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Dairy farming is a class of agriculture for long-term production of milk, which is processed (either on the farm or at a dairy plant, either of which may be called a dairy) for eventual sale of a dairy product. Dairy farming has a history that goes back to the early Neolithic era, around the seventh…

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Ranching is the practice of raising herds of animals on large tracts of land. Ranchers commonly raise grazing animals such as cattle and sheep. Some ranchers also raise elk, bison, ostriches, emus, and alpacas. The ranching and livestock industry is growing faster than any other agricultural sector in the world.

Ranching is common in temperate, dry areas, such as the Pampas region of South America, the western United States, the Prairie Provinces of Canada, and the Australian Outback. In these regions, grazing animals are able to roam over large areas. Some Australian ranches, known as stations, extend more than 10,000 square kilometers (3,861 square miles). The largest, Anna Creek station, covers almost 24,000 square kilometers (9,266 square miles).

Cowboys are responsible for herding and maintaining the health of animals across these vast ranches. Cowboys often work with horses to herd cattle and sheep. Cowboy culture is an important part of the identity of ranching regions. In Mexico and South America, cowboys are known as vaqueros. In Australia and New Zealand, they are called jackaroos. Herding, round-ups, cattle drives, and branding often symbolize ranching and cowboy culture.

Herding is the practice of caring for roaming groups of livestock over a large area. Ranchers and cowboys often herd animals toward favorable grazing areas. Herding also involves keeping the herd safe from predators and natural dangers of the landscape. Grazing is so important to Australian stations, ranchers are known as grazier s.

A round-up, called a muster in Australia, is a gathering of all livestock on a ranch. A round-up is usually conducted by cowboys on horseback, ATV, or other vehicle. It can be done for a wide variety of reasons: health care (such as immunization shots) for the animals, branding, or the shearing of sheep.

A round-up is one of the most difficult responsibilities of ranchers and cowboys. Animals often do not want to be rounded up and herded into a small, confined area. Even the most docile cattle or sheep are likely to become aggressive during a round-up. Round-ups also involve a large number of ranch personnel performing different tasks at the same time: veterinarians administering care to the animals, cowboys herding the animals, and wranglers caring for the ranchs horses.

A cattle drive is a massive effort of moving a herd of cattle from one place to another. In the 1700s and 1800s, cowboys on horseback took a year or more to drive cattle thousands of kilometers. Cattle drives start on ranches and usually end near points of major transportation routes, such as a harbor or railroad station. From there, cattle are loaded into vehicles and shipped to slaughterhouses.

Branding is the process of permanently marking an animal to indicate ownership. The traditional brand is known as a hot brand. A rancher or cowboy heats an iron instrument with a design unique to his ranch. Each animal belonging to that ranch has the design burned into its skin. The scar left by the burn is the animals brand.

Hot brands are less frequently used on modern ranches. Ear-tags and ink tattoos are more common. Many ranchers use microchips instead of brands. A microchip is implanted under the skin of the animal. The microchip uses radio-frequency identification (RFID) to not only identify the animals owner, but also to relay information about its location and health.

Livestock raised on ranches are an important part of a regions agriculture. Livestock provide meat for human and animal consumption. They also supply materials, such as leather and wool, for clothing, furniture, and other industries.

Some ranches, nicknamed dude ranches, offer tourist facilities. Some of these sites are working ranches that allow guests to help out in real ranching activities. Others focus on horseback riding, offering lessons and trail rides. Still others allow visitors to hunt native or imported animals. Resort ranches provide a more relaxing experience, with fun activities like trail rides and sing-alongs.

History of Ranching

People raised livestock throughout the Middle Ages, but usually only in small numbers on small areas of land. The practice of raising large herds of livestock on extensive grazing lands started in Spain and Portugal around 1000 CE. These early ranchers used methods still associated with ranching today, such as using horses for herding, round-ups, cattle drives, and branding.

Ranching was only firmly established in the New World of the Americas. When the first Spanish explorers came to the Americas, they brought cattle and cattle-raising expertise with them. A variety of ranching traditions developed in the Americas, depending on the region the settlers came from and the characteristics of the land where they settled.

