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...

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...

In this study we compare revealed and stated-preference approaches to value live-stock traits of cattle in Kenya. The premise is that much can be learnt about non-market values of indigenous animal genetic resources (AnGRs) from the use of multi-attribute stated-preference methods, if these...

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...

We study the role of bush encroachment control for a farmer's income and income risk in a stochastic ecological-economic model of grazing management in semiarid rangelands. In particular, we study debushing as an instrument of risk management that complements the choice of an adaptive grazing...

We study risk preferences and their determinants for commercial cattle farmers in Namibia who are subject to high and heterogeneous precipitation risk, using data from questionnaire and field experiments, simulated data for on-farm precipitation risk and data on famers' previous place of...