This article compares herd productivity, levels of investment and socioeconomic
characteristics of communal and private livestock farmers
sampled in the southern region of Botswana during 1999/2000. The object is
to determine whether land tenure and other socio-economic variables might
contribute to differences in investment and herd productivity. Descriptive
statistics show that levels of investment and herd productivity are higher on
private farms than on open-access communal grazing. Private farmers are
also better educated, more liquid, and have larger herd sizes, but do not
differ from their communal counterparts in terms of age, gender, race or
household size. Levels of investment in fixed improvements and operating
inputs are negatively correlated with herd mortality, and positively
correlated with calving and off-take rates, and with liquidity and private
ownership of land. While these findings appear to support Botswana’s
agricultural policy of privatising some communal grazing land to
individual farm households or to small, organized groups of farmers, it is
clear that land tenure is not the only variable of policy interest. A more
rigorous analysis of the data is required to untang e the causes of observed
differences in herd productivity and investment.