Household-Level Livestock Marketing Behavior Among Northern Kenyan and Southern Ethiopian Pastoralists

Pastoralists in East Africa's arid and semi-arid lands (ASAL) regularly confront climatic shocks triggering massive herd die-offs and loss of scarce wealth. On the surface, it appears puzzling that pastoralists do not make extensive use of livestock markets to offload animals when climatic shocks temporarily reduce the carrying capacity of local rangelands, and then use markets to restock their herds when local conditions recover. In recent years, donors and policy makers have begun to hypothesize that investments in livestock marketing systems might quickly pay for themselves through reduced demand for relief aid,by increasing pastoralist marketing responsiveness to temporal variation in range conditions.Marketing,

Pastoralist Livestock Marketing Behavior in Northern Kenya and Southern Ethiopia: An Analysis of Constraints Limiting Off-take Rates

Pastoralists in East Africa\u27s arid and semi-arid lands (ASAL) regularly confront climatic shocks that plunge them into massive herd die-offs and loss of scarce wealth. One of the most puzzling features of pastoralist behavior in times of stress has been their relatively low and non-responsive rate of marketed off-take of animals when faced with likely losses to herd mortality. As Figure 1, from Desta (1999), finds in 17-year herd history data from Borana pastoralists in southern Ethiopia, mortality always exceeds net sales as a share of beginning period herd size, with the latter never exceeding three percent and moving hardly at all in response to shocks to rangeland carrying capacity that cause regular spikes in mortality rates. This case might be more pronounced than others, but the basic pattern is widely believed representative of herd dynamics and marketing patterns among east African ASAL pastoralists

Household-Level Livestock Marketing Behavior Among Northern Kenyan and Southern Ethiopian Pastoralists

WP 2005-11 November 2004Pastoralists in East Africa's arid and semi-arid lands (ASAL) regularly confront climatic shocks triggering massive herd die-offs and loss of scarce wealth. On the surface, it appears puzzling that pastoralists do not make extensive use of livestock markets to offload animals when climatic shocks temporarily reduce the carrying capacity of local rangelands, and then use markets to restock their herds when local conditions recover. In recent years, donors and policy makers have begun to hypothesize that investments in livestock marketing systems might quickly pay for themselves through reduced demand for relief aid,by increasing pastoralist marketing responsiveness to temporal variation in range conditions

Household-Level Livestock Marketing Behavior Among Northern Kenyan and Southern Ethiopian Pastoralists

Pastoralists in East Africa's arid and semi-arid lands (ASAL) regularly confront climatic shocks triggering massive herd die-offs and loss of scarce wealth. On the surface, it appears puzzling that pastoralists do not make extensive use of livestock markets to offload animals when climatic shocks temporarily reduce the carrying capacity of local rangelands, and then use markets to restock their herds when local conditions recover. In recent years, donors and policy makers have begun to hypothesize that investments in livestock marketing systems might quickly pay for themselves through reduced demand for relief aid,by increasing pastoralist marketing responsiveness to temporal variation in range conditions