Research Reports

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https://hdl.handle.net/10566/22

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Browsing by Subject "Agriculture"

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
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    Challenging the stereotypes: small-scale black farmers and private sector support programmes in South Africa
    (Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), University of the Western Cape, 2016) Okunlola, Adetola; Ngubane, Mnqobi; Cousins, Ben; du Toit, Andries
    This report represents one of the outputs of a research and social dialogue project undertaken over 18 months. It explores a number of private sector partnerships and projects launched in support of black farmers – some of them highly innovative, others of dubious merit. Hardly a week passes by without news of some new initiative to ‘train’, ‘help’, ‘empower’ or otherwise assist ‘small-scale black farmers’. The findings of this research suggest that many of the current programmes of support on offer from the private sector are built on somewhat shaky foundations. These are often based on problematic assumptions and normative ideas about what constitutes desirable agricultural development, most of them deeply (if not consciously) informed by the experience of fostering a successful large farm sector in South Africa in the past. The problems that many small-scale black farmers experience in their attempts to enter the competitive world of formal value chains suggests that a fundamental re-think is now required.
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    Climate change and rural livelihoods in Southern Africa: An agenda for policy-oriented research
    (Institute for Poverty Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), 2022) Bennie, Andrew
    This report is the outcome of an extensive review of the literature and the debates on climate change and landbased livelihoods in Southern Africa. In the context of the converging climate and food crises, it provides an overview of the politics of climate change, its impacts, and responses in Southern Africa, and sketches the outlines of PLAAS’s research agenda on the intersections of climate change, agrarian change and rural livelihoods. As such, it is an open-ended document, intended to identify and formulate questions, not to present answers. The purpose of the report is to set out in broad terms the way in which seek to connect our work on agrarian change and rural livelihoods to the questions raised by the climate crisis currently facing our societies.
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    The new alliance on food security and nutrition: what are the implications for Africa’s youth?
    (Future Agricultures Consortium, 2016) Hakizimana, Cyriaque
    Young people are a growing proportion of Africa’s population and most live in poverty in rural areas. Despite urbanisation, in absolute numbers the rural youth are growing and agricultural development needs to prioritise opportunities for them to create land-based livelihoods. Large-scale land-based investments that allocate land and water to private companies are often justified with the promise of job creation, but typically create fewer jobs than the land-based livelihoods that they displace. Private investments in agriculture need to be designed to create opportunities for young people to create livelihoods for themselves and their families, both in primary production and also in upstream and downstream enterprises. Implementation of the New Alliance on Food Security and Nutrition needs to avoid large-scale land-based investments and facilitate the process of developing young people as independent farmers and producers capable of establishing landbased and rural non-farm livelihoods on their own, and on their own terms.
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    Status report on land and agricultural policy in South Africa
    (PLAAS, University of the Western Cape, 2010) Greenberg, Stephen
    A strategy that seeks to insert smallholders into the large-scale, industrial, export-oriented model can only succeed in broadening and diversifying the producer base slightly. The large-scale model also brings with it the deepening problems of concentration in the value chain, which, in turn, entrench the production model. The ANC in government has identified the major contours of the challenge, but its responses tend towards seeking to deracialise that model while keeping its core intact. An alternative has to confront the existing economic power of commercial agriculture and agro-industry with the aim of transforming it in the interests of the poor. Deracialisation is necessary, but is not sufficient to realise this. The logic of a smallholder strategy must be followed beyond the farm gate, to the institutions that support agriculture and the value chains that feed off it.
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    Status report on land and agricultural policy in South Africa, 2010
    (Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, 2010) Greenberg, Stephen
    Agriculture plays numerous roles in society. The most obvious is to produce food (and, to a lesser extent, fibre). While agriculture is the mainstay of the rural economy, it also shapes social relations and landscapes. In some countries, this is taken as an unmitigated positive. However, in South Africa, agriculture is built on the back of dispossession of the African population and their social, economic and political marginalisation. It is built on extractive methods that deplete the soil, the water and the natural vegetation. Agricultural policy in post-apartheid South Africa must grasp these contradictions, simultaneously strengthening the positive features of agriculture and abolishing those that rely on the immiseration of human beings and the destruction of the environment. Agriculture was not high on the list of priorities for the post-apartheid government. It was one of the sectors that experienced deep cuts in the budget following the demise of apartheid. Only from around 2003 did the budget start climbing again, but the 2011 budget estimates are still below those of the 1980s in real terms. Provincial budgets are stagnating.
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    Strategies to support South African smallholders as a contribution to government’s second economy strategy. Volume 1: Situation analysis, fieldwork findings and main conclusions
    (PLAAS, University of the Western Cape, 2009) Aliber, Michael; Baiphethi, Mompati; de Satge, Rick; Denison, Jonathan; Hart, Tim; Jacobs, Peter; van Averbeke, Wim
    Within the ambit of the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative of South Africa, government is leading a process to define a Second Economy Strategy, and has identified the agricultural sector as a site of opportunity, potentially fostering a larger number of smallholder agriculturalists. In an effort to identify an implementable program to support the smallholder sector, this study closely analyses what makes particular South African smallholdings in various settings successful and what factors contributed to their success. A broad definition of agricultural smallholding is employed including independent operators, group farmers, subsistence farmers and commercial farmers. ‘Supporting the smallholder sector’ is conceptualised as consisting of four distinct strands, namely the prospects and measures for: improving the performance of subsistence-oriented smallholders; encouraging/enabling currently subsistence-oriented smallholders to benefit from a more commercial orientation; improving the performance of commercially oriented smallholders; and increasing participation in smallholder agriculture among those (especially rural dwellers) who do not practise agriculture.
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    Strategies to support South African smallholders as a contribution to government’s second economy strategy. Volume 2: Case studies
    (PLAAS, University of the Western Cape, 2011) Aliber, Michael
    This second volume of Strategies to support South African smallholders as a contribution to government’s second economy strategy contains sixteen case studies that comprise the main data for the analysis detailed in Volume 1. This collection of case studies provides a useful resource on its own, providing a rich and diverse repository of narratives depicting various types of smallholders in diverse circumstances and environments. As researchers were given the latitude to deviate from a standardised approach, this volume reveals the authors’ different styles, different emphases, and indeed different disciplinary strengths. The ‘unit of analysis’ also differs across case studies: some are studies of single individuals, others focus on particular schemes or projects, and still others involve a comparative analysis of individuals or projects. Due to the complexity of categorising the case studies they have been simply grouped by province, and are ordered, roughly, from southwest to northeast.