Livestock types and farming system

Abstract

The European agricultural revolution has been regarded as a classical model of agricultural development even in the rest of the world. A major concern of the model lies in improvement of livestock-crop linkage through better ratation systems and in this perspective, that is a driving force towards agricultural evolution. With regard to Japanese traditional agriculture, although the linkage has been less important than that in its Western European counterpart, a similarity between the two in terms of methods to maintain soil fertility is certainly observed. This is the reason why the classical model, stemming from Western Europe, has greatly affected the way of understanding and explaining agricultural development in Japan during the past decades, and the comparative viewpoint of farming systems, based on this model, has implicitly or explicitly, provided a firm background for comparing a variety of agricultural systems in physically and culturally different environments. Unlike the Japanese system, indigenous farming systems observed in Southwest Asia have a tradition of livestock-crop linkage similar to Europe, although the distribution of mixed agriculture in the former area is rather limited. It has been considered, however, that some conditions in Southwest Asia, including the dry climate may hinder the European-type evolution of the farming system from the three-field system to mixed agriculture (or Dreifelderwirtschaft to Fruchtwechselwristchaft through Feldgrasswirtschaft). It is also widely observed that there must be a close economic relationship between pastoralists and agricultural farmers. This paper seeks to theoretically explore the agro-pastoral linkage in the aforementioned geographical and social dimensions, based on an analysis of livestock types and the breeding system in the case of Ladakh, Northern India (see Figure 4). The second section, focusing upon the existing literature of farming systems published in Japan, is devoted to reexamining the classical model concerned with the European experince of farming development from a geoecological standpoint. The model has the limitation that, given its underlying assumptions, it is applicable within only identical ecological niches. Thus, the case of Ladakh concering this issue is reported and investigated in the third through fifth sections. In Ladakh, many kinds of domestic animals are reared in various ecological niches. Moreover, the altitudinal range, mobility of the grazing herds, and the role of livestock in the local subsistence economy differ widely by livestock type. Nevertheless, it is unlikely that biological characteristics of livestock types and related natural conditions are the sole determinants which decide these varied agro-pastoral linkages. This is because regional and histrical variations in the breeding systems and their role in the local economy can be observed, implying economic and cultural influences of livestock breeders. In other words, changes in the livestock's role must be affected by not only natural conditions of land and availability of feed, but also the local technology level and the economic system, although such changes could also be found in the development process of mixed agriculture in Europe. © 1994, The Human Geographical Society of Japan. All rights reserved.