Shepherd boys
Near Akch, Afghanistan
Two boys rest. They are hearding goats (not in view) in a totally barren landscape. It is beyond me how goats can survive in such a desert; it is also clear that overgrazing by sheep and goats is what has made this land so desert-like.
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Chris Mason writes:
I am a cultural anthropologist who has studied Afghan pastoralists for many years. This is a wonderful photograph, but I would just like to comment on the caption. It is actually a myth that overgrazing causes desertification. These people have been very astute stewards of their environment for millenia. Just the opposite is happening: Over many thousands of years, sheep and goats graze on land which is not suitable for farming (or it already would be). Their dung, containing fertizer and seed, slowly makes marginal land arable. The shepherds know if they kill all the grass, there will be none for next season, so they are careful to move the herds before this happens. Often, nomadic pastoralists and famers coexist in a symbiotic relationship: Farmers will ask nomads to graze their herds in their fields after harvest, grazing on the stubble. Their dung is free fertizer, and vegetable matter which would be wasted is food for sheep, which in turn provide for the needs of the shepherd peoples. It is incredibly sophisticated and not at all about ignorant peasants destroying the land through overgrazing or overpopulation.