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Hoofprints on the Land: How Traditional Herding and Grazing Can Restore the Soil and Bring Animal Agriculture Back in Balance with the Earth
Perfect for fans of English Pastoral and Wilding , Hoofprints on the Land shows that herding cultures are not a thing of the past but a regenerative model for our future. Hoofprints on the Land is a fascinating and lyrical book exploring the deep and ancient working partnerships between people and animals. UN advocate and camel conservationist Ilse Köhler-Rollefson writes a passionate rallying cry for those invisible and forgotten herding cultures that exist all over the world, and how by embracing these traditional nomadic practices, we can help restore and regenerate the Earth. Ilse has spent the last 30 years living with and studying the Raika camel herders in Rajasthan, India, and she shows how pastoralists can address many of the problems humanity faces. Whether it be sheep, cattle, reindeer, camels, alpacas, goats, or yaks―this ancient and natural means of keeping livestock challenges the myth that animal-free agriculture is the only way forward for a healthy planet. From the need to produce food more sustainably and equitably to the consequences of climate change, land degradation and loss of biodiversity, we can learn from pastoralists to help repair the human relationship with livestock to return to a model of intelligent cooperation rather than dominance. As Ilse “ Herding is therapy, not just for the planet, but also for our souls. ”
- GenresNonfiction
288 pages, Paperback
Published January 5, 2023
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September 12, 2024
In 1995, Spain became the first (and so far, the only) country to afford legal protection to pastoralists’ traditional migration routes with the passage of the Drovers’ Roads Law. For centuries, this network of cañadas allowed shepherds to move their sheep from winter grasslands in the south to summer pastures in the northern mountains. The cañadas represent ecological corridors that facilitate the movement of plants and insects in addition to livestock, and might serve as migratory pathways allowing plants and animals to move northward as climate change warms and dries southern Iberia.
In contrast to Spain, where herders are permitted to walk sheep through Madrid, most herding cultures throughout the world are increasingly threatened because transhumance routes are blocked by private property, fencing, development, highways, land set aside for natural areas, and distrust and suspicion of members of unfamiliar herding groups.
Hoofprints on the Land is a gentle manifesto for pastoralists’ rights and a compelling justification for supporting and encouraging traditional herding societies dependent on grazing and browsing worldwide.
According to the United Nations’s Food and Agriculture Organization, 37% of the earth’s land surface is “agricultural land.” However, that term might be misleading because only one-third of agricultural land is arable cropland; the remaining two-thirds cannot be cultivated. These unplowable lands are too steep, stony or salty, too dry or too wet, the climate is too hot or too cold, or the growing season is too short. If these lands are to produce food, the plants growing there must be grazed or browsed by livestock adapted to challenging environments. As a result, transient herding cultures manage at least four times as much land as the world’s farmers cultivate.
The author was trained in veterinary science in Germany. Growing disillusioned with animal medicine, she transitioned to a career in archeozoology. While assisting with archeological excavations in Jordan, she became fascinated with camels. She completed a doctoral degree on camel domestication, and then received a fellowship to study camel husbandry and socioeconomics in India. There, she became enthralled by traditional Raika camel herders in Rajasthan, where she co-founded India’s first camel dairy and from which she advocates for pastoralists on a global level.
Pastoralists are people whose subsistence depends directly or indirectly on raising animals in native pastures. However, Köhler-Rollefson has adopted a colleague’s more nuanced definition of pastoralists as “people who have a social relationship with animals.” This classification does not encompass ranchers, nor does it include farmers who raise animals for milk on pastureland, mostly in the northern hemisphere.
Through references to a diverse collection of scientific articles, nonprofit reports, government studies, and personal observations and anecdotes, Köhler-Rollefson reviews the depth and breadth of herding worldwide, the ecological and sociological value of pastoralism, and the prospects for herding in an increasingly crowded, warmer, and hungrier future. She profiles cultures that herd reindeer, yaks, water buffaloes, camels, cattle, sheep, horses, donkeys, South American camelids and goats, but she concentrates on pastoralists who work with camels, sheep and goats.
