Farming in Namibia's Northern Communal Areas (NCAs) is predominantly for subsistence purposes, and is characterised by very low and even declining productivity due to a combination of low and uneven rainfall and poor soils, with conditions of extreme income inequality and poverty, undernutrition, out-migration of labour and high population growth rates. More contentious is whether and to what extent resource degradation is taking place and whether land use systems are sustainable. Communal agriculture makes a very limited contribution to Namibia's GDP, and, despite a lack of clear data, is probably a vital source of income only for poorer farmers (defined, for convenience, as the 46 per cent of the households in the NCAs spending 60 per cent of their total consumption expenditure on food). Behind these problems lies a lack of appropriate resource conserving technologies, weak community-based institutions for the management of natural resources, and, in several key respects, a disabling overall policy environment. At the same time farmer support services are newly established and yet to have widespread impact. While technological and socio-economic advances may be expected to yield some growth in the agricultural sector, the key policy objectives for the future, this report suggests, should be risk reduction, production stability, and the diversification of agricultural and non-agricultural economic opportunities in the rural areas. The most fundamental problem remains, seven years after independence, the lack of a clear policy, administrative structures and legislation dealing with land allocation, tenure and management.