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Historically, Pastoralism takes place mainly in marginal areas, where cultivation (and the higher energy achieved per area) is not possible. Animals feed on the forage of these lands; an energy source which humans cannot directly utilize. The herds convert the energy into sources available for human consumption: milk, blood and sometimes meat (Bates, 1998:105)

Once you move away from the livestock connotations of pastoralism as presented in the puerile art and literature so associated with the term, and look at the mechanics of the thing, it becomes suprisingly complex, and applicable to modern life. The key to the pastoralist adaptation is maintaining a small population, mobility & dynamism and complex information systems. Sound familiar, like a recipe for a tech start-up company?

Abstracted out in this way, pastoralism begins to sound like a good idea. The application of these basic pastoralist principles to modern life, particularly during this transition period from industrialized society to whatever comes next, comprises an effecient, sustainable response to the marginalization and fracturing that is going on in both civic and business life.

Pastoralism has always been contrasted with intensive agriculture, and in a way that makes it easy to compare neo-pastoralism and traditional, industrial age business. Both pastoralism and neo-pastoralism are concerned with making use of resources that cannot or will not be used by either intensive agriculture or industrialized business. They both rely on complex communication systems in order to keep loosely allied members and groups in contact and acting in concert.

I hope to flesh out this theory much farther, but for now I want to share this germinal idea and see what you all have to say about it.