Livestock as an Imperfect Buffer Stock in Poorly Integrated Markets

Simon Lange and Malte Reimers ()

No 200327, GlobalFood Discussion Papers from Georg-August-Universitaet Goettingen, GlobalFood, Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development

Abstract: Livestock holdings in rural areas of the West African Semi-arid Tropics (WASAT) are often substantial yet there is little evidence for precautionary saving in the form of livestock. This paper re-visits farm households' ability to smooth consumption ex post via savings in the form of livestock. Based on data covering Burkina Faso's 2004 drought, we find that livestock sales increase significantly in response to drought with households citing the need to finance food consumption. Some consumption smoothing is achieved via adjustments to grain stocks, but households apparently fail to smooth consumption by adjusting livestock holdings. We argue that this seemingly contradictory finding is largely due to a decrease in relative livestock prices during droughts. This renders selling livestock a costly coping strategy and underlines the need for market integration.

Keywords: Community/Rural/Urban Development; Consumer/Household Economics; Demand and Price Analysis; Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety; Food Security and Poverty; Risk and Uncertainty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 45
Date: 2015-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-dev
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/200327/files/GlobalFood_DP65.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Livestock as an Imperfect Buffer Stock in Poorly Integrated Markets (2014)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:gagfdp:200327

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.200327

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in GlobalFood Discussion Papers from Georg-August-Universitaet Goettingen, GlobalFood, Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().