Effects of Temperature and Precipitation Stress on Livestock Ownership in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Climate change threatens the livelihoods of smallholders (i.e., smallholder farmers, pastoralists, agro-pastoralists) in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) because of their exposure and sensitivity to the surrounding environment, including increases in temperature and changes to rainfall patterns. Scholars have argued that these environmental changes will compel crop farmers to increasingly adopt livestock because they are less vulnerable to environmental shocks than rainfed crops since livestock can be moved to access feed and water. While evidence exists that smallholders prefer different livestock species due at least in part to ecological conditions, the effects of shocks on smallholder livestock ownership in SSA remain understudied. This study investigates the impact of climatic shocks on livestock ownership in SSA using binary, ordinal, and multinomial logistic regression analyses. It finds that, under conditions of unusually high heat and low rainfall, smallholders are more likely to own livestock, more likely to diversify herds, and more likely to own smaller livestock like goats and chickens than large livestock like cattle. These findings provide important insights to help manage adversity due to climate change for vulnerable smallholders. These efforts, moreover, would be improved with more data collection and analysis.