Prospects for Pastoralism in Kazakstan and Turkmenistan

From State Farms to Private Flocks

Dr Carol Kerven, Carol Kerven

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781135788070
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

This collection traces how pastoralists have coped with the challenges of change in a part of the world with a long-tradition of livestock keeping. Their precarious position - balanced between a market system where only the fittest may survive, and their attempt to remain a human resource for the future development of the natural pastures and livestock industry - is carefully and critically examined by the contributors. The pastoralists' unique skills at managing livestock in a variable and challenging environment, and their ability to supply commodities much in demand mean that an understanding of their societal position is essential for anyone interested in transition in the former Soviet Union.

1
‘WE HAVE SEEN TWO WORLDS’¹
Impacts of privatisation on people, land and livestock

Carol Kerven

The steppe is wide as a sea
It’s decorated by flowers
It lays beneath people’s feet;
So, be fertile, be people’s joy
We call you our Mother
S. Seifullin, Kazak poet
(Translated from Russian by Yerjan Noorhasenov

(in Asanov et al. 1992b))

Past and present

The lives of Central Asian pastoralists were engulfed by two different worlds in the twentieth century. First they were drawn into large collective farms, in which family animals became state property, decisions on animal husbandry were made by officials and technocrats, and hard work was rewarded not by seeing one’s flocks grow to be passed onto one’s children, but with medals and citations. After a period of great hardship, life in the collectives became secure. A decent house, income and health care was provided. Shepherds’ children could be educated in the new village schools and go on to become university graduates. The threat of livestock being decimated by climatic disasters was overcome.

But then came another world, in which the previous order was turned upside down. An older shepherd reflects that:

In Soviet times everything in our lives was settled. Now, who can help us? One will not help another if one does not help himself. If help does not come from foreign countries, it will not come from our government. After the break-up of the Soviet Union, no one evaluated how precious our livestock are. No one had pity about the animals. Now they have started to think about it but it’s too late to increase them.

Nomadic pastoralism has an ancient heritage in the vast natural pastures of the Asian steppes. Even a century ago, ‘There were yurts from central Anatolia to eastern Mongolia – a quarter of the way around the world, in a band 1000 miles from north to south’ (Ryder 1983: 265).

The yurts, symbols of a nomadic way of life, still exist in Central Asia but the way of life they represent is fast unravelling. Major upheavals have profoundly altered the pastoral systems of Central Asia this century. After incorporation into the Soviet Union, pastoralists were collectivised into state farms, building an industrialised nomadism that was highly productive. Despite many radical changes, Soviet administration preserved some important elements of the nomadic system. Independence from the Soviet Union brought new policies that dismantled or reorganised the state farms, withdrawing most state support, and decontrolled markets. This has been termed ‘the second Revolution’. As pastoralists now confront a market system only the fittest may survive. Many have lost their livelihoods and more are at risk of doing so. Yet in the neighbouring ex-Russian ruled Republic of Mongolia, pastoralists are prospering by some accounts (Fernadez-Gimenez 1999; Sneath 2000). The same applies in the rangelands of western China (Benson and Svanberg 1998; Hamann 1999). Why has reform in the former Soviet Republics of Central Asia not benefited the remote dwellers of the deserts and steppes? This book attempts to provide some answers to this question.

Privatisation policies have proceeded differently in each country. Policy changes in the livestock sector of Turkmenistan have been neither as profound nor as sudden as occurred in Kazakstan, and the results so far are a greater degree of stability in the livelihoods of Turkmen pastoralists. The Turkmen government is following a ‘step-by-step’ approach to restructuring the economy, including the livestock sector. While frustrating to Western donors and investors, on the ground this approach seems to hold certain advantages for livestock producers, who are still somewhat protected from negative market forces while having an opportunity to accumulate private livestock leased from the state. Unfortunately, the very success of this approach is undermining state resources, and some reversals of policy are taking place.

In contrast, pastoralists in Kazakstan have been subjected to radical changes in their production system over a very short period of time. Reformulating the entire institutional, property rights and economic context of production has created opportunities for a few individuals to prosper, but has left many vulnerable to the cupidity of newly-empowered officials and entrepreneurs, with little economic support or protection from the state.

In both countries, the reorganisation of former state collective farms into a variety of new institutional forms, together with the introduction of open markets, has altered the goals and methods of livestock production. As a result, economic returns, the systems of natural resource management, and ultimately the welfare and income of producers are all affected.

