Pastoral Sedentarization and Its Effects on Children?s Diet, Health, and Growth Among Rendille of Northern Kenya

Abstract

Throughout the arid regions of Africa formerly mobile pastoral populations are becoming sedentary. Although pastoral sedentarization is encouraged by international development agencies and national governments as solutions to food insecurity, poor health care, and problems of governance, it has not been demonstrated that abandoning the pastoral way of life, and particularly children's access to milk and other livestock products, is beneficial to the health and well-being of pastoral populations. This paper reports the results of a 3-year study of one pastoral and four settled Rendille communities of northern Kenya based on data from 17 repeated bimonthly surveys of childhood dietary, growth, and morbidity patterns and household level economic strata. Bivariate analysis of 5,535 measurements from 488 children from birth to 9 years revealed that age-specific height and weight measurements for the pastoral community are uniformly heavier and taller than children from the sedentary villages. Multivariate analysis using Generalized Estimating Equations methodology showed that the amount of milk consumed was always a statistically significant determinant of child weight and height growth, regardless of drought or non-drought times and breastfeeding status. Other significant determinants of child growth include morbidity and poverty, both associated with sedentary communities. These results indicate that international

Applying the concept of resilience to pastoralist household data

“…Comparing across groups during the drought phase, the staying with group suffered notably lower rates of illness, which may reflect their lower attachment to town-based market activities. This potentially echos the findings of Fratkin et al (2004) that human health is negatively correlated with degree of sedentarization. The staying with group stands out for the relative stability and low level of their sensitivity to human illness.…”

“…Does the increased value of meat production draw resources away from milk offtake? When we factor in that control over milk and milk marketing and livestock marketing have gendered and that there are household-level nutritional implications (Herren 1992;Sikana et al 1993;Nduma et al 2001;Fratkin and Roth 2004;McPeak and Doss 2006), the case for further research on this topic is even more compelling.…”

The Impact of In-Kind Food Assistance on Pastoralist Livelihoods in Humanitarian Crises

“…Reported assessments of the effectiveness of interventions that specifically target pastoralists have generally been negative, but the evidence tends to be limited to selective case studies that should not be used to draw general inferences (e.g. Fratkin, 2001;Fratkin et al, 2004;Hesse and Thébaud, 2006;Markakis, 2004). There is a number of more rigorous evidence syntheses that assess humanitarian interventions (e.g.…”

“…The literature on pastoralist societies suggests a number of potential unintended consequences, including long-term dependency on external provision of food (Abbink et al, 2014;Bassi, 2010;Boulton, 2012;Helland, 1998;Levine, 2010), exclusion of the poorest (Bishop and Hilhorst, 2010;Maxwell et al, 2014: 28) and undermining of existing social support networks (Sharp, 1999). Other impacts of food assistance might include shifts in livelihood strategies and mobility patterns (including sedentarization) (Fratkin et al, 2004;Salzman, 1980), new dynamics concerning assets (including sale, acquisition of assets and asset types) and income (Abebe et al, 2008;McPeak et al, 2012;ODI, 2006), as well as changes related to intra-household relations, educational attainment, gender roles (Fratkin, 1992;Krätli, 2009;Pantuliano, 2002), conflict and insecurity (Oba, 1992) and denudation of the environment (Ibid. ; Blackwell, 2010;McCabe, 1990).…”

Extremely high fertility of a sedentarized Bedouin clan in south Jordan: a genealogical-demographic approach to long-term change

“…This transition has been caused by various factors, including population increase, deterioration of pasture land, necessity of dependency on agriculture and demand for modern conveniences as well as political intervention (Shamekh, 1977;Ginguld et al, 1997;Fratkin et al, 2004). This transition has been accompanied by drastic changes in daily life.…”