The first section of the book is devoted to an overview of human herding cultures as well as a more detailed examination of the intrinsic human-animal interactions that lead to bonding, communication, and mutual reliance. The second part explores the roles of herding in sustaining biodiversity, regenerating soil fertility, and combatting climate change in addition to the importance of herding for providing nourishing, minimally processed food. The final brief section summarizes the foregoing and reflects on the future of the herding way of life.
Readers specifically focused on natural area stewardship will probably find the two chapters at the beginning of the second section of the book, “Herding Therapies,” of most interest. The first chapter reviews the biological diversity that can result from herding. The second chapter examines the ability of herding, properly managed, to regenerate soils and ecosystems. However, many of the world’s pastoral landscapes are anthropogenic and have been for centuries—sometimes millennia—such as those surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. Herding does help to maintain such cultural landscapes. Where native grazers have been removed or excluded from natural ecosystems, reintroducing herding can enhance and restore plant and animal communities. However, Köhler-Rollefson’s focus on the benefits of pastoralism for human societies does not include much of a thoughtful evaluation of the effects of pastoralism on natural ecosystems if vestiges of such ecosystems even persist in areas that have subjected to herding for long periods.
For readers interested in natural areas, perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the book is the lack of a balanced consideration of the impacts of herding on native landscapes. For example, herding may contribute to the introduction and spread of invasive species. Köhler-Rollefson mentions agricultural fields in India overwhelmed by invasive camel (or Indian globe) thistle (Echinops echinatus). The plant is the bane of farmers but is readily consumed (and spread?) by pastoralists’ camels. On the Spanish cañadas, shepherds sometimes hang loosely woven bags of seeds from sheep’s necks to spread forage plants. While the author laments the exclusion of pastoralists from traditional grazing areas when land is set aside for natural areas and preserves, she fails to evaluate ecosystem change dispassionately when grazing pressure has been reduced.
Much of the information is referenced with endnotes keyed to the chapters but, frustratingly, too many vague claims and questionable assertions are not supported by sources. The book includes an extensive bibliography, and the text is supplemented with eight pages of color photographs depicting pastoralist cultures. A first appendix summarizes more than 15 formal international declarations related to pastoralism adopted over the preceding two decades; a second appendix includes the text of the 2008 Declaration of Animals Keepers’ Rights generally cited in high-level international agreements.
As Köhler-Rollefson makes abundantly and repeatedly clear, pastoralism is the only practical agricultural option for people inhabiting large portions of the planet, especially in the southern hemisphere. Instead of being denigrated as backward, benighted, or inefficient by academic rangeland and animal scientists, pastoralism deserves to be celebrated as a source of sustenance that human societies have developed, nurtured and refined organically over long periods of time. Köhler-Rollefson also argues persuasively that some of the features of pastoralism profitably could be applied to intensive livestock culture as practiced in the global north in order to ameliorate climate change, improve animal health, enhance general animal welfare, restore soils, and reduce natural ecosystem destruction.
In contrast to Spain, where herders are permitted to walk sheep through Madrid, most herding cultures throughout the world are increasingly threatened because transhumance routes are blocked by private property, fencing, development, highways, land set aside for natural areas, and distrust and suspicion of members of unfamiliar herding groups.
Hoofprints on the Land is a gentle manifesto for pastoralists’ rights and a compelling justification for supporting and encouraging traditional herding societies dependent on grazing and browsing worldwide.
According to the United Nations’s Food and Agriculture Organization, 37% of the earth’s land surface is “agricultural land.” However, that term might be misleading because only one-third of agricultural land is arable cropland; the remaining two-thirds cannot be cultivated. These unplowable lands are too steep, stony or salty, too dry or too wet, the climate is too hot or too cold, or the growing season is too short. If these lands are to produce food, the plants growing there must be grazed or browsed by livestock adapted to challenging environments. As a result, transient herding cultures manage at least four times as much land as the world’s farmers cultivate.
The author was trained in veterinary science in Germany. Growing disillusioned with animal medicine, she transitioned to a career in archeozoology. While assisting with archeological excavations in Jordan, she became fascinated with camels. She completed a doctoral degree on camel domestication, and then received a fellowship to study camel husbandry and socioeconomics in India. There, she became enthralled by traditional Raika camel herders in Rajasthan, where she co-founded India’s first camel dairy and from which she advocates for pastoralists on a global level.