Gauchos are cowboys of the grasslands (or Pampas) of Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. In Central Mexico, particularly the state of Jalisco, cowboys are called charro s, like the charros from Castile, Spain, who settled the region. In Northern Mexico, wealthy ranchers known as caballero s employed vaqueros to drive their cattle. Ranching in the western United States is derived from vaquero culture.

Throughout most of the 1800s, ranchers in the United States set their cattle and sheep loose to roam the prairie. Most of the grazing land was owned by the government. This was the so-called open range. Ranchers only owned enough land for a homestead and sources of water. Twice a year, cowboys rounded up cattle to brand calves (in spring) and gather steers for sale (in autumn).

Several factors contributed to the end of the open range. One was the invention of barbed wire in 1874. Farmers began to fence off their fields to protect them from being destroyed by livestock. This limited access to grazing land. Farmers and ranchers often came into conflict over land and water rights.

Overgrazing was also a problem. As more and more ranchers grazed their animals on the open range, the quality of the land became degraded. Cattle are not native to the Americas, and had to compete with native grazing animals, such as bison, for forage. Grasses did not have time to grow on the open range, especially in winter.

The winter of 1886-87, one of the harshest ever recorded, killed hundreds of thousands of cattle that were already weakened from reduced grazing. Many large ranches and cattle organizations went bankrupt. Afterwards, ranchers began fencing off their land, which they often leased from the American government.

In Western movies, ranchers and cowboys are played mostly by white men like Gene Autry, John Wayne, and Clint Eastwood. However, in the 1800s, more than one-third of all cowboys in the United States were Mexican vaqueros. Others were Chinese or Filipino. African Americans, seeking greater freedom in the West, also worked as cowboys and ranch hands during this period.

Working Animals

Ranches include animals other than livestock. These working animals help with the job of herding and rounding up livestock.

Horses are perhaps the most familiar working animal on ranches. If you imagine a cowboy, you probably picture him sitting astride a horse. Horses allow cowboys to travel over rangelands quickly and keep up with moving livestock. Horses are also strong and responsive, making them excellent herding animals.

The sport of rodeo developed from the skills required of cowboys and ranch horses. Informal competitions among ranchers and cowboys tested their speed, agility, and endurance. Today, events such as roping, barrel racing, and bull riding demonstrate those same qualities among professional athletes.

Dogs are also common on ranches. Several types of dogs have been bred for their herding abilities. Many of these highly intelligent, agile animals are simply called shepherds; Australian shepherds and German shepherds are probably the most familiar. Collies and sheepdogs are also used on ranches. Livestock guardian dogs do not herd animals, but are used to protect herds from predators. For example, the Great Pyrenees was bred to protect grazing animals from wolves and other predators native to the Pyrenees mountains in Spain and France.

Ranching Around the World

Today, ranches exist on every continent except Antarctica. South America enjoys an enormous ranching culture. The largest beef-producing company in the world is the Brazilian multinational corporation JBS-Friboi.

The South American ranching industry continues to grow. Many South American countries, led by Brazil and Argentina, are rapidly developing. The growing middle class has expanded the market for beef. Argentina and Uruguay are the worlds top per capita consumers of beef.

In Australia, like the Americas, ranching is a way of life and a strong part of the economy. A typical jackaroo (or female jillaroo) is a young, seasonal employee. Stations may employ their own veterinarians, mechanics, and engineers.

Sheep stations are more common than cattle stations in Australia. The difficult, annual process of shearing sheep is a symbol of Australian livestock culture. A shearing team or company usually moves from ranch to ranch with specialized shearing equipment and machinery.

In Africa, most ranches are wildlife ranches. Wildlife ranches, also known as game ranches, maintain healthy populations of species such as rhinoceros, elephant, leopard, and antelope. People pay a fee to hunt these animals on the ranch. Wildlife ranches also appeal to ecotourists. Ecotourism promotes traveling in a way that has minimum environmental impact and benefits local people.

Large-scale cattle ranching is rare in Asia but fairly common throughout the islands of the South Pacific. In the U.S. state of Hawaii, cowboy culture was born when Mexican vaqueros were brought in to help herd cattle in the 1830s. Cowboys in Hawaii are called paniolo s.

