Abstract
From time immemorial, transhumant livestock farmers have continued to work in the countryside, living an intense and symbolic form of social distancing. Their work consists of moving around with their herd or flock, mainly sheep, so they can provide their animals with the best pastures. This research study, using ethnographic techniques, located and interviewed a group of livestock farmers to understand how the use of smartphones has changed their professional and social habits. Even now in modern times, this group still lives in isolation, working alone in the mountains. However, they have also been undergoing profound change due to the development of virtual social networks and information channels, mainly through groups in online applications. This enables them to keep fully up to date with all the topics they are interested in. This new connectivity has allowed them to make better-informed financial decisions based on more and better information. It has also meant they can produce proposals for joint action when faced with problems that affect them as a group. Lastly, the widespread use of mobile phones has increased their ability to communicate with friends and family, breaking previously held social taboos and barriers.
Keywords
Introduction
Extensive transhumant livestock farming was one of the main activities in Spain until the 19th century, when it fell into a period of strong decline. In fact, in the 1960s the practice was thought to have been completely wiped out (Fontavella, 1951; Burriel, 1968) due to increasing industrialization and abandonment of the rural environment. This ancient practice consisted of moving livestock, mainly sheep, from the mountains to the valleys when the cold winter weather made it impossible to remain at high altitude, making the most of mild winters on the coast. The animals were moved back up into the mountains when the start of the summer heat dried out coastal pastures.
The farmers usually spend the 6 winter months alone, leaving their families in mountain villages, although there are also cases where the family accompanies the farmer to live in the valley during the winter. The farmers keep the cattle in the corral every afternoon and go home until the next morning, when they come back to take the sheep out to eat grass all day long.
Transhumant livestock farmers are, by definition, some of the greatest exponents of working in nature, outside the sphere of the familiar (Agulló, 2009). Historically, transhumant shepherds, a traditionally male job, made lengthy journeys of up to 1 month walking from mountain pastures to warmer areas, where they would spend the winter. Both in the mountains and in the valleys, shepherds walked from early in the morning until sunset with their flocks. They were far away from the comforts of town life and would remain with their animals in full contact with nature.
However, in the 21st century it is becoming clear that transhumance is still alive but in a different way, adapting to the new demands of modern life. This century’s livestock farmers still move daily with their flocks in search of green pastures to feed their sheep and every year they continue to move from the mountains into the valleys in winter, returning at the end of spring. This study sets out to analyze how technology, specifically the use of mobile phones, has altered the practices of a group of professionals accustomed to staying far away from inhabited areas, out in the countryside and the mountains, in permanent solitude.
The use of mobile devices has gone from being a novelty to being an everyday practice that is now firmly rooted in our society, providing a socialization that encourages people to communicate in a dynamic where technology becomes routine. Mobile phones are a flexible and attractive means of communication, a disruptive technology that unexpectedly and significantly revolutionized traditional telephones (Christensen, 2013). They represent a new way of being in a social environment and, for many people, not having one is comparable to the physical isolation that we have all experienced at some point in our lives (Lozano-Ramírez, 2019). Transhumant shepherds and herders, as an expression of a trade loaded with strong symbolism for its solitude and work in the middle of nature, have also opted to integrate this technology tool into their everyday lives.
Smartphone use for Spanish transhumant shepherds
Society is becoming increasingly mobile and access to broadband forms part of the basic social structure, much in the same way as electricity and roads (Aguado & Martínez, 2008). The constant development of smartphones and their huge expansion make them a flexible and easily accessible device. Smartphones have been widely adopted and it is taken for granted that everyone has one, using them to meet several human needs, both superficial and profound (Goggin, 2006).
Various published studies show an evident worldwide growth of smartphones (Jamalova & Constantinovits, 2020; IAB Spain, 2019; Kemp, 2018). In Spain, thanks to the statistical reports on the digital society produced annually by Telefonica Foundation, we know there has been a 5% increase between 2018 and 2019 in the use of these devices, taking into account that 96% of citizens own a mobile phone, with 87% of these being smartphones. Reasons for using them vary enormously and account for an increasing number of aspects of everyday life, with the main uses being for entertainment (37.5%) and for communicating with family and friends (34.7%). Only 24.7% of the Spanish population use their smartphones for professional or educational purposes (Fundación Telefónica, 2019).
