Subject: CATTLE and RAINFORESTS Here's a chance to send the same message to three of my favorite listservers: ANTHRO-L (anthropology), SANET-MG (sustainable agriculture), and CHIAPAS-L. Allow me to recommend you all to each other. While I am at it, I will also send it to my very favorite list, HARP. I am harping here in the more usual sense, not in the musical sense which would come first to mind with my harper friends. I refer you to an article entitled "Animal Agriculture for the Reforestation of Degraded Tropical Rainforests," by Ronald Nigh. (CULTURE AND AGRICULTURE, the Bulletin of the Culture and Agriculture Group of the American Anthropological Association, Numbers 51-52, Spring-Summer 1995, pp. 2-6.) Nigh's institutional affiliation is Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropologia Social del Sureste, San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico. Instead of summarizing, I will give some quotes. "My view has moved from . . . seeing cattle as the principle cause of tropical forest destruction . . . to the present argument that livestock production is a key element in tropical forest restoration!" (Author's own exclamation point!) On traditional animal management: "(The) Maya . . . managed secondary vegetation . . . to increase wild animal density. The temporary, artificial creation of early successional vegetation associations - fields, grasslands, or forage brushlands, - may . . . provide the overall strategy for animal production." On intensive grazing (citing Savory): " This method . . . has allowed us to reduce the area of a ranch devoted to pasture to one-third or even one-tenth of the area, while at the same time increasing bioeconomic production in absolute terms. This . . . has permitted the freeing up of lands, many of which should never have been converted. . . ." Early observations on degraded pastures sown with African exotics: "pastures respond (under controlled grazing) by diversifying; especially, we note a welcome increase in some native legumes. . . . (under a recent mild drought) our pastures held up and recovered much better than our neighbors with uncontrolled grazing or no grazing at all." On "enrichment planting" (citing Ramos and del Amo) and the "natural ecosystem analogue approach" (citing Hart and others): "It is possible both to speed the successional process and to greatly increase the economic return at each stage of succession, thus providing an important incentive for forest regeneration. Production is achieved by substitution of . . . more economically valuable species of the same structure and behavior. . . ." Example: vanilla. On aquatic resources: "The restoration of the tropical ecosystem and the elimination of the use of agrotoxics allows the recovery of important aquatic resource zones that formerly supplied a rich harvest of fish, crustaceans, mollusks, reptiles, amphibians, turtles and birds. Some of these were managed intensively in the past." Cattle production system: "Dual-purpose organic milk and meat production is based on intensive, controlled grazing, concentrated only on appropriate lands and combines the use of cattle genetically selected for pasture-based tropical systems." Specifically, the animal is "a Holstein Brahmin (Sahiwal) F1 from New Zealand. . . adapted to a pure grazing system . . . for organic milk production in the tropics." Closing paragraph: Tropical regions have been especially intractable to modern technology. The complex ecology of the tropics responds with particular vehemence to management methods that view agriculture as an "industrial process" rather than as a natural system. Organic methods, along with a holistic approach to resource planning and marketing and a respect for traditional knowledge provide a viable strategy for the design of sustainable production systems in tropical regions. Some personal remarks: Anthropologists: If you are not studying agriculture, you are not leaving out the main thing. Contemporary culture IS agriculture. Been that way for a long time. "SUSTAGGIES" (as tagged by Michele Gale-Sinex): US and MEXICAN farmers have a lot in common. Please PAY ATTENTION to what is happening in Mexico. To CHIAPAS-L: Thanks for being there, nursing the hopes of a civil society. The challenge in Chiapas and elsewhere is not just political, economic and social. It is also cultural, and specifically, it is AGRIcultural. All the goals listed in question 1 of the CONSULTA will be useless without a sustainable agriculture. THANKS TO RONALD NIGH, we have a fine piece of work which we can discuss, dealing SPECIFICALLY with the agroecology of Chiapas. Is there a Mexican or other agricultural scientist who will come forward with an agroecological analysis of extensive cattle production showing it to be technically superior? Or an economist who will show that with all social and environmental externalities taken into consideration, intensive grazing is more costly (or less beneficial) than extensive grazing? I'd like to see someone try. HARPING ON to a conclusion: The fabulous Latin American harper Alfredo Rolando Ortiz, on his training cassette, plays two tunes, both very charming, and then comments that the two tunes are political symbols of two opposing parties. "So," he says, "you must be careful to know who you are playing for. So much for politics." But Alfredo never tells us which means what. So much for politics. John Lozier Adjunct Associate Professor of Agricultural Education College of Agriculture and Forestry West Virginia University Morgantown, WV AND Assistant Professor of Anthropology California University of Pennsylvania California, Pennsylvania lozier@waldo.cup.edu AND ** _____________________________________ ***// / Harping for Harmony \/// / John Lozier _____\/________________/______jlozier@wvnvm.wvnet.edu__________