In Europe, few ranches exist outside Spain and Portugal. Most countries in Europe are too small to support ranches. In fact, Australias Anna Creek station is only slightly smaller than the entire nation of Belgium.

Ranching and the Environment

Ranching is an efficient way to raise livestock to provide meat, dairy products, and raw materials for fabrics. It is a vital part of economies and rural development around the world. However, the livestock industry has major, disruptive effects on the environment.

In South America, ranching has expanded beyond grasslands into rain forests. Ranchers clear large swaths of forest in order to create pastureland for their cattle. This clearcutting reduces habitat for native species such as monkeys, tropical birds, and millions of species of insects not found anywhere else in the world. During the past 40 years, about 20 percent of the Amazon rain forest has been cut down, much of it for cattle ranching.

Ranches established on former rain forest lands are usually not economically productive. Cleared rain forest land usually makes poor grazing land. A rain forests biodiversity exists in its above-ground canopy, not the earth beneath. Grasses do not thrive in the thin, nutrient-poor soil.

Even outside of the rain forest, many ranching practices have significant effects on the environment. Overgrazing, a threat throughout the Great Plains of the United States and Canada, puts the native tallgrass prairie ecosystem at risk. This can lead to soil erosion. The loss of valuable topsoil can reduce the agricultural productivity for crops and grazing lands. Poor agricultural practices contributed to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, which destroyed hundreds of ranches throughout the Great Plains.

Compaction of the soil from animal hooves further degrades the land. This is unique to introduced species. Bison, native to the Americas, have small, sharp, pointed hooves. Their stampeding aerates the soil and actually contributes to the prairie ecosystem. Cattle have heavy, flat hooves that flatten the soil and reduce its ability to absorb water and nutrients.

Drylands are especially at risk for overgrazing and reduction in the quality of soil. In fact, ranching can be a key cause of desertification.

Livestock ranching also contributes to air and water pollution. Runoff from ranches can include manure, antibiotics and hormones given to the animals, as well as fertilizers and pesticides. Chemicals from tanneries that treat animal hides can also seep into water.

Ranching is also a major contributor to global warming. In fact, livestock are responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than transportation. Carbon is released when forests are cleared for pastureland. Manure produces nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide. Cattle release large amounts of methane from their digestive systems.

Scientists, governments, and ranchers are working together to find ways to reduce these problems and make ranching a sustainable economic activity.

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Ranching is the practice of raising herds of animals on large tracts of land. Ranchers commonly raise grazing animals such as cattle and sheep. Some ranchers also raise elk, bison, ostriches, emus, and alpacas. The ranching and livestock industry is growing faster than any other agricultural sector in the world.

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Subsistence agriculture is the type of farming in which crops grown are consumed by the grower and his family. Subsistence agriculture may be of different types. It may be shifting or settled agriculture, it may be primitive or non-primitive in character, it may be both intensive and extensive in nature.

As long as its major purpose is fulfilling needs of its producers it remains subsistence farming. The main distinction between primitive (shifting) and non-primi- five (sedentary type of subsistence agriculture) depends on the tools and equipment's used.

The tools of the primitive agriculturists are more or less the same as those used in shifting cultivation, while in non-primitive subsistence agriculture wooden plough, harrows, hedges and permanent bandings are used. In India subsistence agriculture is practiced in the areas of isolation and relative isolation in Bihar, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Northeast India, Bun- delkhand and the Western Ghats.

The intensity of agriculture and multiple cropping are directly governed by the pressure of population in a given region at a given point of time. In shifting cultivation tracts where the density of population per square kilometer is generally less than ten persons, the intensity of agriculture is very low.

The land is such areas are sown only once in a year and that too abandoned after one or two years. But in those parts where density of population is relatively high, at least two crops in a year is .the usual practice and the same piece of land is sown season after season and generation after generation. Intensive subsistence agriculture is best developed and practically confined to the monsoon lands of Asia.

It is carried on mainly in China, Japan, India, Bangladesh, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, Laos, Cambodia and the islands of Pacific Ocean, Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia. These are the most densely populated parts sustaining about two-third population of the world. In these countries, the density of population is higher than that of the industrial countries of Europe and America.

