From study sites to ORB – generalization of results

Here, an attempt will be made to upscale the results obtained for the local level of the study sites to the regional level of the research area, i.e. the ORB. To do so, it is helpful to recall the main insights gained so far. A comparison of all three study sites revealed that natural

resource degradation and social stratification36 are positively correlated with population

density, while cash availability appears to be positively correlated with only social

stratification. This is in line with the assumptions of the Boserup-Ruthenberg framework, the

applicability of which has been proven above. It is therefore assumed that the basic assumptions of this framework hold and that the evolution of many smallholder farming systems in the ORB can to a large extent be explained by their adaptation efforts to changing degrees of land scarcity and market access.

The issue of soil fertility management lies at the heart of the future agricultural development in the research area. Even nowadays, traditional farming systems rely mainly on land availability for the regeneration of soil fertility. However, scarcity of arable land in the ORB is likely to increase in the future. Current farming practices will then result in soil nutrient mining or achieve a low-level equilibrium. Furthermore, the case of Mashare illustrates the importance of land availability for livestock keeping. Here, overgrazing has resulted in an on- going breakdown of the cattle economy. Due to the multi-functionality of cattle keeping, especially as a provider of draught animals, this is harmful for rural livelihoods in the mid- and lower catchment. It can therefore be postulated that land scarcity degrades current natural-resource-based livelihood sources in the Okavango catchment. As has been shown, the majority of rural households depend on these livelihood sources.

In the mid and low river areas of Namibia and Botswana, land scarcity is already a serious constraint to farming; it is caused mainly by the expansion of cropland due to a growing demand for food as well as by the rise of competing land uses, including conservation areas or the establishment of government-led large-scale irrigation projects.

Furthermore, land scarcity can be driven by the commercialization of natural resource use. Growing market access may induce a change in farmers’ mind-sets and decision making, e.g. by creating new needs or aspirations for commodities traded in international markets (see Pröpper et al. 2015). As a result of this changing mind-set, natural resource use or agricultural production may be intensified to generate cash income. This can already be observed in the study site Cusseque for charcoal production, which reduces the area of forest available for shifting cultivation. At the moment, subsistence-oriented production dominates in the basin, and important obstacles to market access include a lack of infrastructure for storage and transport of the harvest, access to electricity, finance markets as well as input markets. This may change in the future and increase the degree of commercialization of crop production, with far-reaching consequences on land use and smallholders’ decision-making.

Future land scarcity in the research area may be caused by two other important drivers of land use change. First, there is some indication that in Cusseque, medium-scale farmers may contribute to future land scarcity. They are already a dominant type of land user in Sub- Saharan Africa (see Jayne et al. 2014, Sitko & Jayne 2014). On the one hand, a roadside garden in Cusseque Village is tended for by locals yet owned by an unidentified urbanite. On the other hand, in 2013 an urbanite from nearby Chitembo was exploring the possibility of growing beans at the roadside for commercial purposes. Although these two observations are certainly no proof of a general land use trend, they indicate that the study site may be of interest to this emerging type of land user. It is therefore a reasonable assumption that in and around Cusseque, urban entrepreneurs will increasingly invest in agricultural production and drive competition for land. The rise of medium-scale farmers has not yet been observed in the other two study sites. A likely explanation for this could be favourable biophysical,

infrastructural, and market conditions in the Angolan highlands, which turn agricultural production into a much less risky business than in the more arid lowlands of the Kalahari. Second, another driver of land use change that may soon affect the entire catchment is the establishment of large-scale commercial farms in Namibia and Angola. In the former, it has already resulted in the relocation of rural communities from the more fertile plots along the Okavango River to areas of lower soil fertility. Both trends combine to result in rising competition for land in the Okavango catchment, thus contributing to a rising degree of land scarcity for rural communities.

When combining the insights gained above with the three principal cropping areas of the Okavango basin (identified by OKACOM (2011, 83) and presented in Chapter H, Fig. 0.2), a tentative map can be created that hints at the likely distribution of the catchment’s dominant farming systems (Fig. 1.13).

Fig. 1.13: Approximation of the spatial distribution of the dominant smallholder farming systems in the Okavango catchment.

Source: Author’s design, based on a map by Stellmes et al. (2013).

While the land-abundant Angolan highlands are dominated by shifting cultivation practiced in

Miombo woodlands, the (for smallholder cultivation) land-constrained mid and lower

catchment is dominated by more permanent forms of smallholder agriculture that still rely on the basic management practices inherited from shifting cultivation. This distribution is based on the following assumptions: i) subsistence production dominates smallholder farming in the research area; ii) water availability and road infrastructure determine availability of arable land; and iii) the most fertile land in the Kalahari lowlands is found along the Okavango River, in the old floodplains and inter-dune valleys. These assumptions are backed up by Mendelsohn’s (2009) finding that the majority of the rural population in the Namibian part of the catchment is concentrated within a 10 km-wide strip along the Okavango River.