Impact of Agricultural Drought Resilience on the Welfare of Smallholder Livestock Farming Households in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa

Sammanfattning

Recurring agricultural droughts are of concern to smallholder livestock farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa. This study determined the impact of agricultural drought resilience on smallholder livestock farming households' welfare in the Frances Baard District Municipality (FBDM), in Northern Cape Province of South Africa. Interviews, more specifically survey interviews, were conducted with 207 smallholder livestock farmers. We used compensation variation, resilience index and linear regression models to analyse the data. The findings indicate that smallholder farmers who received drought relief support saw an improvement in their welfare. However, the welfare improvements varied across respondents and different gender categories, with males having higher welfare improvements relative to females. The study also found that economic capital, social capital, human capital and natural capital substantially affected the welfare of smallholder farmers. Furthermore, the study revealed that the smallholder farmers had a moderate agricultural drought resilience index, but low natural resilience capital. The study recommends that governments and non-governmental policymakers aiming to improve the welfare of smallholder farmers should focus on building their economic, social, human and capital resource bases. In this way, the smallholder farmers will be resilient in a time of climatic shock.

Nyckelord

resilience; welfare; compensation variation; agricultural drought; agricultural drought index

Publicerad i

Land
2021, volym: 10, nummer: 6, artikelnummer: 562
Utgivare: MDPI

SLU författare

• Owusu Sekyere, Enoch

  • Institutionen för ekonomi, Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet
    
  • University of the Free State

Globala målen (SDG)

SDG1 Ingen fattigdom
SDG5 Jämställdhet

UKÄ forskningsämne

Studier av offentlig förvaltning
Kulturgeografi
Sociologi (exklusive socialt arbete, socialpsykologi och socialantropologi)

Publikationens identifierare

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/land10060562

Permanent länk till denna sida (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/112899