In the 21st century, albeit with some major changes, transhumance is still practiced by a significant group of livestock farmers. These professionals continue with this practice for its competitive advantage, as it reduces their running costs, mainly for the savings they make on animal feed. Transhumant livestock make the most of both summer pastures in the mountains and winter grass in the valleys. This is a small, traditionally mobile group of people who work alone. The research question asked here is, how has modernity and specifically technology impacted such a traditional activity as this one?
Since the first mobile phone came on the market in 1983 (Klemens, 2010), its functions have been increasing and adapting to users’ needs and interests. This constant and permanent evolution conditions the way people relate and communicate daily, in the same way that the smartphone has been adapting its functions to the changing needs of the user (Linke, 2013).
Among its different functions, we recognize the technological ones, in other words, the possibilities of the device, and its social functions, both of which are constantly evolving (De la Torre, 2012). In addition to its original function of making calls, the mobile phone has been gradually incorporating features and services, enabling users to produce and disseminate content, with the resulting exponential growth in its initial potential for communication.
The functions of the device can be split into four stages (Arroyo, 2011):
Traditional functions. Making telephone calls from anywhere, at any time, without needing to be connected to a telephone land line.
Multimedia services. Mobile phones have incorporated multimedia features such as still and video cameras, music players, radios, and GPS.
Advanced connections. The mobile phone revolution and the arrival of the smartphone. In addition to all the functions described above, these devices have access to the Internet and all this entails.
Applications. Applications (commonly known as apps), many of which are free of charge, are constantly being developed for mobile phones and for all kinds of uses.
Smartphone functions offer many advantages for their users, including an increase in social cohesion and union with families and friends, which is considered especially important for developing countries, rural areas, and professions such as the one presented in this paper (Pearce, 2013; Watson & Duffield, 2016).
The use of a smartphone means transhumant shepherds have fewer worries during the transhumance process, as they may be in permanent contact with their families, friends, and professional colleagues (Butt, 2015). A previous study on the use of mobile phones as a survival strategy for nomadic shepherds carried out in a region of Morocco (Vidal-González & Nahhass, 2018) showed that in addition to the connection between the nomadic shepherd and their family, using a mobile phone turned out to be essential for staying in touch with veterinarians, for obtaining information about new grazing areas, and in particular for getting updates about livestock market and auction prices. However, what was most important, according to the results of that study, was that mobile phones improved social cohesion within traditional family groups, making the long distances between family members easier to deal with.
Smartphones have obvious limitations that must be considered both in terms of technology and in how the device is used (De la Torre, 2012). Specifically, in the case of transhumance being discussed here, battery life is likely to be one of the most significant technological limitations. A phone battery lasts an average of 14 hours, depending on its quality and on the use made of the device. In this case it is essential to have plugs and power sources with which to charge the device. The device’s technical and storage limitations might be another limitation for transhumant shepherds; however, this can be solved by using the latest-generation mobile phones, as well as by using storage space in the cloud to reduce the amount of information held on the device and free up memory space (Husted et al., 2011). The digital divide in Spain, in relation to mobile adoption and use, continues to be a social problem affecting variables such as age, level of education, and gender (Álvarez-Sigüenza, 2019; Martin, 2020), in addition to other variables such as digital skills, the context in which technology is used and the subjective perception of its usefulness (Robles, 2017).
Transhumance on the main forms of social media: WhatsApp and Facebook
Burke et al. (2011) stated that, unlike the early days when the Internet supported a small set of activities and appealed to a homogeneous group of university students, social media sites are now integrated platforms enabling a wide range of users to perform a number of activities such as image sharing, private messaging, joining groups, and spreading news. Mobile phones are normally used to connect people who know each other already, but the use of certain applications and social networks on smartphones also allow new social connections to be created and developed (Castells et al., 2007). According to Humphreys (2008, p. 116), “some mobile social networking apps are designed to facilitate interaction between members of private social networks (private internal space) who are physically distanced (external disparate space).”