The fast growing population, almost unchecked for centuries, necessitates an even greater intensity in the tillage of land. Farming in both the wet lowlands and the terraced uplands is, therefore, very intensive to support the dense population of teeming million. There are two types of the intensive subsistence agriculture. One is dominated by wet paddy and the other is dominated by crops other than paddy, e.g., wheat, pulses, maize, millets, sorghum, kaoling, soya-beans, tubers and vegetables.

Intensive Subsistence Agriculture Dominated by Wet Paddy:

Intensive subsistence agriculture dominated by wet paddy is practiced mostly in the Monsoon Asia. In this agricultural typology, the size of holding is generally very small. Farm sizes are also very small and they, through many generations, have been subdivided so that they have become extremely small and often uneconomic to run.

An average farm in Japan is 0.6 hectare, and in some parts of Kerala and West Bengal it is even smaller. Individual peasants grow crops mainly to support their families, though there may be some surplus for sale which fetches some amount for the farmers secondary and tertiary needs. In the Monsoon Asia the farmers are so 'land hungry' that almost every bit of tillable land is utilized for agriculture.

The fields are separated only by narrow handmade ridges and footpaths by which the farmers move around their fields. The boundary bunds, locally called as maindh or daul, are kept very narrow to save space. Only the steepest hills and the infertile and alkaline (reh and kaller) patches of land are left uncultivated. The farming is so intensive that two and even three crops of rice can be raised in one year. In tracts where only one crop of rice can be raised the fields are normally used in the dry season to raise other food or cash crops such as oats, pulses, tobacco, oilseeds and vegetables.

In wet paddy agriculture, traditionally much manual and hand labour is required. Ploughing is done with the help of buffaloes, oxen, mules and horses. Paddy crop is planted in narrow rows by females, while hoeing and harvesting operations are done by both males and females. Harvesting and thrashing are done manually.

The farm implements are often very simple. Machines have been developed recently which can work on the flooded plains for ploughing and hoeing. Small machines are used in the farms of China, South Korea and Japan which are gradually being diffused in other countries of Monsoon Asia.

In this type of agriculture the cultivator concentrates on the cultivation of food crops, especially rice and vegetables, comparatively, few sheep, goats or horses are kept in wet paddy areas. He-buffaloes are kept as draught animals in many parts of the monsoon world.

Poultry on a small scale is common and pigs are kept as scavenger animals on the Chinese and Japanese farms. Many farmers practice fish culture in paddy fields. Fish culture in paddy fields is carried on in Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, West Bengal (India) and Bangladesh with the set objective to satisfy the protein demand of the farmer's family.

In paddy intensive subsistence farming the farmers make use of every available type of manure, including farm waste, rotten vegetables, fish waste, cow dung and human excreta to ensure higher agricultural returns and also to maintain the high fertility of the land. The green manuring and chemical fertilizers are also used to enhance the productivity of land. In India, the farmers of West Bengal, Kerala, the coastal Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu provide a good example of intensive subsistence wet paddy agriculture (Fig. 5.9).

Intensive Subsistence Agriculture Dominated by Other Crops:

Owing to variations in terrain, soil, vegetation, temperature, length of growing season, moisture conditions, sunlight, wind and many socioeconomic constraints, it is neither practicable nor profitable to grow paddy in many parts of the monsoon world. In the intensive subsistence farming, dominated by other crops, the methods and operations of cultivation are equally intensive and farming is on subsistence basis.

In north China, Manchuria, North Korea, and Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh in India, wheat, maize, millets, pulses, soya-bean and oilseeds are intensively grown. In Myanmar, Thailand and peninsular India, millets, maize and pulses are the dominating cereal crops as soil moisture in these areas is not conducive for the cultivation of paddy.

Farming in these regions has very similar features to those of wet paddy cultivation. There is intensive use of land, multiple cropping, heavy use of manual labour, little use of farm machinery and use of a variety of manures and fertilizers.

