**6. Conclusions**

This study identified factors affecting livestock farmers' agricultural drought resilience to food insecurity in Northern Cape Province, South Africa. A principal component analysis was applied to estimate the agricultural drought resilience index. A structural equation model was then applied using a survey of 217 smallholder livestock farmers.

The study found that most (81%) smallholder livestock farmers were not resilient to agricultural drought. The study also showed that asset, social safety net, and adaptive capacity indicators positively and significantly impacted households' resilience to food insecurity. However, climate change indicators had a negative and significant impact on households' resilience to food insecurity. This implied that the more assets a farming household owned, the higher the resilience to agricultural drought. The findings further indicated that benefiting from the social safety net provided support for individual households. Indeed, the Northern Cape climate is characterized by hot summers (between 34 ◦C and 40 ◦C) coupled with low rainfall (mean annual precipitation of 200 mm). The climate is consistently dry, which leads the reduction of livestock production. As a result, the government needs to strengthen the drought relief program for affected smallholder farmers by supplying fodder, medication, and farming inputs, and strengthening access to agricultural credit.

The study suggests that smallholder livestock farmers need assistance from the government and various stakeholders to minimize vulnerability and boost their resilience

to food insecurity. They should target disadvantaged smallholder farmers to build their resilience by enhancing their persistence and adaptability. The government may help smallholder livestock farmers to gather resources to acquire more assets and reduce vulnerability to food insecurity via strengthening access to agricultural credit and farm input. Additionally, the government should address viable off-farm employment as a source of income, and strengthen social safety nets, which include smallholder farmers' involvement in agricultural drought resilience activities by giving training and disseminating information.

Furthermore, the government could improve water rights and access to boost the resilience of smallholder farmers to agricultural drought. This could be achieved through collaboration and coordination among all stakeholders. This includes coordination between monitoring agencies in terms of reliable early warning data, communicated in a comprehensive way to decision makers, farmers' organizations such as the African Farmers' Association of South Africa (AFASA; AFASA is very active in Northern Cape Province of South Africa), and the private sector, such as banks, to strengthen the resilience of farmers against shocks.

Collaboration with national and provincial governmental departments should also be strengthened. This includes collaboration with the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF), provincial Departments of Agriculture, National and Provincial Disaster Management Centres (NDMC and PDMC), the Department of Water Affairs (DWA), and the South African Weather Service (SAWS).

**Author Contributions:** All authors made a significant contribution to the manuscript preparation. V.A.M. was involved in data collection, analysis, and writing the first draft. Y.T.B. was a supervisor of the first author, and aided in the study design and conceptualization, review, and writing the final draft. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** National Research Foundation (NRF) of South Africa funded this research, grant number TTK170510230380.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** The study obtained an ethical clearance certificate from the University of the Free State Research Ethics Committee, and the reference number is UFS-HSD2020/0359/2704.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.

**Data Availability Statement:** Data will be available on request from the corresponding author (Y.T.B.).

**Acknowledgments:** We acknowledge and thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions. We acknowledge Liesl van der Westhuizen (Science Writer) for language editing in this manuscript.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
