Introducing Investment Options
This chapter offers a brief survey of how the investment literature deals with risk and uncertainty, and examines the reasons for variation in returns between farmers from the principal assets – wells, oxen plough-teams, breeding cattle. Simple decision-making models derive criteria for choosing between investment options according to the net present value, internal rate of return, and payback period associated with a given pattern of returns over time. Portfolio models presents the rationale for investment in a range of assets, the returns from which are poorly correlated. Farmers differ in terms of their access to factors of production, the scale of their activities, the opportunity cost of capital, and vulnerability to risk. Four idealised household types – A, B, C, D – are described in order to compare the flow of returns from the three principal investments – wells, oxen plough-teams, and breeding cattle.