In India, operational holdings and sizes of fields are generally small and uneconomic. About 25 per cent of the total rural population has land less than 0.4 hectare and another 25 per cent is landless. As a result, the farmers are poor and the majority of them cannot afford to purchase modern agriculture implements, fertilizers, quality seeds, insecticides and pesticides. Though tractors are popular in the relatively large farms of Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, yet the oxen and buffaloes are the principal draught animals. Most of the agricultural operations are, however, labour intensive.

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ADVERTISEMENTS: Subsistence agriculture is the type of farming in which crops grown are consumed by the grower and his family. Subsistence agriculture may be of different types. It may be shifting or settled agriculture, it may be primitive or non-primitive in character, it may be both inten­sive and extensive in nature.

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Nomadic pastoralism is a form of pastoralism when livestock are herded in order to find fresh pastures on which to graze. True nomads follow an irregular pattern of movement, in contrast with transhumance where seasonal pastures are fixed. However this distinction is often not observed and the term nomad used for both-in historical cases the regularity of movements is often unknown in any case. The herded livestock include cows, water buffalo buffalos, yaks, llamas, sheep, goats, reindeer, horses, donkeys or camels, or mixtures of species. Nomadic pastoralism is commonly practised in regions with little arable land, typically in the developing world, especially in the steppe lands north of the agricultural zone of Eurasia. Of the estimated 30-40 million nomadic pastoralists worldwide, most are found in central Asia and the Sahel region of North and West Africa, such as Fulani, Tuaregs, and Toubou, with some also in the Middle East, such as traditionally Bedouins, and in other parts of Africa, such as Nigeria and Somalia. Increasing numbers of stock may lead to overgrazing of the area and desertification if lands are not allowed to fully recover between one grazing period and the next. Increased enclosure and fencing of land has reduced the amount of land for this practice. There is substantive uncertainty over the extent to which the various causes for degradation affect grassland. Different causes have been identified which include overgrazing, mining, agricultural reclamation, pests and rodents, soil properties, tectonic activity, and climate change. Simultaneously, it is maintained that some, such as overgrazing and overstocking, may be overstated while others, such as climate change, mining and agricultural reclamation, may be under reported. In this context, there is also uncertainty as to the long term effect of human behavior on the grassland as compared to non-biotic factors.

Nomadic pastoralism was a result of the Neolithic revolution and the rise of agriculture. During that revolution, humans began domesticating animals and plants for food and started forming cities. Nomadism generally has existed in symbiosis with such settled cultures trading animal products (meat, hides, wool, cheese and other animal products) for manufactured items not produced by the nomadic herders. Henri Fleisch tentatively suggested the Shepherd Neolithic industry of Lebanon may date to the Epipaleolithic and that it may have been used by one of the first cultures of nomadic shepherds in the Beqaa valley. Andrew Sherratt demonstrates that "early farming populations used livestock mainly for meat, and that other applications were explored as agriculturalists adapted to new conditions, especially in the semi‐arid zone."

In the past it was asserted that pastoral nomads left no presence archaeologically or were impoverished, but this has now been challenged, and was clearly not so for many ancient Eurasian nomads, who have left very rich kurgan burial sites. Pastoral nomadic sites are identified based on their location outside the zone of agriculture, the absence of grains or grain-processing equipment, limited and characteristic architecture, a predominance of sheep and goat bones, and by ethnographic analogy to modern pastoral nomadic peoples Juris Zarins has proposed that pastoral nomadism began as a cultural lifestyle in the wake of the 6200 BC climatic crisis when Harifian pottery making hunter-gatherers in the Sinai fused with Pre-Pottery Neolithic B agriculturalists to produce the Munhata culture, a nomadic lifestyle based on animal domestication, developing into the Yarmoukian and thence into a circum-Arabian nomadic pastoral complex, and spreading Proto-Semitic languages.

In Bronze Age Central Asia, nomadic populations are associated with the earliest transmissions of millet and wheat grains through the region that eventually became central for the Silk Road. By the medieval period in Central Asia, nomadic communities exhibited isotopically diverse diets, suggesting a multitude of subsistence strategies.

