ABSTRACT
In the classification of societies agropastoralists, along with horticulturalists who apply shifting cultivation techniques and nomads who practice animal husbandry, are usually situated between societies of hunters and gatherers and those engaged in sedentary subsistence agriculture. In the Wallersteinian world system perspective, one would locate subsistence-based societies 'beyond the periphery', often even beyond the pale of the primitive accumulation of capital. The practice of agropastoralism, on the other hand, is more likely to be one of necessity for societies and households that face conditions where the ecology will support neither agriculture or pastoralism alone yet the environmental conditions for both production activities are available. Subsistence agropastoralism includes animal husbandry practices which emphasize the natural reproduction of herds, with little or no provision to produce through cultivation the food consumed by livestock. Agropastoralism distinguishes entire societies, though not every household of a society exemplifies all of the economic activities associated with agropastoralism.
