The feed for draft animals comes from five sources:

1. crop residues;

2. fodder grown on grasslands, grazing on grasslands and uncultivated marginal lands, such as hillsides;

3. grazing on fields which are fallow during the dry season;

4. fodder produced from trees and from forest areas generally;

5. grain and other high-quality feed. This is a small proportion of the total.

There is great uncertainty about the relative magnitude of these sources. Indeed, even the numbers of draft animals themselves are highly uncertain. J.K. Parikh has used an assumption of 25% to 30% of the energy requirements of draft animals come from grazing for Bangladesh.¹ Some of this grazing is on land which is fallow during the dry season which would belong to the owner of the cattle. However, much or most grazing may take place on common grassland which have soils which are too poor to sustain cultivation of crops.

We can make an order of magnitude estimate of the amount of uncultivated land involved in grazing draft cattle. Let us begin with the figures for India, as an example. Our estimate of the total feed for draft animals is in the range of 1,800 to 3,600 petajoules per year. The total number of cattle are triple the number of draft animals (according to the assumptions used here to derive the numbers of draft animals).

Since grazing requirements of non-working cattle tend to be considerable lower than those for draft animals, we can make an order of magnitude estimate of feed requirements as being roughly double the amount needed for draft animals alone. Thus, the energy requirements for all cattle are on the order of 3,600 to 7,200 petajoules per year.

If we assume that one-fourth of the requirements come from grazing in fields and that half of these grazing requirements come from grazing on lands other than fields (including common lands), then the energy requirements met from land that serves as pasture can be estimated.

These assumptions lead to an estimate of energy needs from pastures of 450 to 900 petajoules per year. Marginal lands, such as those on which cattle graze, are low productivity areas. Assuming figure of one ton of dry matter per hectare per year (which may be on the high side) and an energy value of 13 gigajoules per ton, we get an estimate of the amount of pasture land, including marginal land needed, to meet the energy requirements of 35 to 70 million hectares. The total grazing requirements are likely to be even larger, since we have omitted other animals such as goats and sheep.

There is, of course, considerable uncertainty in this range of figures. For instance, the dry matter available per hectare may be considerably different than one ton. We do not have any data on dry matter production on grazing land. Further, the regional differences in availability of grazing land and its productivity are likely to be considerable, so that in many areas there may be very serious shortages of grazing land. Finally, the proportion of feed from common grazing lands may be either greater or lower than the one-eighth we have assumed here (half of 25%).

We can get an order of magnitude consistency check on the range of estimates by examining land use data. These are shown in Table 9.

The total amount of land classified as "permanent pasture" was only 12 million hectares in 1985. However, "other" category, including wasteland in was about 49 million hectares. A great deal of the land classified under this "other" category is truly waste land with little or no production. This would apply to considerable areas of desert in western India (and in Pakistan). However, some portion of this consists of marginal, uncultivable land which may provide some food for ruminants. However, such land is unlikely to be productive at the rate of 1 ton of dry matter that we have assumed in making our estimate of land requirements for grazing. Thus, while land in the other category may be used for grazing, the number of animals it could sustain even at a marginal level would be much smaller than that in our calculations. Or conversely, the amount of land required to provide the 25% of the feed requirements would have to be considerably larger.

A good portion of the land needed for grazing probably comes under the classification as "forests and woodland" in Table 9 above. In India, as in most of South Asia, much of the land in this category is not dense forest. On the order of half of the 67 million hectares listed this way may actually serve functions such as grazing and even cultivation of food crops.

In conclusion, the total land available for pasture as such appears to be considerably short of the requirements, if one-fourth of the caloric requirements are assumed to come from this source. A considerable amount of land in the "other" and "forests and woodland" categories is being used as grazing land.

Table 10 shows estimates of grazing land requirements and land use data for Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan.

The need for grazing land is greater than these approximate figures suggest. As discussed above, cattle are inadequately fed, and this reduces the power availability for agriculture. It may also reduce the efficiency of the use of cattle in agriculture, since more of the energy intake is used for basic metabolic upkeep. This shortage of mechanical power, in part due to the unavailability of feed, is of long-standing. As Marvin Harris noted in 1966:

These facts have great bearing not only on agricultural policy, but also on other aspects of rural energy production and use. The land used for grazing and fodder production is often marginal land which could not sustain crop production, but may very well be suited to the planting of village woodlots for fuelwood production. Thus there are many situations where there is a direct conflict between the need for grazing cattle and increasing fuelwood production, under the present arrangements for the use of common lands.

This tension between draft power for agriculture and land for fuel is made more severe not only by the time and trouble it takes to gather fuel requirements for the family, but also by the fact that in many areas there are serious shortages of mechanical power for agriculture, especially at peak periods.

Draft Animals and Woodlots

It is clear that in any circumstances where there is serious pressure on land resources, it is going to be difficult to find the land for woodlots without depriving farmers, including poor farmers, of grazing land. Uncultivated, deforested hillsides and other marginal lands are vulnerable to erosion. They are precisely the areas where trees and forests might produce a whole host of well-known benefits. But they are also precisely the areas where cattle graze in the rainy season in many areas. Policies which reduce present access of the poor to grazing land or to fuelwood gathering rights on these hillsides would most harm those sections that they purport to help. These policies would also hurt some short term interests of other farmers because their cattle also graze on marginal common lands. Indeed, they have more cattle and in this sense have more to lose from these lands being put to other uses.

The implications for land use of various approaches to meeting the draft power needs of agriculture is important to patterns of domestic fuel use. Crop residues and dung constitute a major portion of fuel use, especially in wood-short areas. This use of crop residues reduces the ability of farmers to feed their animals or to increase the number of animals. Similarly, the use of dung as fuel reduces organic nitrogen for the fields, thus requiring increased use of inorganic fertilizers use or producing reduced yields.

In this context, the success of woodlots for fuel is intimately tied to the implementation of policies for the provision of animal feed to replace that available from common grazing lands. We should also note that fuelwood is also used directly to cook fodder for cattle, contributing to the overall energy requirements of the draft animal system. If woodlots can be integrated with schemes to increase the affordable availability of feed for animals, then they would become much more feasible as one land-use conflict would have been resolved.

On a technical level this problem is not a difficult one. Instead of focusing on single-purpose trees, it is necessary to plant trees or forests which can meet a multiplicity of needs. In particular, plans for planting fuel-producing trees on marginal lands or common lands must also include varieties that can produce fodder. Ideally, a mix of trees should be planted so that they can meet diverse needs for fuelwood, fodder, timber and food.

Many plans along these lines have been proposed. Goldemberg et al. have suggested "two-tier" forests which would accommodate both fodder and fuel requirements:

Another way in which such forests could alleviate the fuel-fodder conflict is in situations where crop residues which could be fed to animals are used as fuel. Adequate supplies of fuelwood and more efficient cooking stoves (both desirable for other reasons as well) could increase supplies of crop residues available for animals.