Connecting Agropastoral Food Culture Research to Livestock Commercialisation Policy, 2021-2023

This research project aimed to define a new research agenda for connecting policy on livestock sector development to research on agropastoralist food cultures. The project brought together a group of relevant stakeholders - policy makers and implementers, researchers, development actors, and local community representatives - from East and West Africa. Researchers performed a rapid literature review on policy and cultural aspects relevant to milk production and consumption in the study locations, policy actors explained their activities and some community members took part in participatory photography. The group reviewed the data in a seminar based on the local ‘Baraza’ deliberation format. The data set comprises: A transcript of an interview with a policy actor from Baringo county Kenya, on the dairy value chain and the meaning of milk, in November 2021. A transcript of an interview with elders of the Arror community on rituals that use milk, in November 2021. Transcripts of a set of interviews with milk value chain actors in Ghana in November 2021. Transcripts of two focus groups held in November and December 2021 where participants from the Arror and Ilchamus ethnic groups who had taken part in a participatory photography process explain their photographs and the issues they illustrated to do with milk and culture in their communities. These transcripts are accompanied by the consent form used in the photography exercise. A report from a baraza meeting held in Baringo county, Kenya, where photographers displayed their photographs and explained them, and used these to open dialogue with policy actors at county level, in April 2022. A literature review on cultures of milk in Northern Ghana, associated with the Fulani ethnic group, and Baringo county, Kenya, associated with the Arror and Ilchamus ethnic groups, and also on policies relevant to the dairy sector, and on the state of milk markets, in Ghana and Kenya. The aim of the data collection was to provide material which provided an entry point to understanding the perspectives of each actor group, that each of the stakeholders could react to in a Baraza in order to co-create meaning about the subject matter. The other aim of the data set is to provide the researchers with material they can use to propose the role of culture in contemporary dairy markets, and policy to do with these, in the study regions.

The context of the research. In both East and West Africa, pastoralism is an important livelihood activity. For groups such as the Fulani (West Africa) and Ilchamus (East Africa), it is an ethnoprofessional activity, sometimes combined with agriculture in agropastoralism. For many groups, pastoralism or agropastoralism entails a unique culture, many aspects of which are connected to food production, processing, exchange and consumption activities. Anthropological research has focused on agropastoralist food cultures, for example describing how cultures and practices of food production, processing, trade and consumption have adapted as pastoralist people have engaged over centuries with local and international markets, in global contexts of technological change. In recent decades, agropastoralist livelihoods have continued to change, in the context of continent-wide agricultural policy favouring commercialisation, modernisation and formalisation of the agricultural and livestock sectors. There is a noticeable disconnect between many policies dealing with livestock sector commercialisation and modernisation, and research on agropastoralist food culture, despite the practices of production and consumption which connect them. For example, proposed commercialisation of the dairy sector is sometimes difficult to connect to gendered associations of milk trade in the cultures of people such as the Fulani. The results is that pastoralist people, and specific groups such as women or those of given ethnicities, may not fully benefit from livestock sector development, or may even be disadvantaged. So, there is a need to draw connections between research on food cultures of pastoralism and development oriented policy on the livestock sector in Africa. The aims and objectives of the work. This exploratory research aims to define a new research agenda for connecting policy on livestock sector development to research on agropastoralist food cultures. The project convenes a group of relevant stakeholders - policy makers and implementers, researchers, development actors, and local community representatives - from East and West Africa. Together, they co-construct understandings of agropastoral food cultures, through participatory photography and desk research on a case study of milk and the dairy sector. The results are shared in a seminar modelled on the local meeting forum, the Baraza. A Baraza entails community members and representatives, opinion leaders, policy actors and other relevant parties convening to debate issues such as policy moves, usually in a public place such as a market. Through a Baraza style seminar, the project aims to encourage these groups to work more closely together to incorporate community perspectives, and research on them, into policy making and implementation. Key messages are then shared to the wider community and policy sector. This aims to define a clearer agenda and raise support for follow-up research. The potential applications and benefits or the research. The short term benefit of this work is that awareness will be raised, among all groups, of the gaps that exist between research on agropastoralist food cultures, and policy approaches to livestock sector commercialisation. Community members will enhance their abilities to advocate to policy makers, and within their communities. In the medium term, policy makers will be more cognisant of how to work with research and consider culture, and researchers will have a better understanding of how to engage with policy actors on this theme. In the longer term, there may be more relevant and culturally informed policy on livestock sector commercialisation, leading to better outcomes for pastoralists.