Categories of Stock Farmers: Definitions

A pastoralist is a livestock farmer operating predominantly in an extensive production system developed on native pasture and rangelands and based in some extend on mobility. The pastoralist group includes nomads, transhumants and semi-transhumants (see mobility).

- A nomad is highly mobile, but does not necessarily return to a "base" every year, and does not practice cultivation. For example, the Tubu of the Sahara.
- A transhumant is highly mobile, but moves between definite seasonal bases every year. For example the Samburu of Kenya, the Bororo in Niger. It may carry out a non-sedentary form of cultivation. For example the Zaghana of Chad.
- A semi-transhumant is living in a base, but a part of the family and livestock is seasonally mobile, and the rest is sedentary in one of the seasonal bases, practicing cultivation. For example the Dinka of Sudan.

The sedentary farmers are the opposite of pastoralists.

- An agro-pastoralist is a livestock farmer practicing an extensive production system where all of the family and livestock are sedentary. He depends for more than 50 per cent of income on livestock. His main capital is the livestock, grazing on communal land.
- The ranch owner has in the same time the landed property and the capital livestock. He can entrust a ranch manager to rear the livestock and manage the pastures.
- A livestock farmer can operate within his own property, his farm, and pratice simultaneously cultivations. He can or not apply intensified techniques. If more than 50 per cent of his income depends on crops, not on livestock, he is classified as an operator in a mixed farming system.

Livestock farming, particularly cattle or sheep, can be realized by private companies, or public societies and managed by a ranch or a farm manager specially appointed.

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