The report produced by We Are Social (2019) shows the social media sites preferred by Spanish users are YouTube (89%), WhatsApp (87%), Facebook (82%), Instagram (54%), and Twitter (49%). For IAB Spain (2019), out of all the instant messaging and communication applications available for smartphones, the most popular and most frequently used by Spanish Internet users is WhatsApp. WhatsApp is undoubtedly the leading multimedia messaging service on mobile networks. It handles more than 64 billion messages every day, including photos and videos (and the figure continues to rise). With more than 500 million active users, it has become the fastest-growing company in history in terms of users (Fiadino et al., 2014, p. 133). According to Rosenfeld et al. (2018), “WhatsApp was developed to enable users to send messages privately and for free via their smartphones” (p. 650). It also has group chat functions, status updates allowing users to describe their thoughts or moods, real-time location sharing, and even video calls. WhatsApp is not only cheaper than SMS messaging, it also allows users to have conversations in large groups, something that is difficult, if not impossible, with SMS (Rosenfeld et al., 2018). The application’s simplicity, its low Internet data consumption, and its immediacy for staying in touch with one’s circle of family and friends make it the ideal application for fighting the loneliness and isolation that can arise in certain social sectors or in rural communities that are more socially connected than urban ones (Wasan & Jain, 2017).
The most important aspect of social media is not which one is used but what happens on them. These networks form part of everyday life, they should not be seen as a fantastic possibility but an actual part of reality and of society. According to Mangisch and Mangisch (2020), the uses made of social media are very wide ranging, from getting back in touch with old friends, publishing and commenting on photos and videos, learning, all the way through to setting up and maintaining professional communities. It is in this aspect of setting up professional communities that the Facebook network takes on special importance in the profession being discussed in this study, and it already has a number of pages dealing exclusively with the profession of transhumance. The benefits reported are mainly those of keeping a traditional occupation in the public eye and staying in touch with other members of the same profession but most of all, the calmness and feeling of togetherness that come from the ongoing connection with family and friends (Kosinski et al., 2015; Watson & Duffield, 2016).
Some examples include the page “Asociación Trashumancia y Naturaleza (Transhumance and Nature Association)” (https://www.facebook.com/TrashumanciayN/) with more than 9,700 followers (Figure 1) and “Trashumancia viva (Alive Transhumance)”, which has close to 3,300 followers (https://www.facebook.com/Trashumancia-viva-1376786452543951/) (Figure 2). Alongside this are the huge number of personal pages and profiles found on this network about occupations such as shepherding and similar activities in rural and mountain areas.
Transhumance and Nature Association Facebook page.
Alive Transhumance Facebook page.
Method
To perform this study, a qualitative research methodology was designed and carried out between 2016 and 2019. A quantitative study was ruled out because the target population is small, with only 36 shepherds, all of them men, practicing transhumance from Aragón and Castilla-La Mancha to the Valencia region (Vidal-González, 2018), plus this population profile is largely inaccessible as these individuals remain permanently in the mountains, making reaching them a difficult process. Most of the interviews were carried out in the field, either in the winter pastures or in the mountains. Some informants were interviewed more than once, to deepen the information collected. One shepherd, informant 11, was accompanied on several occasions while he was travelling, over the course of 6 days, from the high to the low pastures and vice versa. This allowed us to meet and talk to his wife and daughter as well. The study was comprised of a final sample of this population consisting of 11 livestock farmers and one veterinarian specializing in transhumant livestock (informant 12) and whose personal data can be seen in Table 1 .
Informant Data.
CU: Cuenca; TE: Teruel; VLC: Valencia province.
The interviews could be carried out thanks to the trust that had developed after years of work with this group. The informants were interviewed in Spanish, were aware of the researchers’ professional interest in their work, and gave their oral consent to be interviewed, as no intimate or personal issues are dealt with. No one refused to be interviewed, although in some cases the responses were sparse.
This was also a participatory research study in which the individuals being studied (transhumant shepherds) were part of the research process itself. On many occasions, the authors joined the community of transhumant shepherds on their journeys, which enabled them to play the role of participatory observers and study the group as they carried on with their everyday lives. This mutual collaboration between participants and researchers led to a more thoughtful approach by members of the research team and minimized the risk of the research process becoming oppressive for the study participants. We walked with the farmers, we became wet due to rain like them, we were hot and cold, we arrived exhausted after days and days of walking from the first hour until the sun had set. This accompaniment has allowed us a closeness and familiarity that would have been impossible otherwise.
This research study using qualitative methodology is based on the following initial elements, shown in graphic form in Figure 3, adapted from the model put forward by Saldaña (2011).
