A political ecology of beef in colonial Tanzania and the global periphery, 1864–1961

Abstract

British colonial policy makers in East Africa from the 1930s to about 1960 drew on a model of pastoral industrialization that had its origins in the Chaco savannas of Paraguay earlier in the century. Based on the political ecology of a particular sector of beef processing – meat extract and corned beef – most famously represented by Liebig's Extract of Meat Company (Lemco), it was hoped that this company's ability to consume tens of thousands of marginal ‘scrub’ or ‘famine’ cattle as the raw material for its products would ease pressures on African land that contributed to desertification and soil erosion. Following World War II, colonial policy experts, especially veterinarians, enticed Lemco to Tanganyika in advance of a planned destocking campaign designed to develop cattle, cattle owners, and pastures along modern ranching lines, in large part owing to perceptions of a world meat shortage. The failure to modernize the cattle environment in the late colonial period and beyond stemmed largely from Lemco's structural reliance on unimproved cattle that were most suited to arid grasslands of global peripheries.