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, under nutrition, 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). 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.