Qualitative research adapted from Saldaña (2011).
The information-gathering instruments were the semi-structured interview, participatory observation and the use of an in-depth field diary, and a participatory observation diary. The study applied the principle of parsimony (Sober, 1981), which says that if there is one more complex system for performing the research study and another simpler one, it is likely the latter will be the most suitable. In view of this, applying this principle and due to the profile of the subject being studied, an informal, semi-structured personal interview format was used, with open questions. The interviewer always had control over the interview and was able to redirect the questions when necessary, but the interviewees were given freedom in terms of time and order of answers. The benefits obtained were that the principle was applied to all participants in the study without exception, enabling numerous clarifications and more details to be obtained for some questions, providing additional information to the mere remarks made by participants. Interviews consisted of a total of 14 questions, which were structured into categories and indicators (Table 2) to enable a better analysis to be made after the replies.
Guiding Questions and Their Classification.
Similarly, as part of the participant observation research, the authors requested permission to participate in a WhatsApp professional group with over 200 members, as well as several Facebook pages.
Lastly, participatory observation was written up in a field diary, where the following events were recorded: number of calls made by participants, both personal and for work; duration of calls; locations and time without network coverage while on the move; and the time the smartphone was used for leisure applications, people called, and topics of conversation. It is important to highlight that during the observation process the observer must exercise continuous reflection and must not be noticed by the participants in order not to skew the observations recorded. These notes enable the process to be described better and complement the data gathered in the interviews, in some cases allowing quantitative data to be obtained on frequency of repetition in answers and recorded notes. The translation into English was done in the process of writing the paper.
Findings
The study only found one case (informant 5) of a shepherd who stated he did not need a mobile phone for work, although he did have a smartphone and used WhatsApp. The other individuals interviewed stated they used their mobile phones, enthusiastically even, as a tool that clearly improved their professional activity. Of them, 10 had a smartphone. Eight of them used WhatsApp, although there were significant differences between the way they used their phones and in the technology involved. Only two of the interviewees had feature phones that were more than 15 years old (informant 2 and 11), whereas eight out of the 12 used the WhatsApp application, which needs a smartphone to run.
Interviewees stated, as seen below, the mobile phone had changed their lives completely and they used it a great deal for both personal and professional purposes. As informant 9 put it: “the mobile phone has changed my life by 90%.”
“The phone allows me to break away from loneliness and boredom, to be in touch with family and friends. For me it is a window to information and to the world. I can talk about everything with my colleagues, no matter how far away they are, and I can expand my network of contacts with people who have the same professional concerns as I do,” informant 6 pointed out.
The frequency with which they used this technology was high. Informant 1 spoke “every day with the family.” Informant 4 commented that he is “always on the mobile.” Similarly, informant 10 said he had received 30 calls the day before the interview.
The transhumant shepherds reported that their main use of the mobile phone was for professional purposes, but it was also used a great deal for staying in touch with family. One of the main uses reported was for checking the weather forecast, a crucial factor for working in the open air and because the quality of the pastures required by the livestock is dependent on rainfall. Informant 4 said he checked the weather forecast “every day,” as did informant 6, who remarked that checking the forecast on the mobile phone was more accurate as it provided local information. Lastly, informant 10 had “two weather applications and [I check] them frequently.”
A recurring use by livestock farmers was to keep up to date with the weekly rates in the various livestock marketplaces (Albacete, Binefar, Ebro, and Murcia) and gauging the best time to sell their lambs for slaughter, the main economic purpose of sheep farming. Along with this information, they also wanted to know the prices of animal feed, one of the biggest financial outlays of livestock farming. Informant 1 “receives the market rates by WhatsApp every week,” something also reported by informants 3, 6, and 11, although informant 11 received this information from his daughters, who looked it up on the Internet. Together with this information, the shepherds were using mobile phones to buy sheep, talk about politics, especially farming policy, but also about problems with their animals, such as diarrhea for example, according to informant 10. This instant access to information means they can take more accurate decisions. As informant 1 remarked, “before they used to mislead us more, they cheated us as much as they liked, but now we have all the information.”
