This paper presents an overview of the livestock sector in Central Asia using national statistics and field survey data. Growing consumer demand and underused pasture reserves suggest significant potential for growth. But production is fragmented between many small household producers with poor access to land, family farms and very large (but often inefficient) enterprises. Few producers can supply quality livestock products at high volumes, leading some meat and milk processors to favour imported produce. Peri-urban milk suppliers may participate in value chains through wholesalers, but in remoter areas farms specialise in meat production, reliant on long chains of intermediaries. Only in Kazakhstan do international agreements, slaughter and animal health arrangements favour export prospects in the near future. Since the 1990s, winter fodder deficits have limited livestock productivity. Domestic fodder production is increasing in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, but is hindered by state order policies in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Dairy producers close to markets often provide high quality fodder, whilst need for supplements is lower amongst mobile meat producers with winter pasture. Amongst the latter, a class of large commercial operations is emerging, whilst smaller farms lacking access to grazing resources find it harder to grow. Government policy often magnifies differences between small and large producers, for example through conditions for subsidies or land access procedures. Subsidised credit is available in most republics but uptake is limited by effective demand. Improved public services, better support for service cooperatives and decentralised processing and slaughter facilities would help producers increase value from their livestock.

This volume of 18 chapters is the work of more than 30 authors, many of whom are natives of the Central Asian region or are researchers who have dedicated a large part of their working lives to studying the development dynamics in this vast and fascinating region. The work focuses on the 20 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990. But it also traces the attitudes of land users to the land dating from before the late 19th century, when Russian conquest and colonization occurred, and through the upheavals caused by Soviet-style collectivization and sedentarization. The book is rich with new data presented in 68 easy to understand charts/graphs (many in color) and 50 Tables. Information was generated for this book by experts working in-country. It presents for the first time in English a digest of plethora of previously inaccessible Russian reports and scientific literature that will be invaluable for development agencies, including UN, World Bank, Asian Development Bank, Islamic Bank as well as to students of this vast and fascinating region who seek up to date and authoritive information.

"Rural families in the CIS enjoyed more equal conditions under socialist regimes. The withdrawal of the state from many areas of life is increasing inequality between rural and urban people. Subnational inequalities within the rural sector are also growing." The transformation of Central and Eastern European agriculture started almost a decade ago. Looking back, it can be seen that the countries concerned made the right choice in setting their overall goals and policies for transition to a market economy, but the social costs have been high. Under the present economic and political conditions in the region, there is no alternative to the creation of a market economy based on private ownership. However, given the developments of the past eight years, it is clear that the initial expectations for transformation were overly optimistic and the transition process is far more complicated and complex than anyone imagined in 1991. The region's agrarian economy is still struggling to adjust to economic reality. This volume presents a fascinating overview of social assessments carried out in Central Asia and Turkey as they relate to the preparation of World Bank agricultural projects designed to support the transition of agriculture from a socialist, or semi-feudal, system to a modern market-conforming system. Taking a retrospective look at the agricultural transition in the region, one could come to the conclusion that the social aspects of the transition have been given short shrift. Increased social tensions created by the delayed reforms have brought these problems to the forefront of agricultural policy decisionmaking and have put pressure on the governments to solve them. This compendium not only provides a comprehensive review of the social problems emerging out of the transition in the regional rural sector, but it also identifies some of their root causes.

This Research Topic is hosted in partnership with the "Grazing in Future Multi-Scapes" international workshop. The workshop will be held online, 30th May - 5th June 2021. Throughout different landscapes of the world, “grazing” herbivores fulfill essential roles in ecology, agriculture, economies and cultures including: families, farms, and communities. Not only do livestock provide food and wealth, they also deliver ecosystem services through the roles they play in environmental composition, structure and dynamics. Grazing, as a descriptive adjective, locates herbivores within a spatial and temporal pastoral context where they naturally graze or are grazed by farmers, ranchers, shepherds etc. In many cases, however, pastoralism with the single objective of maximizing animal production and/or profit has transformed landscapes, diminishing biodiversity, reducing water and air quality, accelerating loss of soil and plant biomass, and displacing indigenous animals and people. These degenerative landscape transformations have jeopardized present and future ecosystem and societal services, breaking the natural integration of land, water, air, health, society and culture. Land-users, policy makers and societies are calling for alternative approaches to pastoral systems; a call for diversified-adaptive and integrative agro-ecological and food-pastoral-systems designs that operate across multiple scales and ‘scapes’ (e.g. thought-, social-, land-, food-, health-, wild-scapes), simultaneously. There needs to be a paradigm shift in pastoral production systems and how grazing herbivores are managed –grazed- within them, derived initially from a change in perception of how they provide wealth. The thoughtscapes will include paradigm shifts where grazers move away from the actual archetype of pastoralism, future landscapes are re-imagined, and regenerative and sustainable management paradigms are put in place to achieve these visions. From this will come a change in collective thinking of how communities and cultures (socialscapes) perceive their relationships with pastoral lands. The landscapes are the biotic and abiotic four-dimensional domains or environments in need of nurture. Landscapes are the tables where humans and herbivores gain their nourishment, i.e. foodscapes. Foodscapes and dietary perceptions, dictate actions and reactions that are changing as developed countries grapple with diseases related to obesity, and people starve in developing countries. Societies are demanding healthscapes and nutraceutical foodscapes, and paradoxically, some are moving away from animal products. While indigenous species of animals, including humans (wildscapes), have been displaced from many of their lands by monotonic pastoralism, multifunctional pastoral systems can be designed in view of dynamic multi-scapes of the future. The purpose of this Research Topic is to influence future mental and practical models of pastoralism in continually evolving multi-scapes. We seek a collection of papers that will cultivate such a shift in thinking towards future models of sustainable multipurpose pastoralism. The contributions will be synthesized to establish how multifunctional pastoral systems can be re-imagined and then designed in view of the integrative dynamics of sustainable future multi-scapes.