other words, they could be forced to "reverse the livelihood flow" as shown in Figure 6.4, thereby jeopardizing future livelihoods.

7.2 Maintaining Income and the Access to the Bush

The first "line of defense" in rural Gambian livelihood security strategies is maintenance of income through diversification. As well as growing more than one type of crop, rural Gambians often have some source of income outside of farming. Many of these extra-farming income sources rely upon resources that are found on uncultivated land, land that also serves as rangeland. Activities for earning revenue from common land include collecting and selling firewood, gum arabic, roofing materials, and fencing materials, as well as the collecting of materials to make and sell charcoal, mattresses, fences, ropes, and household items such as bowls and mortars and pestles. Also important is hunting and the harvesting of wild fruit for direct consumption or for sale. In Ngeyen Sanjal, it was also reported that some people collect certain species of grass to sell to Senegalese livestock owners who then transport the grass back to Senegal. (See Figure 7.1.)

The designers of projects and programs to improve feed and forage for free grazing ruminants, especially cattle, tend to talk about "rangeland." Projects are given titles such as "Integrated Livestock and Rangeland Development Project." (Emphasis added. Source: "Aid Memoir, Preliminary Summary," 1993:1) There is a tendency to see the land within the project area only in terms of its use for providing food to livestock. It must be remembered, however, that for the rural Gambian population, uncultivated land has other important uses. By identifying a piece of land as "rangeland" there is a danger that other uses and other users will be forgotten or excluded. These other users will include many people from the poorest segment of the rural population, as it is the poorest people who tend most to rely on the bush. In Ngeyen Sanjal, among the poorest eighteen of the households consulted, ten identified some way that they obtain revenue from the bush. In Sutukunding, among the poorest eighteen households, eight stated that they obtain revenue from the bush.

[After showing and naming samples of over a dozen foods from wild plants:] If we were living in a different situation we would not eat all of these. It's because of hunger that we eat them.

-a woman from Sutukunding

These activities are especially important in times of hardship such as when the previous season's harvest has been poor. One man, whose household was identified as being in the lowest wealth rank, divided his yearly revenue into four categories: selling his groundnut harvest, and from the bush collecting and selling large logs, collecting smaller firewood to sell directly or to make into charcoal and sell, and collecting and selling grass for roofing. When asked to weight the importance of each category by distributing twenty-five beans representing his total yearly revenue, he placed no beans in the groundnut category, saying that for the past five years the harvest has been very bad. "I'm not selling my groundnuts now. I keep them for food and next year's seed. . . . Before these past five bad years I did not depend on the bush."

A change in tenure that limits access to these resources can affect "the first line of defense" and hurt the poor household. For example, one man who relies on obtaining wood as the raw material for handicrafts and household utensils stated that since the Forestry Department demarcated the Ngeyen Sanjal Forest Park he has had to cross the river and go to the Casamance region of Senegal to obtain wood. Legislators, planners, and other outside agents should remember that uncultivated common land is not only "rangeland," it is "the bush" with many uses. In this regard, praise is due to the rangeland project of the Department of Livestock Services at Dankunku, MacCarthy Island Division, which has not restricted access to the "rangeland" for the collection of other resources and has even increased the availability of these other resources by reducing bush fires.

7.3 Livestock as Savings and Access to Land For Grazing

7.3.1 LIMITING ACCESS THROUGH DESTOCKING

As stated above, livestock are the preferred form of savings for rural Gambians and relying upon savings is a crucial part of livelihood security strategies. Secure access to pastures, therefore, is also crucial and any actions that may limit access have the potential to undermine livelihood security strategies. As stated earlier, it is a common though unsupported belief that Gambian pastures are overgrazed, and not surprisingly, blame is often assigned to "the tragedy of the commons." The 1991 Livestock Sector Review, for example, states that "Livestock owners and herdsmen are free to graze their animals anywhere. . . . In consequence, these rangelands are overgrazed." (UNDP, 1991:40) The common remedy suggested for overgrazing is destocking, to be achieved through measures such as land tenure reform, grazing fees, quotas, or a combination of these. But we have seen that a number of writers question the mainstream view of rangeland ecology (Section 3.2.2) and that herdsmen at the two study sites question whether overgrazing is occurring on their pastures (Section 5.3.2). It is plausible that over the years, overgrazing has been kept to a minimum and the need for intensive tenure arrangements on Gambian pastures has been averted by the combination of a number of factors including difficulty accessing water, disease, and (until relatively recently) an abundance of uncultivated land. The point here is not to deny the existence of overgrazing, only to say that its existence has not been clearly demonstrated one way or the other.

It should be noted that although livestock are the preferred and most beneficial form of savings/investment, they are by no means the only secure form of savings or the only profitable investment. Therefore, the consequences of restrictions on access to pastures would not necessarily be severe. Nevertheless, the potential for negative consequences on livelihood security obliges that any interventions having an effect on access to grazing land be assessed carefully before being implemented. Furthermore, because livestock owners and herdsmen generally do not believe that overgrazing is occurring, any attempts to induce destocking would likely be resisted.