Often traditional nomadic groups settle into a regular seasonal pattern of transhumance. An example of a normal nomadic cycle in the northern hemisphere is:

Spring (early April to the end of June) - transition

Summer (end of June to late September) - a higher plateau

Autumn (mid-September to end of November) - transition

Winter (from December to the end of March) - desert plains.

The movements in this example are about 180 to 200 km. Camps are established in the same place each year; often semi-permanent shelters are built in at least one place on this migration route.

In sub-regions such as Chad, the nomadic pastoralist cycle is as follows:

In the rainy season, the groups live in a village intended for a comfortable stay. The villages are often made of sturdy material as clay. Old men and women remain in this village when the other people move the herds in the dry season.

In the dry season, the people move their herds to southern villages with a more temporary character. They then move inland, where they stay in tent camps.

In Chad, the sturdy villages are called hillé, the less sturdy villages are called dankhout and the tents ferik.

David Christian's account

David Christian made the following observations about pastoralism. The agriculturist lives from domesticated plants and the pastoralist lives from domesticated animals. Since animals are higher on the food chain, pastoralism supports a thinner population than agriculture. Pastoralism predominates where low rainfall makes farming impractical. Full pastoralism required the Secondary products revolution when animals began to be used for wool, milk, riding and traction as well as meat. Where grass is poor herds must be moved, which leads to nomadism. Some peoples are fully nomadic while others live in sheltered winter camps and lead their herds into the steppe in summer. Some nomads travel long distances, usually north in summer and south in winter. Near mountains, herds are led uphill in summer and downhill in winter ( transhumance). Pastoralists often trade with or raid their agrarian neighbors.

Christian distinguished 'Inner Eurasia', which was pastoral with a few hunter-gatherers in the far north, from 'Outer Eurasia', a crescent of agrarian civilizations from Europe through India to China. High civilization is based on agriculture where tax-paying peasants support landed aristocrats, kings, cities, literacy and scholars. Pastoral societies are less developed and as a result, according to Christian, more egalitarian. One tribe would often dominate its neighbors, but these 'empires' usually broke up after a hundred years or so. The heartland of pastoralism is the Eurasian steppe. In the center of Eurasia pastoralism extended south to Iran and surrounded agrarian oasis cities. When pastoral and agrarian societies went to war, horse-borne mobility counterbalanced greater numbers. Attempts by agrarian civilizations to conquer the steppe usually failed until the last few centuries. Pastoralists frequently raided and sometimes collected regular tribute from their farming neighbors. Especially in north China and Iran, they would sometimes conquer agricultural societies, but these dynasties were usually short-lived and broke up when the nomads became 'civilized' and lost their warlike virtues.

Nomadic pastoralism was historically widespread throughout less fertile regions of Earth. It is found in areas of low rainfall such as the Arabian Peninsula inhabited by Bedouins, as well as Northeast Africa inhabited by Somalis (where camel, sheep and goat nomadic pastoralism is especially common). Nomadic transhumance is also common in areas of harsh climate, such as Northern Europe and Russia inhabited by the indigenous Sami people, Nenets people and Chukchis. There are an estimated 30-40 million nomads in the world. Pastoral nomads and semi-nomadic pastoralists form a significant but declining minority in such countries as Saudi Arabia (probably less than 3%), Iran (4%), and Afghanistan (at most 10%). They comprise less than 2% of the population in the countries of North Africa except Libya and Mauritania.

The Eurasian steppe has been largely populated by pastoralist nomads since the late prehistoric times, with a succession of peoples known by the names given to them by surrounding literate sedentary societies, including the Bronze Age Proto-Indo-Europeans, and later Proto-Indo-Iranians, Scythians, Sarmatians, Cimmerians, Massagetae, Alans, Pechenegs, Cumans, Kipchaks, Karluks, Saka, Yuezhi, Wusun, Jie, Xiongnu, Xianbei, Khitan, Pannonian Avars, Huns, Mongols, Dzungars and various Turkics.

