TRANSPORT: Animal Power Grows Aross Developing World

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

GALLE, Sri Lanka, Mar 25 1998 (IPS) - Far from being edged out by motorised transport, animal power is still popular in many parts of the world for agriculture, trade, domestic transport and recreation, a transportation specialist confirmed.

“Animal power is increasing in most parts of the world, particularly Africa and I think that this trend is unlikely to change in the next century,” Prof. Paul Starkey of Britain’s University of Reading predicted.

Prof. Starkey recalled that during a brief assignment with the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), Rome, in the 1980s, he was told animal power would be redundant within 10 years.

“I held the view that animals would be still a powerful mode of transport, others at the FAO thought differently,” he told IPS. Time has proved him right. Ten years later, work animals like buffaloes, horses, donkeys and camels, continue to transport people and goods in the countryside of developing countries.

The Briton was in Galle, 115 kms south of Colombo, for a regional meeting of intermediate modes of transport, attended by specialists from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Laos, Sudan, Uganda, Britain, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka.

It was organised by the Lanka Forum on Rural Transport Development (LFRTD), a non-government network that designs and promotes rural transport systems, both motorised and non- motorised to meet different transport needs of communities.

The two-day meeting last week in the southern coastal town of Galle, was preceded by a parade of intermediate modes of transport (IMTs), developed by private individuals — some with the help of LFRTD.

The parade consisted of a modified bullock cart, cycle trailers, extended bicycles, motor cycle trailers, the “tuk tuk” (three-wheel scooter) and the tractor trailer. Kala Premachandra, a 42-year-old farmer, has produced between 300 and 400 bicycle trailers for commercial use in his village, Suriyawewe in the south.

With little schooling, Premachandra followed the family vocation of farming but was not happy. He wanted to start a bicycle repair shop but instead developed a water collection system in his field that impressed a local NGO. He was picked for a training course in welding and in 1983, produced his first bicycle trailer.

The news of his achievement cheered the small village and, goaded into making more, he started his own workshop. “I developed and improved on the first ones, and since then I have produced up to 400 trailers which have been purchased by village lads to transport goods and people,” he said, after completing the parade swing through a couple of southern villages.

Prof. Starkey said that traditional ox-driven carts remain important in South Asia with India having 14 million carts. Although the use of ox-carts has declined in Sri Lanka, they have proved persistent, providing profit for urban and rural entrepreneurs.

Horses, mules and donkeys are more important in north Asia and in arid and mountainous areas. “Donkey populations have been increasing in Pakistan and India, while China has the highest population of 11 million donkeys in the world,” he said.

The British specialist pointed out that animal power has certain advantages such as it is a natural, renewable energy source, ecologically sustainable as animals consume locally- available feed and reproduce themselves.

They cause less pollution and environmental damage than motorised alternatives and is generally affordable by rural communities. He said that animal power may be the only viable option for inter-village transport in remote or hilly areas where road systems are not developed like in the Himalayas, Central Asia and Ethiopia.

Animals are important for local trade and the first stage of agricultural marketing (field to farm and farm to market) and feeding supplies into long-distance motor-based networks.

Some people, Prof. Starkey says, question the continued relevance of animal power in countries that are rapidly industrialising and urbanising but contrary to many expectations, local animal-powered transport has proved highly persistent in many such countries.

“The technologies can be complementary, and both can help spread the social and economic benefits that can come from transport,” he told the meeting.

Animal transport is generally only abandoned if most members

of a society have access to affordable motorised transport which is why several countries which have rapidly increasing numbers of motor vehicles like China or India, also have stable or even expanding populations of donkeys and other transport animals.

“In such circumstances, farmers with animal transport tend to have larger circles of contacts and trade. The resulting enhanced market access allows them to increase their production and also their profit, so stimulating rural economies,” he said.

The British expert discounted the theory that it was the poor that owned animals. “Significant resources are required to purchase and maintain animals, and the very poor cannot afford transport animals. In most parts of the world, the poorest people have to carry water and goods themselves,” he noted.