The pastoralists of Central Asia are a human resource for the future development of the natural pastures and livestock industry. They possess knowledge and skills of irreplaceable value for managing livestock in a variable and challenging environment. They can make use of a great landmass that would otherwise remain unproductive. They can supply high-quality livestock commodities much in demand domestically and with a comparative advantage internationally. Under the right conditions, they can serve as guardians of the biodiversity in the land. Without these options, the people formerly dependent on livestock must leave the land to join the unemployed and unskilled in the cities.

The ecological foundations

The impacts of policy and economic shifts have been modulated by the ecologies of the rangelands in each country. There are substantial climatic differences between the northern and southern pasture regions of Central Asia which result in dissimilar natural limitations for livestock production in Turkmenistan and Kazakstan (Babaev and Orlovsky 1985; Khazanov 1984).

The northern desert and semi-steppe zones cover the middle part of Kazakstan in which this study was carried out. These zones experience a sharp continental climate with extremely cold and snowy winters during which plant production ceases for several months. To find grazing for their animals, pastoralists in the past had to move sometimes long distances before winter either to warmer southern desert zones or sheltered areas. Precipitation occurs mainly in two peaks during spring and autumn, with a gradient from 200–400mm per year generally decreasing from north to south.

The southern desert zone, which includes most of Turkmenistan, has milder winters with moderate frosts and infrequent snow. The growth of vegetation is only interrupted for a maximum of ten days over winter and animals can thus graze most of the year. Rainfall is very sparse, at around 100mm/year mostly falling in winter. Summers are extremely hot, with temperatures up to 50^oC causing high rates of evaporation.

For pastoralism, the difference between the northern and southern regions is that the factors of cold and snow mainly shape seasonal livestock movements in central Kazakstan, while seasonal livestock movements in Turkmenistan are determined principally by availability of water.

Soviet planners addressed these limitations in each case through the application of science and engineering. Water was provided to the desert, and fodder to the animals over winter. As the post-Soviet states retreat from maintaining services, these environmental barriers to production have re-emerged.

Kazakstan: sudden dissolution of state farms

Historically, Kazakstan supported a nomadic pastoral production system. Long distance migrations, a response to strong seasonal variations in climate and range production, were a critical part of the ecological adaptation of Kazak pastoralists (Chapters 3 and 7). Under the Soviet system imposed in the 1930s, nomadism was curtailed. People and livestock were forcibly sedentarised into a collective structure of state-controlled farms (Zveriakov 1932). While some limited seasonal movement continued, the emphasis was on intensifying livestock production. Intensification required state investment in local infrastructure, both for livestock and people, through provision of fodder, water, transportation and infrastructure. Between the 1950s and 1980s, this was accomplished through increasing the livestock fodder base, reversing the traditional pattern of extensive utilisation of natural pastures, as documented in Chapter 3. The result was reduction of mobility and long-range movements, and greater grazing pressure on local pastures. This strategy was implemented throughout the rangelands of the former USSR, not just in Kazakstan, and it was maintained by state subsidies on fodder, livestock transportation, and village-centered facilities for pastoralists.

Independence for Kazakstan was followed by a massive restructuring of the economy, away from central planning and toward an open market system. Shortly thereafter, the Kazakstan livestock sector collapsed, ostensibly as a result of economic restructuring and privatisation. Evidence in Chapters 3 and 5 suggests however, that the range livestock system may have already been in a precarious state prior to independence. Sixty years of Soviet management had apparently taken its toll on Kazakstan’s rangelands (Babaev and Kharin 1992; Gilmanov 1995), while also reorganising pastoralist livelihoods in such a way that people became completely dependent upon state inputs of livestock feed, fuel, food and other commodities, rather than on local resources.

The decollectivisation of state farms and a move toward partial privatisation of land and livestock holdings began in 1994. The sequence of events and their immediate effects is given in Chapter 5. At the same time as the assets of farms were privatised, the state withdrew from both the provision of subsidised inputs and the buying of produce. This sudden cessation of state support had an enormous impact on the livestock sector. The newly-formed cooperatives inherited debts and could not afford to buy inputs (seeds, fertiliser, feed, veterinary supplies, fodder, fuel, spare parts) while marketing channels were not in place to substitute for the former state-controlled system. The cooperatives could not pay their members or creditors and started to do so by the distribution of goods, especially livestock and farm machinery. This further reduced the assets of the cooperatives, to the extent that most are no longer viable. Rural areas reverted to a barter economy.

