Ilse Köhler-Rollefson - Hoofprints on the Land: How Traditional Herding and Grazing Can Restore the Soil and Bring Animal Agriculture Back in Balance with the Earth

Praise for Hoofprints on the Land

Ilses deep understanding of herding cultures, and their relationship with the land and life itself, is both moving and revelatory. Pastoralism, she shows us brilliantly, is not a marginal issue but a symbiotic partnership between animals, humans and ecosystems that should be at the heart of our efforts to heal the planet. I loved this book.

ISABELLA TREE, author of Wilding

Ilse Khler-Rollefsons Hoofprints on the Land reminds us that animals are not objects to be manipulated in factory farms. They are not a technology to be pushed to obsolescence and extinction in the new rush for making fake milk, fake cheese and fake meat. Ilse shows how animals are sentient beings, subjects not objects, members of our families. Animals should never have been put in factory farms. Factory farms violate the rights of animals and contribute to pollution, including climate change. Ilse shows that free-range animals and animals in pastoral cultures are a solution to climate change that factory farming has contributed to.

VANDANA SHIVA, author of Terra Viva

Grazing done right can improve biodiversity and regenerate pastureland. You will gain many insights into how to improve land from Hoofprints on the Land.

TEMPLE GRANDIN, author of Animals in Translation

I never knew how fascinating a book about herding and grazing could be, never understood how vital is the part that pastoralists play concerning the health of the planet and its grazing animals. But I have drunk the delicious camel milk in Ilse Khler-Rollefsons dairy, and am a convert to everything she espouses. This book is remarkable: scholarly, accessible and hugely important.

JOANNA LUMLEY

A beautiful, deeply thoughtful and intelligent book that completely reframes the fraught discussion around the role of animals in our food system. Every reader will not only learn a great deal but will also see the world in a new and better light.

NICOLETTE HAHN NIMAN, author of Defending Beef

Entirely timely, unique and massively thought provoking. It raises a whole host of intriguing issues which often, in my view, although identified as pertinent to the Southern Hemisphere, have clear and painful parallels in the north. I am not sure that many involved with limited appreciations of how livestock farming works will realise these synergies. But they should be illuminated and understood. Ilses depth of knowledge of subject is splendid.

DEREK GOW, author of Bringing Back the Beaver

Inspiration for western agriculture as an extension of the ever-growing interest in regenerative agriculture, Hoofprints on the Land opens our minds to the important role nomadic herding could play in securing the future of people in dry lands, while also playing a vital role in environmental management. For most of us farming in temperate climes, nomadism may seem an irrelevance, a nostalgia from bygone ages; Hoofprints on the Land helps us to understand how misguided these impressions are.

HELEN BROWNING, chief executive, Soil Association

A must-read for anyone who cares about the Earth. Hoofprints on the Land is a powerful story of hope, sharing a way of producing food that gives back more than it takes away from nature and humanity combined. A genuinely inspirational book I absolutely devoured it.

LYNN CASSELLS, coauthor of Our Wild Farming Life

In Hoofprints on the Land, Ilse Khler-Rollefson shows how traditional herding cultures today, often impoverished and overlooked, might still save the planet. This is a passionate, important book, a must-read for anyone interested in ecology or food or our future coexistence with wild and domestic animals.

BRAD KESSLER, author of Goat Song

A provocative and thoughtful meditation on the necessity of distinguishing between industrialised farming and traditional methods of pastoralism when discussing food security and the future of agriculture. Transhumance has been around since the beginning of animal domestication and works within established ecosystems, putting in more than it takes out. There is wisdom in age-old practices of animal herding that deserve to be preserved and protected.

DR ROSS BARNETT, author of The Missing Lynx

Pastoralists care for the Earth, provide a flood of protein resources, and maintain cultures of enormous depth. All of this is stunningly clear from the story of the Raika camel herders of Rajasthan, told by one of their closest allies and most thoughtful observers. This wonderfully documented book shows that herding is a twenty-first-century technology for sustainability.

PAUL ROBBINS, dean, Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, University of WisconsinMadison

All of us who are concerned and worried about pastoralists and traditional livestock herders and their role in our world simply have to read this book by Ilse Khler-Rollefson and soon. Those of us who are unconcerned or unaware of how intertwined our world is with theirs, simply have to read this book even sooner.

P. SAINATH, author of Everybody Loves a Good Drought

For centuries, the Raika communities have lived in harmony with nature, in the course of which they have developed some of Indias most vibrant oral and folk traditions. Having worked with the Raika community for many decades, I believe their worldview, traditions and way of regenerative and sustainable livestock rearing show the world an important way forward in dealing with many challenges that we face today, especially in the area of climate change.

WILLIAM NANDA BISSELL, executive vice chairman, Fabindia Limited

Also by Ilse Khler-Rollefson

Camel Karma: Twenty Years Among Indias Camel Nomads

Invisible Guardians: Women Manage Livestock Diversity

A Field Manual of Camel Diseases: Traditional and Modern Healthcare for the Dromedary

Hoofprints on the Land

How Traditional Herding and Grazing Can Restore the Soil and Bring Animal Agriculture Back in Balance with the Earth

ILSE KHLER-ROLLEFSON

Foreword by FRED PROVENZA

Chelsea Green Publishing

White River Junction, Vermont

London, UK

Copyright 2022 by Ilse Khler-Rollefson.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.

Commissioning Editor: Muna Reyal

Project Manager: Angela Boyle

Copy Editor: Caroline West

Proofreader: Anne Sheasby

Indexer: Nancy A. Crompton

Designer: Melissa Jacobson

Page Layout: Abrah Griggs

Front cover photograph shows a Raika shepherd returning from his daily grazing round in the forest below Kumbhalgarh Fort in Rajasthan, India.

First printing December 2022.

v1.202212

ISBN 978-1-64502-152-0 (paperback) | ISBN 978-1-64502-153-7 (ebook) | ISBN 978-1-64502-154-4 (audio book)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

Chelsea Green Publishing

85 North Main Street, Suite 120

White River Junction, Vermont USA

Somerset House

London, UK

www.chelseagreen.com

For Justus, Lotta, Jette, and Felia,

Shauriya, Siya, Lakshyaraj and Kanika,

Kushi, Kaviya and all the children fortunate to grow up with livestock or have a herding heritage.

1. PART ONE