Economic comparisons of livestock production in communal grazing lands in Zimbabwe

During the last decade a 'new rangeland science' has emerged. One of the te nets of the new science is that pastoralists should not adhere to a single conservative stocking rate, but rather adopt an opportunistic strategy, whe re numbers will fluctuate widely in response to good and bad seasons. It is further argued that opportunistic strategies give higher economic returns compared to strategies based on conservative stocking rates. In the current paper we compare the economics of four cattle management scenarios. The an alysis is based on a simulation model of the fluctuation over time of anima l numbers, outputs and prices, using data from field surveys and the litera ture. Our results suggest that strategies based on conservative stocking ra tes would have higher net present values than strategies based on opportuni stic stocking rates. Previous analyses have failed to account for losses du e to drought and the costs of capital lied up in livestock, and the analyse s have tended to compare commercial with communal production rather than co nsidering different kinds of small holder production methods. To receive th e full benefits of destocking, however, a decision to destock has to be mad e at the level of the community, as the benefits of improved outputs can on ly be achieved if the stocking rates of the communal grazing lands are redu ced. Making collective decisions about managing numbers is a process with c onsiderable transaction costs, and thus the likelihood of new institutions emerging are lessened. It is surprising that a tight tracking scenario (whe re numbers of cattle are managed by purchasing and selling so as to maintai n numbers in equilibrium with the available feed resources) is being recomm ended in the most recent literature. Our results suggest that such a system would come with considerable economic losses. The costs of a current progr amme to reclaim small dams illustrate the environmental costs of the opport unistic scenario. A tight tracking policy is likely to further increase env ironmental degradation and its associated costs. We identify several seriou s flaws in the papers that elevate opportunistic pastoral systems as giving higher economic returns than other systems. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.