TY - JOUR

T1 - Determinants of farm size and stocking rate in Namibian commercial cattle farming

AU - Engler, John-Oliver

AU - Wehrden, Henrik

AU - Baumgärtner, Stefan

N1 - Funding Information: We thank David J. Abson, Neil Collier, Roland Olbrich and Martin F. Quaas for helpful discussions and for providing critical feedback on earlier versions of this manuscript. Financial support from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (grant number 01LL0911E ) is gratefully acknowledged. Publisher Copyright: © 2018 Elsevier Ltd

PY - 2019/2/1

Y1 - 2019/2/1

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, i.e. the heads of livestock per hectare. There is strong support for the hypothesis that environmental variables such as inter-annual rainfall variability play an important 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, i.e. the heads of livestock per hectare. There is strong support for the hypothesis that environmental variables such as inter-annual rainfall variability play an important 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 - Economics, empirical/statistics

KW - Sustainability Science

KW - Economics

KW - rangeland management

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85056157455&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.landusepol.2018.10.009

DO - 10.1016/j.landusepol.2018.10.009

M3 - Journal articles

VL - 81

SP - 232

EP - 246

JO - Land Use Policy

JF - Land Use Policy

SN - 0264-8377

ER -