Mobile Pastoralism in the Post-Communist Countries of Central Asia

Abstract

The author discusses contemporary pastoralism in the post-communist countries of Central Asia. Its transformation varies in individual countries, although in almost all of them the livestock have become the private property again. However, the state still maintains an excessive and detrimerntal control over the pastoralist sector, and individual producers far from always are market oriented. The author claims that pastoralist farms of capitalist type are the most perspective for utilization of the desert and semi-desert zones.