One of the uses that livestock farmers thought had been a game changer for them was being connected in the event of an emergency or an urgent need. When the shepherd was alone and could not fend for themselves, the mobile phone became an essential item of kit. Some of these cases included “asking for help when a sheep has given birth or when an animal has broken a leg” (informant 2), being found in the middle of the countryside by the truck delivering “straw or animal feed or the veterinarian who has to do tests on the animals” (informant 3), but also in case “you have a fall or you break an arm” (informant 10). In particular, for informant 12 (the veterinarian) “the mobile phone is essential” as it meant she could get out and attend to an emergency in a very short space of time.
One of the most commonly mentioned applications used by informants was WhatsApp, used for professional purposes. Using this application enabled them to break with the traditional isolation of their profession and feel connected, part of a group, with a network of colleagues with whom they could share concerns and interests. 1 Informants 1, 3, 6, 8, and 10 said they were members of professional groups on this application “to stay in touch with market prices” (informant 1), but also for “keeping abreast of Agrarian Community Policy proposals in Brussels” (informant 3), for “talking about anything, politics, lamb prices, checking market prices” (informant 6), “for exchanging information about diseases, prices, to support each other” (informant 8), which allowed them to “stay tuned to all kinds of news about colleagues” (informant 11). The researchers were members of a WhatsApp group that had more than 200 users and published information about market prices as well as forecasts on future prices, “this week is the start of March and the mood in the sheep market is positive. . . There aren’t too many lambs in the field and early April sales are expected to be good.”
Informant 6 refers to an especially symbolic event, halfway between the professional and the social. Thanks to WhatsApp, they regularly organize a dinner for livestock farmers, to which they travel from far away. One of them was attended by 85 people. These are unique moments of meeting and cooperation in a sector where individual work is the norm.
We have witnessed the intense use of the mobile phone by the farmer, with calls to offer to buy the flock, to indicate he had lost a sheep, to ask for support from the family for having an injured sheep, or to offer help in times of special difficulty because of a rainstorm that threatened to cut off the road. When researchers asked informant 11’s wife if she imagines her life without the mobile phone, especially during the transfer from the mountains to the valleys, she only smiled and said, “not at all.”
For informant 12, a veterinarian in regular professional contact with the transhumant livestock farmers, the mobile phone and the use of messaging meant that “livestock farmers are getting more information.”
One of the critical times for these farmers is when they must go on the move, taking their livestock from the mountains to the winter pastures and vice versa, and many of them still do this journey on foot. It is at this point when loneliness becomes a real and pressing issue (Figure 4). To quote Agulló (2009, p. 90) “the transhumant journey is complex and full of obstacles,” forcing everyone involved in it to put greater safety measures in place.
Shepherd connected in a Teruel village, by David Cantillo.
As the researchers found during their participatory observation, the family remained on high alert during these critical days, “my parents worry when I’m on my own in the mountains” (informant 1) and were ready to take more action to support the farmer as he moved around in the mountains. Before shepherds had mobile phones, there was much more uncertainty and they had to call from the switchboard phone in the villages they passed through so they could keep in touch with their families, as informant 2 refers to when remembering his youth. Now, with mobiles, everyone, farmers and their families, “are much calmer,” as informant 2 put it. It was clear the two things informants worried about were lack of network coverage in some areas and being left without battery charge.
In terms of coverage, informants were perfectly aware of the areas they passed through where there was no network coverage, “especially in the riverbeds” (informant 2) or “I know exactly which areas have coverage” (informant 10). Informants 1, 2, 4, 10, and 12 complained there were still places with no coverage, so they had to use a variety of strategies, such as calling home just before they lost reception (informant 6). In the case of informant 11, who was accompanied by a researcher several times during the journey, his family knew exactly the times and places where he was out of contact, and they were bearing this in mind when they called him. As the journey is the most critical time, “when your needs are greatest” (informant 2), this is when the family makes the highest number of calls, “when I’m on the move it’s two or three times a day, but if it’s a complicated day they call more often” (informant 2), “my family calls me every 2 hours if there’s no one with me” (informant 11), but they also got calls from friends who knew how vulnerable they were, so they called to find out how they were and offer help if needed. The researchers witnessed several particularly difficult days, during a period of heavy rainfall, which triggered an incessant stream of calls to informant 11 to provide information about the state of the route, give help, and facilitate the shepherd’s work at such a key time (Figure 5).
On the journey, by David Cantillo.