7.3.2 LIMITING ACCESS THROUGH ENCLOSURE

In the literature on land tenure, advocates of communal, village-based land tenure systems often speak of strengthening the ability and authority of village-level institutions to control and manage common resources such as pastures. However, for Gambian pastures, if boundaries were to be established and observed on common land and proprietorship of that land to be clearly given to individual villages, some villages would suffer. Not all villages have uncultivated common land nearby. Examples of villages with little uncultivated land for grazing include Balo Omar, approximately two kilometres from Ngeyen Sanjal, and Palen Wolof, approximately four kilometres from Ngeyen Sanjal (see map, p. 44). Livestock owners from these villages have to cross the territory of other villages in order to reach the pastures (see Figure 7.2). Furthermore, in the rainy season cattle herds from several villages converge on one area of bush and government forest park near Ngeyen Sanjal. The forage and water there are shared amongst them all. To the extent that enclosing common land at the level of the village would reduce the access of some villages to distant pastures and watering points, it would be detrimental to many livestock owners.

A more striking example of a village that would be adversely affected by such a change is Farato, a Fula village approximately two kilometres from Sutukunding. Every dry season, many cattle owners from this village move their herds four days' journey to MacCarthy Island Division and move them back again with the start of the rains. If villages in MacCarthy Island Division were given the right to exclude outsiders from the pastures there, the stocking density on pastures in Upper River Division would increase dramatically.

7.3.3 PHYSICAL ACCESS TO GRAZING LAND AND CATTLE TRACKS

Another aspect of access to grazing land is actual physical access, and for this cattle tracks are required. In the territories surrounding both Ngeyen Sanjal and Sutukunding, cattle tracks are being reduced in width and in some cases disappearing completely as the land is brought under cultivation. One of the results is an increase in the number of disputes over cattle track land and over damage to crops by livestock (see Figure 7.3). The loss of cattle tracks is a serious problem for villages without nearby common land, such as Balo Omar, and it is also a problem for cattle owners who move their herds much longer distances, such as those of Upper River Division who move their herds to the low lying areas of MacCarthy Island Division every dry season. At both research sites most livestock owners named loss or shrinkage of cattle tracks as the second biggest problem for cattle production after lack of dry season watering points. Cattle track land, because it may not have been farmed for decades and because it has received the benefit of years of manuring, can be some of the most fertile land. With cultivable land becoming increasingly scarce and the fertility of that land declining, the temptation for the farmer who farms beside a cattle track to extend his field a few metres into the cattle track is great. Over time the cattle tracks become narrower and narrower. However, according to the chief of Wuli District, some disputes over cattle track land have been caused not by farmers encroaching onto cattle track land, but by livestock owners laying false claim to cultivated land in order to widen a cattle track.

It would be inaccurate, however, to state that there are two clearly defined interest groups, farmers and cattle owners. Very few of the cattle owners are not also farmers, themselves, and at times the ones who are accused of cultivating cattle track land own large herds. Instead, the difficulty in maintaining cattle tracks is that cooperation is needed at two levels, among landholders within a village and between villages, and that this cooperation is lacking. As described above, mechanisms exist for settling disputes over cattle track land, but they seem to be ineffective. The situation was probably described best by one man at a meeting of cattle owners in Bani, a village about four kilometres from Sutukunding: "The alkalo and seyfo have the authority to reestablish cattle tracks, but they do not have the power." The loss of cattle tracks may be more a problem of the breakdown of traditional authority structures than of the land tenure system per se. Many different people remarked that the national government should somehow "reinforce" alkalolu and the decisions they make.

Only help from the government -- by force -- can help with the cattle tracks. It's our main desire to have a cattle track but we're afraid to raise the subject. People are stubborn.

-a cattle owner from Farato (near Sutukunding)

7.3.4 ACCESS TO WATER SOURCES

Clearly, if the government is to institute any changes in the land tenure system, the effect that these changes could have on access to distant pastures should be carefully considered. However, in some cases there is the potential to mitigate the problems caused by reduced access to distant pastures by improving the quality and usefulness of nearby pastures. For example, every dry season most cattle owners of Ngeyen Sanjal and neighboring villages move their herds to the Kunjata-Bambali area more than twelve kilometres away, even though a large amount of grazing is available in and near the Ngeyen Sanjal Forest Park. They do this because of the lack of dry season watering points in their own area. If water was available in the dry season more, perhaps all, of the herds of Ngeyen Sanjal and area could stay nearer their home villages.

Livestock owners at both research sites named access to water in the dry season as the biggest constraint to cattle production. At both sites, access to water in the rainy season is relatively easy as livestock drink from shallow pools where rainwater has collected. After October these pools dry up. In the Sutukunding area for the remainder of the dry season, cattle access the river on slipways. Unless lined with concrete, these slipways require maintenance every year: in the rainy season they become gullies and are badly eroded. Cattle owners at Sutukunding stated that even with the slipway, the cattle sometimes find it too steep, especially in the late dry season when they are weak. In the Ngeyen Sanjal area, the river is too salty to be used as a water source for cattle. Instead, cattle are taken to the low-lying land near the villages of Kunjata and Bambali where water can be obtained from shallow wells.

Providing safe water sources near each village would improve security in another sense, that of actual physical security for the cattle. Many livestock owners consider cattle theft to be a major problem and they stated that having the herds near their own village would make it easier to provide security and easier to monitor hired herdsmen who are not always completely trusted. Keeping cattle closer to the home village also makes it possible for farmers to make greater use of manure and it must be noted that at both sites the population was virtually unanimous in stating that declining soil fertility is the greatest constraint to agricultural production. However, care should be taken in providing boreholes or other water sources for livestock. If, as most herdsmen and livestock owners say, overgrazing is not occurring, it may be because difficulty in obtaining water is helping to limit livestock numbers.

3. Rainfall levels are based on data collected at the nearest meteorological stations, Jenoi for Ngeyen Sanjal and Basse for Sutukunding (GOTG, 1982:13,21).