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# The Life Before the Leather
- URL: https://abagofstories.com/the-life-before-the-leather/
- Published: 2026-07-29T10:59:55.000Z
- Updated: 2026-07-29T10:59:55.000Z
- Description: AFAR uses vegetable-tanned zebu leather and horn recovered from existing Ethiopian farming and food systems. “By-product” is not a claim of innocence. It describes where the material begins, and the responsibility that follows.
- Author: Claudio Maria Lerario
- Tags: Hands & Materials, Local Futures, Ethiopia

Before a hide reaches a tannery, it belongs to an animal. Before it becomes the side of a bag, it has moved under the sun, grazed after the rains, stood beside a family’s home, or crossed a field behind a wooden plow.

This earlier life matters.

In Ethiopia, cattle remain part of the daily structure of rural life. They provide food and income, help cultivate the land, and serve as assets that families can draw upon during difficult periods. Recent estimates place the country’s cattle population above 70 million, the largest on the African continent, while livestock continue to provide income, nutrition, and draft power for millions of smallholder farmers. ([ILRI](https://www.ilri.org/news/ethiopia-rewriting-its-livestock-future-science-center?ref=abagofstories.com))

When AFAR speaks about zebu leather, it begins here: with the animal as part of a household, a landscape, and an agricultural economy. The leather comes later.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6d/20/6d207f2a-6719-4291-87ae-b3b4a25be7f5/content/images/2026/07/CML_2056.webp)

## What “by-product” means

AFAR uses the term in a specific, operational sense. The company does not raise animals for their hides, and it does not commission slaughter to produce bags or accessories. It purchases hides and horns that have already become available through existing farming and food systems.

This distinction does not mean that a hide has no value. It means that the production of leather was not the primary reason the animal was raised or slaughtered. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization describes hides and skins as secondary products whose availability is driven principally by livestock and meat production rather than by changes in the demand for leather. ([FAOHome](https://www.fao.org/4/Y0019e/Y0019e.htm?ref=abagofstories.com))

Some researchers and campaigners prefer the term “co-product,” since hides enter a market and generate income. The disagreement is partly about economic accounting, but the practical question for AFAR remains straightforward: did the company create a separate demand for an animal to be killed?

Under AFAR’s sourcing policy, the answer is no.

The same principle applies to the horn used for certain accessories. It is recovered from an existing chain and given a further use rather than being discarded. Horn and hoof have long been recognized among the recoverable materials generated when livestock enter the food system. ([FAOHome](https://www.fao.org/4/x6552e/X6552E10.htm?utm%5Fsource=chatgpt.com))

“By-product,” then, does not mean consequence-free. It means that the material begins after another purpose, another economy, and an animal life have already existed.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6d/20/6d207f2a-6719-4291-87ae-b3b4a25be7f5/content/images/2026/07/FJV2059.webp)

## The animal before the object

Language can make supply chains sound cleaner than they are. A hide becomes a “material,” the material becomes an “upper,” a “panel,” or a “component,” and the animal gradually disappears from view.

AFAR does not want that disappearance.

The photographs accompanying this story return the animal to the center of the frame. Cattle stand in pasture, follow a herder, rest beneath a tree, and work beside farming families. Children encounter them as part of an ordinary landscape. An ox pulling a plow is not an illustration of a supply chain. It is a participant in the agricultural life of a household.

None of this romanticizes livestock farming or suggests that every animal is treated well. Animal welfare depends on feed, water, shelter, health care, handling, transport, and the conduct of the people responsible for the animal. Calling leather a by-product cannot answer those questions.

It can, however, establish one important boundary: the material should come from a system that already exists for food and farming, rather than from an animal raised primarily to supply a fashion market.

For AFAR, respect begins by acknowledging the animal’s presence rather than hiding it behind the finished object.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6d/20/6d207f2a-6719-4291-87ae-b3b4a25be7f5/content/images/2026/07/CML_8690-1.webp)

## Recovering value instead of discarding it

Once an animal enters the food chain, its hide can follow several paths. It can be damaged during handling, deteriorate before preservation, remain uncollected, or be discarded. It can also enter a chain of skilled work involving collection, sorting, curing, transport, tanning, cutting, stitching, finishing, and repair.

FAO has documented how uncollected or badly processed hides represent a loss of both material and rural income. When handled properly, they can support collectors, merchants, processors, craftspeople, and other small businesses in livestock-producing regions. ([FAOHome](https://www.fao.org/4/i0523e/i0523e.pdf?ref=abagofstories.com))

This is where the word “local” becomes important.

Exporting an untreated hide captures only a small part of its possible value. Turning that hide into finished leather, and then into an object made for long use, requires more knowledge and more labor. Each additional stage can support local skills: assessing the surface, curing it before it deteriorates, controlling the tanning process, understanding how the leather stretches, selecting the strongest sections, reinforcing stress points, shaping the edges, and repairing the object after years of use.

AFAR carries out the design and manufacture of its bags in Ethiopia. The recovered material does not simply leave the country as an anonymous commodity. It passes through Ethiopian hands and workshops before becoming a finished object.

