Abstract

Livestock health is economically important for agropastoral households whose wealth is held partly as livestock. Households can invest in disease prevention and treatment, but livestock disease risk is also affected by grazing practices that result in inter-herd contact and disease transmission in regions with endemic communicable diseases. This paper examines the relationships between communal grazing and antimicrobial use in Maasai, Chagga and Arusha households in northern Tanzania. We develop a theoretical model of the economic connection between communal grazing, disease transmission risk, risk perceptions, and antimicrobial use, and derive testable hypotheses about these connections. Regression results suggest that history of disease and communal grazing are associated with higher subjective disease risk and greater antimicrobial use. We discuss the implications of these results in light of the potential for relatively high inter-herd disease transmission rates among communal grazers and potential contributions to antimicrobial resistance due to antimicrobial use.

Keywords

household production; Africa; risk management; antibiotic use; ecology; zero-inflated model

Published in

Environment and Development Economics
2018, Volume: 23, number: 1, pages: 80-97

UKÄ Subject classification

Agricultural Science


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1355770X17000341

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/101296