Modelling Decision Making in Communal Areas of Namibia: Do Prevailing Strategies of Family Labour Allocation Coincide with Objectives of Peasant Farmers?

In Namibia’s Kavango region, forests vanish due to population pressure and intensified land use. The dominant farming system is a mixture of subsistence cropping and livestock keeping without mechanisation. The objective of this case study, embedded in a wider project, BIOTA Southern Africa, is to construct a dynamic bio-economic optimisation model of a communal village. Our paper describes the identification of the objective function (utility maximization) and provides insights into the family labour economy by answering the question: Are the prevailing strategies of labour allocation consistent with the identified objectives? The arguments and weights of the utility function were identified through conjoint analysis (CA). Labour supplies and inputs were estimated from data analysis of semi-structured peasant farmer interviews. Since animal husbandry is not absorbing the highest amount of family labour and being simultaneously the most important objective, this paper shows that objectives of farmers and their labour allocation strategies do not automatically coincide.