This paper estimates the preferences of farmers for cattle traits in southern Burkina Faso using Conjoint analysis, a survey-based system for measuring preferences for multiple-attribute goods. Here the technique is used in the context of a West African country where literacy is low, where...

World agriculture is based on a small number of animal species and a decreasing number of breeds within each species. Several breeds of West African shorthorn cattle (Bos taurus brachyceros) are now at high risk of extinction due to interbreeding. The West African shorthorn breeds are...

We study optimal adaptive grazing management under uncertain rainfall in a discrete-time model. As in each year actual rainfall can be observed during the short rainy season, and grazing management can be adapted accordingly for the growing season, the closed-loop solution of the stochastic...

Rain-index insurance is strongly advocated in many parts of the developing world to help farmers to cope with climatic risk that prevail in (semi-)arid rangelands due to low and highly uncertain rainfall. We present a modeling analysis of how the availability of rain-index insurance affects the...