Determinants of Farm Size and Stocking Rate in Namibian Commercial Cattle Farming
Publikation: Arbeits- oder Diskussionspapiere und Berichte › Arbeits- oder Diskussionspapiere
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Determinants of Farm Size and Stocking Rate in Namibian Commercial Cattle Farming. / Engler, John-Oliver; Wehrden, Henrik; Baumgärtner, Stefan.
Rochester : SSRN Social Science Research Network, 2017. (SSRN; Nr. 3086556).Publikation: Arbeits- oder Diskussionspapiere und Berichte › Arbeits- oder Diskussionspapiere
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TY - UNPB
T1 - Determinants of Farm Size and Stocking Rate in Namibian Commercial Cattle Farming
AU - Engler, John-Oliver
AU - Wehrden, Henrik
AU - Baumgärtner, Stefan
PY - 2017/12/14
Y1 - 2017/12/14
N2 - Utilizing a data set of 399 Namibian commercial cattle farmers, we provide a detailed empirical analysis of farm management under highly variable rainfall. Particularly, we provide an econometric analysis of what personal characteristics of the farmer, environmental characteristics, and characteristics of the farm explain farm size and choice of stocking rate. There is strong support for the hypothesis that environmental variables such as inter-annual rainfall variability play a vital role in explaining stocking rate, but not in explaining farm size in the sense of rangeland area or cattle numbers. Other major explaining factors for the stocking rate are the farmer’s gender and the number of cattle on farm above a certain threshold given by a fit of the Pareto distribution to the data. Traditional farm size variables like cattle number and rangeland area are not well explained by any of the candidate models constructed, which supports the view that the stocking rate is the central farm management parameter.
AB - Utilizing a data set of 399 Namibian commercial cattle farmers, we provide a detailed empirical analysis of farm management under highly variable rainfall. Particularly, we provide an econometric analysis of what personal characteristics of the farmer, environmental characteristics, and characteristics of the farm explain farm size and choice of stocking rate. There is strong support for the hypothesis that environmental variables such as inter-annual rainfall variability play a vital role in explaining stocking rate, but not in explaining farm size in the sense of rangeland area or cattle numbers. Other major explaining factors for the stocking rate are the farmer’s gender and the number of cattle on farm above a certain threshold given by a fit of the Pareto distribution to the data. Traditional farm size variables like cattle number and rangeland area are not well explained by any of the candidate models constructed, which supports the view that the stocking rate is the central farm management parameter.
KW - Sustainability sciences, Management & Economics
KW - Risk preferences
KW - environmental risk
KW - semi-arid rangelands
KW - cattle-farming
KW - stocking rate
KW - farm size
KW - range management
KW - Economics, empirical/statistics
KW - Pareto distribution
U2 - 10.2139/ssrn.3086556
DO - 10.2139/ssrn.3086556
M3 - Working papers
T3 - SSRN
BT - Determinants of Farm Size and Stocking Rate in Namibian Commercial Cattle Farming
PB - SSRN Social Science Research Network
CY - Rochester
ER -