Another of the problems that often arises, as mentioned earlier, is that of phone battery life, although most did not have problems as they slept in places where they could recharge their mobile phones. Only two informants described having a strategy in place for this. Informant 3 had a portable battery and informant 6 disconnected WhatsApp during the journey to save battery power.
Along with professional uses, informants also mentioned more personal uses, mainly for keeping in touch with their families. So, informant 1 said his parents “suffer because I’m on my own in the mountains,” so he talked to them every day. Likewise, informant 3 commented that the mobile phone “means I can stay in touch with my father, and have a video call with my daughter”. Informant 6 always calls his parents and “talk to my mother at night.” Similarly, the day before his interview, Informant 10 received six calls from family and friends and informant 11 received two calls a day from his wife to see how he was getting on.
In this sense, although the vast majority have a smartphone, the main app use is to communicate more quickly, through voice or text messages on WhatsApp. Facebook has a more social component.
Several informants referred to the use of their mobile device as a tool for combating the loneliness and isolation that comes with the job. In a way, the mobile phone allows them to break down the barriers of space, to build their social networks, following Massey (1992). Informant 1 remarked that without chatting on the phone “it would be so boring” and that before, none of them were really aware of their solitary lifestyle, “we didn’t stop to think about loneliness” (informant 2). Similar views were expressed by informant 6, “we aren’t so alone now” and “before, there were a lot of people in the countryside and now it can be frightening, that’s why the mobile helps.” Lastly, informant 11 emphasized that if there was no one with him “the family call me every 2 hours”. Another way of breaking the isolation, loneliness, and monotony was the use of WhatsApp to communicate with people, “otherwise you can die from so much loneliness” (informant 1).
After collecting the information offered by the informants, we analyzed the questions asked in categories and classified them into units of meaning. We have mainly insisted on the questions of categories two (technical aspects of the mobile) and five (professional use), labelling with the code of interest for our research. Half of the informants considered coverage the main technical problem of mobile phone use while travelling, whereas only 25% mentioned battery life as a technical problem. Regarding the different codifications of professional use that the interviewees make of the mobile phone, the descriptive frequencies have been those shown in Table 3.
Frequency of Professional Use in Responses.
Discussion
As far as we know, there are no studies on the use of mobile phones in extensive livestock farming in Europe, so we will compare them with those obtained in the Global South.
One of the main shared uses is in relation to price information in the market. Having this information allows you to make better decisions about how and when to sell or buy. Jensen (2007, p. 892) confirmed that “mobile phones reduced price dispersion and waste, and increased fishermen’s profits and consumer welfare” when writing on fishermen in Southern India. Aker’s study on farmers in Niger (2008, p. 40) was also able to check how the use of the mobile phone “reduced price dispersion across grain markets.” Similar conclusions were reached by Tanle and Abane (2018) in their research on rural markets in Ghana, where farmers are monitoring prices until they reach acceptable levels. Finally, Barrantes and Fernández-Ardevol (2012) point out that the use of mobile phones reduces the costs of buying and selling in the markets, in their research on markets in the Puno region of Peru.
Another point where the uses coincide is that related to professional issues, referred to as the most important by 70% of Moroccan informants (Vidal-González & Nahhass, 2018). Also, for the Spanish farmers, the professional use is the most outstanding.
Where there is a coincidence is in the social use of the mobile phone, which for everyone is a perfect formula to overcome social isolation, as informants 1, 2, 3, 6, 10, and 11 note and is summed up by informant 6 as “it’s not lonely, it’s half-life.” However, it is proposed as complementary to professional use, unlike what happens in the rural communities of Papua New Guinea (Watson & Duffield, 2016).
We would like to draw attention to an interesting coincidence, because for livestock farmers in East Africa mobile phones are a distraction during the herding process (Butt, 2015, p. 9), coincidentally with the social use referred to by the Spanish shepherds.
However, we also found important differences, because livestock farmers in East Africa use the mobile phone mainly to know about the condition of pastures and water points (Butt, 2015). This coincides with the majority use by nomadic livestock farmers in Eastern Morocco (Vidal-González & Nahhass, 2018), who declare the primary use of their mobile phones is receiving information on the location and condition of the pastures. Spanish cattle breeders do not need this information as much, mainly because the pastures are not so variable, and competition is much less.
