Most rangelands in Namibia’s farming areas are severely bush encroached and suffer from drastically reduced grazing capacity, groundwater recharge and soil moisture content. Encroacher bush has to be thinned to recover the productivity of the land, but this is an expensive activity. Costs of bush control easily run into thousands of dollars per hectare (N$/ha) and given the large size of commercial farms, into millions of dollars for a whole farm. Few farmers can afford such an investment despite the undisputed long-term benefits of bush control. However, bush control becomes feasible if wood harvested from encroacher bush is turned into an economically useful product that can be sold to defray the costs of control or even generate an extra income.