2,000 years after humanity domesticated crops and livestock, some farmers kicked off humanity's next agricultural innovation, pastoralism.
These pioneering livestock farmers strategically guided animals to seasonal grazing areas.
Their mobile lifestyle allowed them to develop trade relationships with communities and farmers along their routes, and this way of life provided pastoralists with wealth, social status, and political independence all the way to the 20th century.
Today, there are hundreds of millions of mobile pastoralists operating in every continent except Antarctica.
From the Himalayas to the Andes to the Alps, they keep sheep, goats, cattle, and yaks.
Sami pastoralists work with reindeer in Arctic rangelands.
Vangujar pastoralists in northern India keep water buffalo.
And all these communities work sustainably with their environments to produce food and other animal products.
But in the last century, political and economic policies have worked against these communities, impeding their access to basic resources and making them more vulnerable to climate change.
And one region where these issues are especially apparent is sub-Saharan Africa.
