Pastoralism and Rangeland Management on the Tibetan Plateau in ...

The main interventions by government <strong>and</strong> those facilitated by the AKRSP <strong>and</strong>
livestock development projects are in breed improvement <strong>and</strong> livestock health
improvement. Extension workers are trained in vaccination <strong>and</strong> emergency
livestock health management. The breed improvement intervention are rather
negative with ambitions to change the native breed highly resistant to diseases
<strong>and</strong> adoptable to steep terrain grazing with heavy breeds more suitable to intensive
rearing. Other strategies through livestock <strong>and</strong> dairy development projects
are accelerated development of <strong>and</strong> investments in dairy, meat, poultry <strong>and</strong>
allied livestock sectors, identify bottlenecks in the development of livestock,
dairy <strong>and</strong> proposing remedial producer-owned <strong>and</strong> controlled organizations
<strong>and</strong> farming groups, capacity development of stakeholders <strong>and</strong> development
<strong>and</strong> dissemination of appropriate technologies (Beg 2010). No intervention has
been done in live animal marketing which is highly biased to favour urban
consumers.
2.2 Livestock products marketing
2.2.1 Milk <strong>and</strong> milk products
The milk <strong>and</strong> milk products are mainly for household use <strong>and</strong> are only marketed
in sizable mountain towns like Gilgit, Chitral, <strong>and</strong> Skardu. The mainly
non-farming service <strong>and</strong> trade-oriented households are the main purchasers
<strong>and</strong> the livestock-oriented rural households in the periphery of the main town
as main sellers. The tradition of local milk trade in these towns is rapidly fading
away mainly because of packed milk availability everywhere <strong>and</strong> lack of quality
control <strong>and</strong> adulteration in locally sold milk.
The main saleable milk product is butter oil (maska). Butter oil extracted from
milk is equivalent to sale of fresh milk or may fetch higher prices than the milk
sold fresh. Butter oil is traditionally produced at summer pastures <strong>and</strong> brought
down for consumption during winter. The quantity of butter oil produced by a
family is a traditional indicator of wealth <strong>and</strong> status. In many mountain areas
the surplus butter oil is buried in clay parts underground <strong>and</strong> is brought out
during particular celebratory occasions like weddings. The older the butter oil
the more it is considered valuable. Twenty five years ago, it was normal to find
60 years-old buried butter oil (talkh rughun), however, now with population
growth the tradition of burying the butter oil is fading away. Cheese (paneer)
<strong>and</strong> dehydrated whey (qurut) (Photo 2) are the other commodities produced at
high pastures during summer but mainly utilized at homesteads during winter
(cf. Kreutzmann 2005). These products are however for domestic use <strong>and</strong> not
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> > > 4. Niche Production as an Additional Asset for <strong>Pastoralism</strong> <strong>and</strong> Rangel<strong>and</strong> <strong>Management</strong>