Pastoralists are people whose subsistence depends directly or indirectly on raising animals in native pastures. However, Köhler-Rollefson has adopted a colleague’s more nuanced definition of pastoralists as “people who have a social relationship with animals.” This classification does not encompass ranchers, nor does it include farmers who raise animals for milk on pastureland, mostly in the northern hemisphere.
Through references to a diverse collection of scientific articles, nonprofit reports, government studies, and personal observations and anecdotes, Köhler-Rollefson reviews the depth and breadth of herding worldwide, the ecological and sociological value of pastoralism, and the prospects for herding in an increasingly crowded, warmer, and hungrier future. She profiles cultures that herd reindeer, yaks, water buffaloes, camels, cattle, sheep, horses, donkeys, South American camelids and goats, but she concentrates on pastoralists who work with camels, sheep and goats.
The first section of the book is devoted to an overview of human herding cultures as well as a more detailed examination of the intrinsic human-animal interactions that lead to bonding, communication, and mutual reliance. The second part explores the roles of herding in sustaining biodiversity, regenerating soil fertility, and combatting climate change in addition to the importance of herding for providing nourishing, minimally processed food. The final brief section summarizes the foregoing and reflects on the future of the herding way of life.
Readers specifically focused on natural area stewardship will probably find the two chapters at the beginning of the second section of the book, “Herding Therapies,” of most interest. The first chapter reviews the biological diversity that can result from herding. The second chapter examines the ability of herding, properly managed, to regenerate soils and ecosystems. However, many of the world’s pastoral landscapes are anthropogenic and have been for centuries—sometimes millennia—such as those surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. Herding does help to maintain such cultural landscapes. Where native grazers have been removed or excluded from natural ecosystems, reintroducing herding can enhance and restore plant and animal communities. However, Köhler-Rollefson’s focus on the benefits of pastoralism for human societies does not include much of a thoughtful evaluation of the effects of pastoralism on natural ecosystems if vestiges of such ecosystems even persist in areas that have subjected to herding for long periods.
For readers interested in natural areas, perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the book is the lack of a balanced consideration of the impacts of herding on native landscapes. For example, herding may contribute to the introduction and spread of invasive species. Köhler-Rollefson mentions agricultural fields in India overwhelmed by invasive camel (or Indian globe) thistle (Echinops echinatus). The plant is the bane of farmers but is readily consumed (and spread?) by pastoralists’ camels. On the Spanish cañadas, shepherds sometimes hang loosely woven bags of seeds from sheep’s necks to spread forage plants. While the author laments the exclusion of pastoralists from traditional grazing areas when land is set aside for natural areas and preserves, she fails to evaluate ecosystem change dispassionately when grazing pressure has been reduced.
Much of the information is referenced with endnotes keyed to the chapters but, frustratingly, too many vague claims and questionable assertions are not supported by sources. The book includes an extensive bibliography, and the text is supplemented with eight pages of color photographs depicting pastoralist cultures. A first appendix summarizes more than 15 formal international declarations related to pastoralism adopted over the preceding two decades; a second appendix includes the text of the 2008 Declaration of Animals Keepers’ Rights generally cited in high-level international agreements.
As Köhler-Rollefson makes abundantly and repeatedly clear, pastoralism is the only practical agricultural option for people inhabiting large portions of the planet, especially in the southern hemisphere. Instead of being denigrated as backward, benighted, or inefficient by academic rangeland and animal scientists, pastoralism deserves to be celebrated as a source of sustenance that human societies have developed, nurtured and refined organically over long periods of time. Köhler-Rollefson also argues persuasively that some of the features of pastoralism profitably could be applied to intensive livestock culture as practiced in the global north in order to ameliorate climate change, improve animal health, enhance general animal welfare, restore soils, and reduce natural ecosystem destruction.
Did not finish
February 24, 2026DNF at 12%. Frankly this is not what I’m looking for, & certainly not a framework of mutually beneficial relationships between human & non-human animals that I’m interested in following. It’s better than industrialised sedentary farming, most definitely, but not free from exploitation. It’s possible to love the animals you herd & still exploit them, & I realise the capitalist, monetary-based society we live in makes it very easy for that to happen.
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