Managing the Miombo Woodlands of Southern Africa Policies, incentives and options
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3.4Financial resourcesFor most households in the study sites access to cash is severely limited. As this paper reveals in subsequent sections, a large proportion of household productive activities are just sufficient to support subsistence requirements. Opportunities for marketed surplus are few and irregular during the year. Meeting household cash needs for expenses such as school fees, buying inputs and other family requirements is a constant challenge for most households. In Mufulira where households are in good contact with urban markets, collection of various forest products for sale makes a real difference. Although households in Kabompo also reported sale of various forest products, viable trade is limited to a few high value products like honey and timber, as well as opportunistic local sales. Livestock in addition to the various other functions provide a means of saving for households. Around 65% of the households reported sales of various types of livestock, from cattle to chickens as a way of raising cash to cover various expenses. Unfortunately the numbers of livestock are very low in both study sites. The most common class of livestock is chickens which were reported by 70% of the households. Only 9% of the households owned cattle by the end of the survey period and among them they reported an average of 2 animals per household. Goats were much more widely reported (20%). Deaths of livestock are also very high due to various reasons that include poor husbandry practices and lack of Government veterinary support. Other forms of financial support such as loans are hardly accessible to any of the households in the study sites. A government fertilizer program has been operating in the areas but the beneficiaries complained that the program is erratic and some people are left out. Only 2% of the households indicated receiving financial support from government or NGOs during the survey year. Remittances which have been widely reported as providing vital support for rural households (Campbell et al., 2002; Cavendish, 1997) don’t seem to benefit that many people in the study areas. Less than 5% of the households reported receiving remittances ranging from about K10 000 to K100 00011 per household per annum during the survey period. Casual labour also provides vital cash income for most households in both study sites. Up to 40% of the households had at least one member who had been paid for causal labour during the survey period. Earning an average daily wage of K5000 for jobs on commercial farms, timber logging concessions or mining operations, some household members specialize in this form of income generation and work as much as 25 days each month. 4Composition of household IncomeHouseholds in the two study sites undertake four main livelihood activities to meet their own subsistence needs and to generate cash income (Table 4; Figure 1). Although rural households are often regarded as farmers, it’s clear that cropping and livestock rearing are not the highest income earning sectors for these households. Rather, foraging for forest products make up the biggest share of household income. Subsistence and cash income from unprocessed forest products such as firewood, poles, timber, fruits, mushroom, insects, honey and medicinal plants alone constitute 30% of total household income while processed products like charcoal, crafts, tools and mats contribute an addition 20%. The livestock sector, which often plays a complementary role to cropping as a source of draught power, manure and sometimes finance, is visibly small (5%) among these households. Households also earn wages from off-farm casual jobs on commercial farms, with logging and mining companies as well as from their neighbours. These off-farm activities contribute significantly (15%) to household income, reinforcing the idea that rural households often depend more on these less conventional sources of income than widely acknowledge. Although this study also evaluated other sources of income such as fishing, operating small businesses and remittances from family members staying away from home, these are very small are do not warrant individual treatment (here grouped together as ‘Other income sources’).
Figure 1: Income share of different sectors | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||