Relating Pastoralists’ Culture Orientation, Livestock Marketing Practices, and Household Food Security among the Afar Pastoralists of Northeastern Ethiopia
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Date
2022-07
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Ethiopia's arid and semi-arid regions provide the lion's share of the country's livestock resource endowments. Regardless of pastoral resource endowment, these areas are the poorest and most reliant on relief aid. Drawing on the debating contention that pastoralists prefer to accumulate and use pastoral produce for cultural purposes rather than trading for cash incomes, this thesis hypothesized that ‘the long-standing pastoralist tradition favors the accumulation and direct use of pastoral produce rather than remaining open to the market for exchange, thereby missing out on indirect (exchange) benefits toward food security’. Pastoral culture is present in the daily lives of pastoralists who establish and maintain relationships with one another by employing traditionally valued practices such as reciprocity and herd mobility. These are traditional survival strategies imbedded in their social norms, values, knowledge and institutions that are built up through generational learning, passed down orally through generations, and govern overall life. These communities rely on the traditional livestock farming sub-sector for their livelihoods and to meet their food consumption needs. In the face of recurring droughts, marketing pastoral produce is also a widely pursued approach to improve food security, and it has become equally important for supporting livelihoods in these areas. But, the potential contribution of pastoral marketing to the food security of pastoral production has received little attention. To this end, this study is guided by three key concepts: pastoral culture, marketing, and food security. Following that, the thesis attempted to address three specific objectives ultimately revealing the relationship between ‘pastoralism’, ‘marketing’, and ‘food security’ through a case study and survey data collected from (agro-)pastoral communities of Afar in Ethiopia. The study sought to shed light on the contribution of (agro-)pastoral marketing practices to food security by determining the extent to which pastoralists adhere to their traditions and how their orientation to culture norms influences their marketing interests. The thesis includes a literature review as well as three empirical studies. Methodologically, the thesis employed a mix of systematic literature review, case study analysis, household food insecurity access scale (HFIAS), ordered logistic regression, and propensity score matching (PSM) procedure. It begins with a systematic literature review to uncover "rural marketing – rural livelihood" relationships, which revealed that rural marketing had positive results at times and negative results at others, resulting in mixed effects on livelihood. The mixed effects necessitate a better understanding of the conditions that make rural marketing useful, as well as the mechanisms by which potential benefits may emerge. The review findings also indicate vii that, while rural marketing has been somewhat successful among upland communities, there is little empirical evidence that the same holds true for (agro-)pastoralists, implying that more research on the livelihood effects of rural marketing using data from (agro-)pastoral groups is required. As a result, using data from (agro-)pastoralists (as representing rural communities that received little attention in the reviewed ‘rural marketing – rural livelihood' relationship studies), the thesis empirically tested the potential positive/negative relationship between marketing practices and food security (as representing livelihood outcome). The first empirical study discovered a misalignment between Aramis-Adaar traditional practices and their livestock marketing endeavors, in which they operate under two competing systems of cultural and marketing practices (though both are important in sustaining livelihoods). Following the case study, the survey used Aramis-Adaar pastoral and Asale agro-pastoral groups and revealed ‘the links between pastoral cultural elements and food (in)security’, and estimated ‘the food security effects of livestock commercial-orientations’. The survey results suggest that while properly integrating pastoralists into the market could be an important mechanism for overcoming the numerous problems that constrain pastoralism, livestock marketing practices fall short of adequately and sustainably supporting pastoralism, owing primarily to market production constraining factors such as pastoralists' cultural orientations. Future policy must align and level the playing field for market production ('competition') and pastoralism ('cooperation') in order to meet the needs of both pastoralism and marketing at the same time.
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Culture Orientation, Livestock Marketing Practices