The risks associated with attacks from wild animals (Woodroffe et al., 2005), threats from Protected Areas rangers (Worboys et al., 2015), or competition for access to pastureland (Bernués et al., 2011) are much lower in Spain, where there is closer cooperation between livestock farmers and less pressure on territory. This can probably be explained by the fact that they are a much smaller group, which decreases rivalry and increases cooperation.
Another important difference is the absence of references on the use of social networks in the Global South, probably due to the use of first-generation mobiles. We found an interesting parallel with rural China, where people use WeChat as “an information source for locally relevant news and everyday information” (Yan & Schroeder, 2019, p. 18), in a similar way to how informants use WhatsApp.
Finally, the close relationship between farmers, who live and work in rural areas, and the cities should be stressed, because it is there that prices are set and transactions are carried out, as Donner (2008) points out.
Conclusions
The work of sheep farmers, especially those who are transhumant, demands spending the whole day, from dawn to dusk, in the countryside, alone, with the flock. This work is repeated every day of the year, making this one of the most socially distanced groups and a symbol of separation from the rest of the community. This distance becomes even more noticeable in transition periods, when they have to move the whole flock through the countryside from the valley to the mountain with the arrival of summer and back down from the mountain to the valley with the first signs of winter. In this sense, the study of the use of communication technology in this group is particularly interesting for anthropology research.
The use of the mobile phone as a means of accessing the Internet is becoming increasingly common in society. The Internet is a reality that is fully integrated into the everyday lives of millions of people around the world. It is impossible to understand many everyday activities without Internet access. This research study highlights how the use of smartphones and access to the Internet by this social group has substantially changed both their lives and their work. Being connected and having access to information has enabled them to make drastic changes to their personal and professional relationships. As informant 8 put it, “I think it [the mobile] is essential.” Informants 1 and 2 agreed, saying that “without a mobile you could die” and “the mobile phone is the basis” of their work.
The majority of uses were related to professional activity, allowing farmers to stay informed about topics that are important for them: market prices, weather, animal feed prices, the development of farming policies in the European Union; they also used their mobile phones to exchange advice or make veterinary consultations. As informant 1 emphasized: “we talk about professional things, as when we shepherds get together we don’t have any other topics of conversation, but we also chat about grasses, lambs, diseases, and so on.” For this same informant, “90% of my contacts are shepherds,” whereas informant 3 talked about his mobile as “an essential work tool (talk to the shepherd, order feed, warn that a sheep has lambed).”
The ability to access such a huge amount of information has broken the information isolation suffered by livestock farmers, allowing them to keep in touch with prices and market trends, as can be seen for the same group of people in other geographical regions (Vidal-González & Nahhass, 2018). This was confirmed by informant 1, who stated that “before, they used to mislead us more, but now we have all the information (before, they cheated us as much as they liked),” referring to the fact that previously it was the buyers who set prices downwards, which could not be discussed in view of the isolation and lack of information on market prices. Stockbreeders now receive all the information thanks to the mobile phone and can make better decisions, mainly about when and at what price to sell their lambs, the basis of their economic activity.
We have adapted Yan’s (2017) diagram of mobile phone behavior to our findings, which explain mobile phone behavior in a professional and social context. In Figure 6 we have summarized the main activities and positive effects on the use of mobile phones, both in professional and social aspects.
Diagram of Technology-Based Mobile Phone Behavior in Transhumant People, Adapted From Yan (2017).
Social uses occupied second place, although they acquired greater importance when the flocks were on the move between the valley and the mountain. A likely explanation for this behavior is that most of the farmers live with their families, so they have direct contact with them daily.
Technical issues were not a cause for significant worry, although network coverage was important for half of the informants, whereas 25% were concerned about battery life, probably because most had sufficient coverage and somewhere to recharge their devices. None of the interviewees had a problem with finding “good” network operators and fixed tariffs that enabled them to improve their coverage options in the areas they passed through.
To sum up, for the transhumant livestock farmers interviewed, access to mobile phone technology has substantially changed their lives, becoming an essential tool, one they cannot do without for their work. As informant 3 remarked, “I’d rather take the sheep out without my lunch than without my phone.”
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
One of the authors would like to thank the Spanish Ministry of Education for the Salvador de Madariaga scholarship for the international stays he enjoyed at Yale University. This paper is part of his research during this time.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by a MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University, United States of America grant.
