Revolution without reform

Botswana Meat Commission figures for 2013 are not yet available, but losses will almost certainly be much lower than in previous years.

The traditional business model of the BMC has seen that the farmer was in effect the residual claimant on the revenues of the BMC. What that means is that after all the costs were met, the farmer was paid in effect whatever was left over. After the nationalisation at independence, the levels of the costs of the abattoir rose and the share of BMC revenue that went to farmers steadily fell over time. A normal well functioning abattoir pays cattle farmers 80% of its revenues.  But by the 1990s, the BMC was paying farmers only some 55% of its revenues.  In the early days, the BMC was paying farmers approximately 80% of it revenue, but this steadily declined as more and more inefficiencies arose in the abattoir's operations. The industry was in crisis and decline in the 1990s as farmers left the industry in droves.