Fodder Plantations & Mechanised Fleecing of Wool Help Sheep Herders in Rajasthan Earn Better Profits

Kayam Deen had almost decided to sell his flock of 40 sheep as they were not bringing him any money. From Jodhpur in Rajasthan, the 40-year-old comes from a long line of nomadic pastoralists.

But, in 2021, fed up with the struggle of maintaining his flock and of his meagre earnings, Deen was on the verge of giving it all up.

“The high cost of maintaining sheep, the lack of grazing land and so much hard work for so little return, almost made me sell my entire flock. But, intervention by the Urmul sansthan persuaded me to keep my sheep and my income has almost tripled in the last two years,” the resident of Narayanpura village in Jodhpur told Gaon Connection.

Deen is amongst hundreds of nomadic pastoralists in Jodhpur district whose incomes have soared ever since the Bikaner-based non-profit, Urmul Seemant Samiti stepped in. Urmul set up two Common Facility Centres (CFCs) in Narayanpura and Luna villages in Jodhpur district.

At these centres, members of the pastoral communities receive various services and technical support. The services include cutting of sheep wool, vaccination, health check ups, deworming, and a washing facility.

“Earlier, the wool we sold used to fetch us a price of Rs 15-Rs 20 per kilogram. Now, we get a price of Rs 50-Rs 100 thanks to the technical support offered by Urmul,” said Deen.

The Bikaner-based NGO was started in 1994 in western Rajasthan to develop a safe and enabling environment for rural residents to ensure their right to health, education and employment. The CFC project to help pastoralists is part of its efforts to provide livelihood support in the region.

Also Read: The Bakarwals of Jammu & Kashmir are in the throes of transition

“Urmul provides a package of basic support services of drinking water, fodder plantation, vaccination camp and a marketplace for pastoralists in the two villages. These services will increase their resilience to climate shocks and stresses,” Sooraj Singh, the project coordinator in Urmul, told Gaon Connection.

Urmul is one of the 11 organisations that was chosen by the Delhi-based non-profit, Sustainable Environment and Ecological Development Society (SEEDS) for one of its campaigns called ‘Flip the Notion’. This is a campaign to tackle climate resilience through innovation.

According to Anshu Sharma, Co-Founder, STS Global, pastoralists traditionally know how to deal with a changing climate. “They migrate along with their livestock; driving causes behind the tradition of livestock migration are lack of dry season water resources and acute shortages in fodder. The result is a regional livestock population increasingly on the move, sometimes turning to year-round nomadism to meet demands for seasonal pasturage,” said Sharma.

“Depending on severity of drought, deficit rainfall, temporary migration with lower flock size moves by the end of winter /start of summer and the migrants return by the onset of monsoon,” he said.

Urmul is helping build climate resilience in these pastoral communities and also increasing their earnings.

“Earlier, due to the lack of water in our village, the livestock found it hard. We could not keep our flock clean with regular washes and that resulted in diseases amongst the animals and often death,” Yaaru Khan, from Narayanapura village, who has been associated with Urmul since 2019, told Gaon Connection.

But, the community centre helps us maintain the good health of our sheep and provides us with mechanised support to extract wool, said 54-year-old Khan.

The mechanised fleecing of sheep wool has helped the pastoral community become more productive with their livestock, he added.

“We used scissors to fleece wool. It was time consuming taking at least an hour to fleece a single sheep. But now the mechanised fleecing at the centre takes only 10 minutes. Also, scissors often caused cuts and wounds to the sheep. We are able to save time and our sheep are in much better health now,” Khan said.

Also Read: Maldhari Women Changemakers of Banni Grasslands in Kachchh

Urmul has streamlined the business end of looking after the sheep, said Abdul Ghani, a young shepherd from Narayanpura. “Urmul taught us to clean the wool with shampoo before cutting it and this gets us a better price,” 24-year-old Ghani said.

The common grazing lands are shrinking, pointed out the co-founder of SEEDS, Sharma. “The Common Property Resources are dwindling due to increased industrialisation, expanding agriculture and horticulture and mushrooming of private institutions such as hospitals and schools. There is a lack of good quality fodder, shortage of water bodies, lack of livestock health services and quality veterinary medicines. Farmers are unwilling to allow grazing on their fallow lands and harvested fields,” Sharma said.

“But migratory pastoralism is a resilient livelihood system the world over. The herds are grazed on common pastures and fallow farmlands. Their mobility prevents overgrazing, allowing natural vegetation to grow back – an important best practice for managing degraded lands,” he added.