The national livestock population fell precipitously following the initiation of privatisation in 1993–4. This rapid decline continued through 1996 with further losses and then slowed somewhat through 1997 and 1998. Overall, the figures charted in Chapter 5 indicate a total decline of 70 per cent of the national small stock population (from roughly 33 million in 1993 to only about 10 million in 1998). A variety of factors, including the loss of markets, retraction of fodder subsidies and the move from collectivisation toward privatisation contributed to this rapid and massive destocking. But it is likely that unsustainable land use practices and a significant shift in climate patterns in the 1990s also contributed to the demise of the livestock system.

Chapter 4 shows that rangeland degradation and increasing climatic variability set the stage for the collapse of the livestock sector. The economic transition then suspended the flows of fodder and other inputs, leaving the pastoralists in deep economic difficulties, and with a seriously depleted environmental resource base. Just how depleted is demonstrated in Chapter 4. Particular pasture zones were subject to severe decline in condition or major degradation over several decades. These zones are now showing strong signs of recovery following the release of grazing pressure due to destocking. A similar pattern is portrayed in Chapter 3.

The financial crisis and destocking occasioned by privatisation have made seasonal livestock migration either impossible or unnecessary for reasons discussed in Chapters 5 and 7. The number of animals owned is frequently too low to justify the cost of moving, transport is lacking and roads to distant mountain pastures are no longer maintained. Families can no longer rely on the services formerly provided by the state farms to mobile herders, and now do not wish to move away from village service centres. Stock theft and lack of sufficient labour are other factors discouraging migration. Moreover, the extent of destocking is such that more accessible pastures are often underused so there is no need to move elsewhere.

In the past the livestock sector played a major role in the economic activity of the country. Kazakstan produced almost a quarter of the Soviet Union’s lamb and one-fifth of its wool (McCauley 1994). In the Soviet era trade with former members of the USSR accounted for nearly 90 per cent of livestock exports from Kazakstan prior to 1993 (Kerven et al. 1996). Many of the sheep production systems were geared towards wool production to satisfy the huge demand for wool in the rest of the Soviet Union (Chapter 6). The break-up of the Soviet Union effectively cut off this market for wool. Alternative markets were not immediately available, as world prices for wool slumped in the early 1990s. The loss of these markets helped to undermine the economic viability of the Kazakstan livestock sector.

Livestock productivity has been compromised due to the loss of state inputs. Many newly privatised pastoralists cannot afford to provide adequate nutrition for their few animals, either with supplementary feed or by moving seasonally to more nutritious pastures. Under climatic conditions of long, cold winters, supplying animal feed over winter has again become acutely problematic, as noted in Chapter 6. The result is that some animals have a lowered output, which further reduces the economic viability of small family livestock enterprises. However, new private farmers who have greater resource endowments are able to overcome this constraint, through more successful engagement with markets that have recently developed (Chapter 8).

The speed of change and degree of dislocation has left many losers but some winners. Chapters 7 and 8 give some indication of growing socio-economic differentiation among pastoralists, partially in response to the market but also as a direct effect of decollectivisation. After an initial period of shock, by the late 1990s marketing systems had spontaneously developed to meet urban demand for meat, in spite of neglect by the government. A small proportion of newly privatised livestock owners and an emerging group of traders have responded to commercial incentives. Marketing is now firmly in the hands of private entrepreneurs and the state no longer has a role. But the majority of pastoralists are unable to benefit from the market, as their private flocks are too small or they live at too great a distance from urban centres. For such people, animals can provide an important source of subsistence but with a low and insecure cash income.

Several themes recur from the evidence on Kazakstan presented in this book. The seasonally and spatially variable pastures provide a valuable natural resource base for the livestock industry and the livelihoods of people. In the latter part of the Soviet ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Notes On Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Note On Currency Exchange Rates
• 1. ‘We Have Seen Two Worlds’: Impacts of Privatisation On People, Land and Livestock
• 2. Agrarian Reform and Privatisation In the Wider Asian Region: Comparison With Central Asia
• Part I: Pastoralists and Rangelands of Southeast Kazakstan
• Part II: Pastoralists and Rangelands of the Kara Kum Desert, Turkmenistan
• Appendices
• Bibliography