The Mongols in what is now Mongolia, Russia and China, and the Tatars or Turkic people of Eastern Europe and Central Asia were nomadic people who practiced nomadic transhumance on harsh Asian steppes. Some remnants of these populations are nomadic to this day. In Mongolia, about 40% of the population continues to live a traditional nomadic lifestyle. In China, it is estimated that a little over five million herders are dispersed over the pastoral counties, and more than 11 million over the semi-pastoral counties. This brings the total of the (semi)nomadic herder population to over 16 million, in general living in remote, scattered and resource-poor communities.

In the Middle Hills and Himalaya of Nepal, people living above about 2,000 m practise transhumance and nomadic pastoralism because settled agriculture becomes less productive due to steep slopes, cooler temperatures and limited irrigation possibilities. Distances between summer and winter pasture may be short, for example in the vicinity of Pokhara where a valley at about 800 meters elevation is less than 20 km. from alpine pastures just below the Annapurna Himalaya, or distances may be 100 km or more. For example, in Rapti zone some 100 km west of Pokhara the Kham Magar move their herds between winter pastures just north of India and summer pastures on the southern slopes of Dhaulagiri Himalaya. In far western Nepal, ethnic Tibetans living in Dolpo and other valleys north among the high Himalaya moved their herds north to winter on the plains of the upper Brahmaputra basin in Tibet proper, until this practice was prohibited after China took over Tibet in 1950-51.

The nomadic Sami people, an indigenous people of northern Finland, Sweden, Norway, and the Kola Peninsula of Russia, practise a form of nomadic transhumance based on reindeer. In the 14th and 15th century, when reindeer population was sufficiently reduced that Sami could not subsist on hunting alone, some Sami, organized along family lines, became reindeer herders. Each family has traditional territories on which they herd, arriving at roughly the same time each season. Only a small fraction of Sami have subsisted on reindeer herding over the past century; as the most colorful part of the population, they are well known. But as elsewhere in Europe, transhumance is dying out.

The Mesta was an association of sheep owners, ( Spanish nobility and religious orders) that had an important economic and political role in medieval Castile. To preserve the rights of way of its transhumant herds through , the Mesta acted against small peasants.

In Chad, nomadic pastoralists include the Zaghawa, Kreda, and Mimi. Farther north in Egypt and western Libya, the Bedouins also practice pastoralism.

Sometimes nomadic pastoralists move their herds across international borders in search of new grazing terrain or for trade. This cross-border activity can occasionally lead to tensions with national governments as this activity is often informal and beyond their control and regulation. In East Africa, for example, over 95% of cross-border trade is through unofficial channels and the unofficial trade of live cattle, camels, sheep and goats from Ethiopia sold to Somalia, Kenya and Djibouti generates an estimated total value of between US$250 and US$300 million annually (100 times more than the official figure). This trade helps lower food prices, increase food security, relieve border tensions and promote regional integration. However, there are also risks as the unregulated and undocumented nature of this trade runs risks, such as allowing disease to spread more easily across national borders. Furthermore, governments are unhappy with lost tax revenue and foreign exchange revenues.

There have been initiatives seeking to promote cross-border trade and also document it, in order to both stimulate regional growth and food security, but also to allow the effective vaccination of livestock. Initiatives include Regional Resilience Enhancement Against Drought (RREAD), the Enhanced Livelihoods in Mandera Triangle/Enhanced Livelihoods in Southern Ethiopia (ELMT/ELSE) as part of the Regional Enhanced Livelihoods in Pastoral Areas (RELPA) programme in East Africa, and the Regional Livelihoods Advocacy Project (REGLAP) funded by the European Commission Humanitarian Aid Office (ECHO).

1. ^ Pollard, Rosenberg, and Tignor, Elizabeth, Clifford, and Robert (2015). Worlds Together Worlds Apart. 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110: W.W. Norton & Company. p. 23. ISBN 978-0-393-91847-2.

2. ^ Ho, Peter; Azadi, Hossein (2010). "Rangeland degradation in North China: Perceptions of pastoralists". Environmental Research. 110 (3): 302-307. Bibcode:2010ER....110..302H. doi:10.1016/j.envres.2009.12.007. PMID 20106474.

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Nomadic pastoralism is a form of pastoralism when livestock are herded in order to find fresh pastures on which to graze. True nomads follow an irregular pattern of movement, in contrast with transhumance where seasonal pastures are fixed.