The International Year of Camelids to be inaugurated on 4th December, 2023 – will it help pastoralists?
The official opening ceremony of the International Year of Camelids (IYC) has been scheduled for the 4th December at FAO headquarters in Rome. It will happen in the form of a 90 minute side-event during the FAO Council. While Civil Society and pastoralists/small producers have each been allotted five minute slots in the draft programme of the event, their physical presence is very much in doubt, due to lack of resources for their travel as well as the difficulty of obtaining a Schengen visa at such short notice. At the informal IYC support group, we are hoping that it will be possible for them to be present and represented at least virtually. Because their visibility is crucial, these two constituencies should not leave the field to wealthier stakeholders who can afford their participation. Raika herder Bura Ram in Rajasthan (India). The Raika believe they were made by God Shiva to take care of camels and, despite very adverse conditions, heroes like Buraram continue in this hereditary occupation, producing completely natural food in a cruelty-free way and without fossil fuels, thereby providing an examplary model of sustainable livestock keeping. The official slogan for the IYC is Heroes of Deserts and Highlands: Nourishing People and Culture. This has a nice ring, but the 'traditional' communities and indigenous peoples who in turn are nourishing camelids - whether it is alpacas and llamas in the Andes of South America, dromedaries in the arid zones of Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, or Bactrians in the steppes of Mongolia and China - are also true heroes. If we, as humanity as a whole, want to benefit from the special adaptations and potential of camelids in generating food in extremely marginal areas, then industrial scale stall-feeding systems as they have cropped up in oil rich countries are not the answer. These may look shiny and scientific and progressive compared with the mobile husbandry systems in which camelids have been raised until now, but they are basically unsustainable, depending on imported feed and fossil fuels, apart from not providing an environment in which camels thrive and are happy. Like people, camels love to wander around and browse ('shop') on different types of plants, composing menus according to their own individual tastes. As one of the members of our network, camelologist Dr. Raziq Kakar, puts it 'camels are like South Asians - they need spicy food and not a bland institutional diet'. 'The life of a livestock herder defies the challenges brought by Mongolia's climate - summers are very hot and dry and winters bitterly cold.' (Source FAO) In short, putting camelids into stall-feeding systems with standard diets of alfalfa hay and grain defeats their ecological purpose. They are biologically designed to be kept in nomadic systems, and to do so requires the knowledge and dedication of traditional or modern pastoralists who are willing to undertake the hardship of managing and careing for camelids in marginal areas with harsh climates. And that is a challenge ever fewer…