Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/73177 
Year of Publication: 
2012
Series/Report no.: 
Working Paper Series in Economics No. 248
Publisher: 
Leuphana Universität Lüneburg, Institut für Volkswirtschaftslehre, Lüneburg
Abstract: 
Commercial cattle farming in Namibia, a prime example of livestock farming in semi-arid rangelands, is subject to a variety of risks, predominant among which is precipitation risk. At the same time it suffers from rangeland degradation that is at least partly due to inadequate management. We characterize cattle farms through descriptive statistics and cluster analysis using data that we elicited in August 2008 through mail-in questionnaires and in-field experiments. We find that cattle farms are highly heterogeneous in the majority of individual characteristics. Heterogeneity is also observed when analyzing characteristics jointly through the cluster analysis which suggests classification of farms into three distinct clusters. This classification is predominantly driven by environmental condition and financial risk management, and to a lesser extent by organizational structure of farms or ethnicity. Overall, our study is the first to provide a comprehensive characterization of this system in respect to risk, management and sustainability.
Subjects: 
cattle farming
semi-arid rangelands
Namibia
empirical survey
perceived risk
management
risk and time preferences
normative views
sustainability
JEL: 
Q12
Q15
Q57
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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