🇳🇦 The cattle breeds of Namibia

Cattle lead Namibia's farm economy: commercial ranches in the centre and north produce meat and live animals for export, while families on the northern communal lands keep roaming herds beside their millet and sorghum crops. Recurring drought and thickening bush make livestock keeping harder each year, and most farmland remains in white hands.

• About 4,000 commercial farms were counted in 2010, some 3,000 of them white-owned.
• Cattle rule the centre and north; the dry south farms sheep and goats.
• The drought that ended in 2019 was called the worst in a century.
• Bush encroachment covers up to 45 million hectares of Namibian land.
• Animal products and live animals make up about 10.7% of exports.

Cattle in Namibia

Namibian cattle keeping splits into two worlds. On fenced commercial ranches, mostly owned by white farmers, livestock ranching is the main business; the country counted about 4,000 such farms in 2010. On the communal lands of the populous north, most families farm to feed themselves, and cattle roam with their crops of millet and sorghum nearby. Cattle raising leads in the centre and north, while the dry south belongs to sheep and goats. Farming's share of the economy is modest, around five to six percent in the late 2000s, yet a quarter to two fifths of Namibians live from subsistence farming and herding, so cattle count for far more than their official weight. With barely two percent of the land wet enough to grow crops, animals carry the burden.

Regions and communities

Cattle dominate the central and northern parts of the country. The north is also home to most Namibians, who farm communal land with herds that roam freely beside crops of millet, corn, sorghum and peanuts. The arid south is sheep and goat country instead. Cropping survives only in favoured pockets: rain-fed white maize comes from the maize triangle between Tsumeb, Otavi and Grootfontein, and irrigation is confined to the border river valleys of the Orange, Kunene and Okavango, plus the Hardap scheme. Along the Orange River, table grapes have grown into an important commercial crop and a big employer of seasonal labour.

Milk, butter and beef

Meat is the chief cattle product. Livestock and meat products stand among the country's primary farm goods, and animal products together with live animals account for roughly a tenth of all exports. The commercial ranches supply this trade. In the subsistence north, animals and crops go mainly to feeding the household rather than to markets. Fodder made from encroacher bush, the woody plants that crowd out grass, has become a product in its own right, keeping herds fed when drought removes the grazing.

Today

Cattle farming faces hard years. A multi-year drought ending in 2019 was judged the worst in a century, and rising temperatures keep squeezing conventional farming. Bush has thickened over as much as 45 million hectares, cutting what the land can produce. Land reform proceeds by purchase from willing sellers with compensation, but white farmers, 1.8 percent of the population, still hold about 70 percent of farmland.