This is not charity directed toward rural families or craftspeople. It is payment for material, judgment, labor, and accumulated knowledge. The distinction matters. Charity depends on the generosity of the giver; an economic relationship recognizes that value was already present.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6d/20/6d207f2a-6719-4291-87ae-b3b4a25be7f5/content/images/2026/07/CML_7803.webp)

## What reaches the farmer

The income generated by one hide or horn should not be exaggerated. It will not transform a household economy on its own, and it should not be presented as though the purchase of a bag solves the structural difficulties faced by small farmers.

Its value lies in accumulation.

An animal may provide draft power, milk, manure, offspring, food, and a form of savings during its life. When the hide is recovered afterward, it adds another return to the same rural economy. Better handling can increase that return, while damaged or abandoned hides produce nothing.

The benefits also extend beyond the original owner. A recovered hide creates work for the person who collects it, the trader who grades it, the driver who transports it, the tannery workers who process it, and the people who cut and sew the finished leather. FAO describes hides and skins as raw materials capable of supporting collection, processing, distribution, and other service jobs in livestock-producing countries. ([FAOHome](https://www.fao.org/4/i0523e/i0523e.pdf?ref=abagofstories.com))

The resulting chain is modest and imperfect, but it is tangible. A material that could have been lost becomes income, employment, and a durable object.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6d/20/6d207f2a-6719-4291-87ae-b3b4a25be7f5/content/images/2026/07/FJV2071.webp)

## Vegetable-tanned does not mean impact-free

“By-product” describes the origin of the hide. “Vegetable-tanned” describes part of the process used to turn it into leather. The two terms should not be confused, and neither should be treated as a complete environmental guarantee.

Vegetable tanning uses tannins derived from plant matter. It avoids relying on chromium as the principal tanning agent and produces leather with a distinctive surface that can deepen and change through use. Yet plant-based chemistry does not make a tannery harmless. Leather production still requires water, energy, careful chemical management, worker protection, and effective treatment of wastewater.

UNIDO’s technical guidance is explicit on this point: tannery effluent can contain organic matter, solids, sulfides, salts, tanning substances, and other pollutants. Treatment must be designed around the processes used at a particular facility and must meet appropriate discharge standards before the water is released or reused.

Responsible leather production is therefore won or lost in the details: how the hide is preserved, how much usable surface is recovered, which substances enter the process, how water is treated, how waste is managed, and whether the people doing the work are protected. UNIDO’s work in the leather sector places cleaner tanning, waste reduction, effluent treatment, professional training, occupational safety, and the conversion of residual materials into useful products within the same field of responsibility. ([UNIDO](https://www.unido.org/agribusiness-and-rural-entrepreneurship-development/leather-and-leather-products-industry?ref=abagofstories.com))

A material cannot be made responsible by vocabulary alone.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6d/20/6d207f2a-6719-4291-87ae-b3b4a25be7f5/content/images/2026/07/CML_1119.webp)

## Respect without demanding agreement

Some people choose not to use animal materials under any circumstances. That position deserves to be stated plainly. AFAR does not expect every person to reach the same conclusion about leather, nor does it present its own choice as universally correct.

Its position begins from the material and economic reality in which the company works.

Ethiopia has an extensive livestock economy. Animals already support farming, food production, household income, and rural security. Hides and horns already emerge from that system. AFAR chooses to recover some of them, process them locally, and turn them into objects intended to remain useful for many years.

This is a practical form of respect rather than a declaration of purity. It asks that no animal be raised or killed specifically for an AFAR product. It asks that as much as possible be recovered once the material exists. It asks that the people who transform it be paid for their skill. It also places responsibility on design: a bag made from animal material should justify that material through durability, repairability, and continued use.

Respect does not require pretending that leather came from somewhere else. It requires remembering where it came from.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6d/20/6d207f2a-6719-4291-87ae-b3b4a25be7f5/content/images/2026/07/CML_7021.webp)

## Made to remain

A long-lasting bag does not erase the impact of its production. It changes the arithmetic of use.

When stitching fails quickly, hardware breaks, or a surface cannot be repaired, another object must take its place. More material is extracted, more energy is used, more packaging is produced, and another shipment begins. A bag that remains in service for years delays that repetition.

This is why AFAR’s choice of zebu leather cannot be separated from construction. The strongest material is wasted if the seams are weak. Good tanning is wasted if the edges separate. A carefully recovered hide loses its meaning when design follows a season rather than a life.

Leather earns its place through time: by softening without collapsing, acquiring marks without becoming useless, accepting repair, and continuing to travel after novelty has passed.

The word “by-product” describes the beginning of this process, not its conclusion. It tells us that the animal was not raised for a bag and that the material already existed within a larger rural system. What happens afterward belongs to AFAR: how the hide is purchased, where it is processed, who receives the value, how the water is managed, how the object is made, and how long it remains in use.

Before the leather, there was an animal. Around that animal, there was a family, a field, and a working landscape. A responsible object should carry that knowledge with it.