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

Abstract

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.

Keywords

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

Published in

Land
2021, volume: 10, number: 6, article number: 562
Publisher: MDPI

SLU Authors

• Owusu Sekyere, Enoch

  • Department of Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    
  • University of the Free State

Global goals (SDG)

SDG1 No poverty
SDG5 Gender equality

UKÄ Subject classification

Public Administration Studies
Human Geography
Sociology (excluding Social work, Social Psychology and Social Anthropology)

Publication identifier

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

Permanent link to this page (URI)

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