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Livelihood transitions of 60 'emergent' farmers facilitated by accessing freehold farmland through agrarian reform in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa.
Source publication
In the context of current agrarian reform efforts in South Africa, this paper analyses the livelihood trajectories of ‘emergent’ farmers in Eastern Cape Province. We apply a rural livelihoods framework to 60 emergent cattle farmers to understand the different capitals they have drawn upon in transitioning to their current class positions and associ...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... accessing land on freehold or leasehold through SLAG, LRAD or PLAS programmes described earlier, these two categories of farmers (nine expanding smallholder farmers and 51 subsistence smallholder farmers) transitioned into three broad categories (43 subsistence farmers on private land; 12 small-scale commercial farmers; and five fully commercialised farmers) [24], as represented in Figure 3. The trajectories they followed as part of this transition are described below: ...
Context 2
... this group of subsistence farmers, two broad sub-groups were also apparent reflecting varying degrees of engagement with the private farmland that they had acquired and associated levels of petty-commodity production. However, it should be noted that these sub-groups were not static but represent a dynamic continuum with farmers intermittently moving from one sub-group to another at different times, as indicated in Figure 3. ...
Citations
... There is reluctance from communal youth to engage in agriculture. The age of the farmers in this study agrees with that of Mthi et al. (2017), Mahashi et al. (2019) and Gwiriri et al. (2021). There is thus clear evidence that more youth need to be recruited into farming. ...
The Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development has allocated a budget for projects such as the Blended Finance Scheme to assist in improving the livelihoods of smallholder farmers. However, previous research has shown that many projects have failed for several reasons, mostly linked to project management. There is a high probability that many will fail if these challenges are not addressed. The purpose of this study is to incorporate the assets-based approach in farming, which will enable farmers to help themselves. The study was conducted in Thaba Nchu and Botshabelo, Free State province of South Africa. A simple random sampling technique was used to identify the sample size of 351 participants. In conducting this study, a questionnaire was designed to include both open and closed-ended questions and was administered through personal interviews by well-trained enumerators. The data was captured through the EvaSys scanner and was analysed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 24. The R software was utilised for descriptive statistics in analysing the quantitative data. The results show that a lack of skills and resources has resulted in inefficiencies in sustainable food production, leading to project failures. These findings support the notion that implementing the asset-based approach in farming could improve the efficiency and sustainability of the state's projects and enable farmers to produce more effectively. Therefore, the study recommends that the asset-based approach should be used to improve the state's projects.
... (4) The higher the financial capital of farm households, the more they prefer contractive livelihood strategies compared to the expanded livelihood strategy. This result is consistent with the findings of Su et al. [102] and inconsistent with the findings of Huang et al. [115], Gwiriri et al. [116], and Liu et al. [15] that the richer the financial capital, the richer their financial expenditures and the more inclined they are to engage in non-agricultural occupations. When rural households in the western mountain areas have more financial capital, they invest more capital and labor to maximize their income from non-agricultural industries. ...
The welfare of many poor and low-income rural households is vulnerable to earthquakes and secondary geological disasters. The academic literature, however, pays little attention to the livelihood pressure, adaptability, and livelihood strategies of these households. Based on the survey data of 327 rural households in the Wenchuan and Lushan earthquake-stricken areas in the Sichuan Province, the livelihood pressure, adaptability, and livelihood strategy characteristics of rural households were analyzed, and the disordered multi-classification logistic regression model was constructed to explore the correlation between the above-mentioned variables. The results show that: (1) Rural households face the greatest economic pressure and the least social pressure; rural households have the strongest adaptability in social capital and the lowest adaptability in financial capital. The proportion of rural households that chose the aid livelihood strategy was the highest, while the proportion of rural households that chose the adjustment livelihood strategy was the lowest. (2) Compared with the expanded livelihood strategy, (a) When the health pressure is higher, the rural households are more inclined to choose the expanded livelihood strategy, followed by the contractive livelihood strategy and, finally, the aid livelihood strategies; (b), the higher the physical capital, the more often the rural households tend to choose the expanded livelihood strategy compared to the adjustment livelihood strategy; (c), The higher the financial capital of farm households, the more they prefer contractive livelihood strategies compared to the expanded livelihood strategy and (d), compared with the aid livelihood strategy, rural households with greater economic pressure are more inclined to choose the expanded livelihood strategy.This study can provide a reference for the establishment of relevant policies related to the adaptation capacity of rural households in the earthquake hazard zone.
Irrigation is an important mechanism to mitigate risks associated with the variability in rainfall for the smallholder subsistence farming system. This study analyzed how practicing small-scale irrigation (SSI) impacts the key livelihood assets on farm households' human, physical, natural, financial, and social capitals in Ethiopia's upper Awash sub-basin. The household-level survey data, collected from the 396 sample households, was used to carry out the current study. A Propensity Score Matching (PSM) analytical model was applied to match the SSI user and non-user groups. The difference between the five capital assets of livelihood was estimated using the PSM's Nearest Neighbor, Radius, Kernel Mahalanobis, and Stratification matching criteria. The results indicated that farmers' participation in SSI has enhanced the capital assets of the farm households. Compared to the non-users, the irrigation users were better off in the number variety of food consumed (0.28 ± 0.13 Standard Error [SE]), types of crops produced (0.60 ± 0.17 SE), expenditures on land renting, and agricultural inputs (3118 ± 877 SE) measured in Ethiopian Birr (ETB), as well as on-farm (9024 ± 2267 SE ETB) and non-farm (3766 ± 1466 SE ETB) incomes. Challenges such as the involvement of local brokers in the market value chain and the absence of farmers' marketing cooperatives have reduced the benefit of irrigated agriculture. Hence, the expansion of SSI schemes for the non-user farmers should consider improving the water usage mechanism and productivity, establishing proper water allocation institutions between up and down streams and limiting the role of brokers in the irrigation product marketing chain be future policy directions.
Over a period of time, the South African agricultural sector has been divided into two sub-sectors, i.e., commercial and subsistence farming for whites and black farmers respectively. It also went through three marketing environmental phases, commencing pre 1913 to date. Use is made of the systemic literature review methodology, considered superior to its more unstructured narrative review counterpart. The findings of the review process are that the early 1900s reflected what a competitive non-regulated market can achieve even for those with minimal productive capacities, while the second phase that commenced with intensification of discriminatory legislation reflected the negative outcomes of the system. The last phase, covering the period after 1994, reflected development of an inclusive policy environment with minimal incorporation of the emerging black farming community. The chapter recommends more concerted efforts at graduating emerging farmers, implementation of well-intended and crafted policies and improved monitoring of CPAs.
