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.
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