Deep Roots

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Image: AFASA

Agriculture is the cornerstone of rural development in South Africa. There

is a need to support smallholder farmers so they can increase production

highly subsidized tillage means; free government extensions

services; free vaccination, dipping, fodder banks and good

quality livestock breeding material).

When dealing with family farming challenges, one should

always have a holistic approach, where all relevant elements

share equal attention rather than focusing on one isolated

element of farmer support and development. Based on

AFASA’s ‘on-farm practical experience’, NERPO has devel-

oped a ‘wagon wheel’ holistic approach to farmer support

and development. In this approach, the farmer is the core

focus, needing a balanced support. Over the years, AFASA

and NERPO have tabled a number of policy proposals to the

South African Government in support of the farmers, espe-

cially with regard to land issues, access to credit, information

and formal markets.

AFASA and NERPO are the main national farmers’ associa-

tions in South Africa that facilitate the development of African

farmers in order to increase their meaningful participation

in the commercial agricultural sector. The two associations

advocate for partnerships based on complementarity of the

strengths of public and private sector role-players.

The public sector, for example, has been spending much

money in the development and transformation of the agri-

cultural sector but not achieving the intended results,

probably due to limited expertise or capacity. Hence, there

is a need to partner with the relevant private companies

or entities with the necessary skills and resources for

better results. Putting the smallholder farmers at the heart

of partnerships and involving them under fair terms and

conditions as well as ensuring effective mechanisms of

cooperation is imperative.

The South African Government has put in place a

number of programmes to assist smallholder farmers, but

these programmes seem not to be enough to boost agri-

cultural production. The government support system is

failing to transform emerging farmers into commercial

farmers who can sustain themselves and contribute to the

growth of the agricultural sector. There is also lack of a

proper strategy to design support packages that deal with

the needs of specific groups of farmers. Lack of coordina-

tion of the farmer support programmes is another problem

that hinders farmers in maximizing the benefits they can

get from government support.

The easiest way of segmenting farmers in South Africa is

through the land tenure system. There are basically three

tenure systems in the country, namely land ownership with

title deeds; land owned through leasing from the state; and

communal/tribal land (former homeland areas, land owned

through the local authority of a chief).

Cooperatives are a good conduit to use in order to have

coordinated support for farmers. These cooperatives are struc-

tures that can coordinate all agricultural activities on behalf of

their members. However, a number of cooperatives in South

Africa are dysfunctional even though they are properly regis-

tered. This calls for a support package that ensures that the

cooperatives that are active and producing are given first pref-

erence with respect to farm machinery, inputs and insurance

subsidies in order to boost their production capacity. Part of

the package should include a revitalization strategy to resus-

citate the dormant agricultural cooperatives.

The AFASA cooperative chamber has embarked on a drive

to bring the agricultural primary cooperatives together and

form one secondary cooperative per district municipality.

The thinking behind this is to create a coordinating struc-

ture that will spearhead agricultural production and ensure

that the farmers also access local, national and international

markets in a structured way. The secondary cooperative

model will create an organized structure, taking responsi-

bility for receiving government funding and implementing

agricultural production projects using evidence-based plan-

ning. This structure will have sole responsibility for

coordinating all agricultural activities and ensure that there

is proper planning from production on the farm to the

marketing of agricultural produce.

Agriculture remains the cornerstone of rural develop-

ment in a country like South Africa. Hence there is a need to

support smallholder farmers so that they increase agricultural

production. The smallholder farmer support package model

must be farmer segment-specific to address the needs of small-

holder farmers in these segments. Monitoring and evaluation

of progress is very important so as to make adjustments

where necessary, and to continuously supervise the farmers

to ensure that they focus on production on their farms. These

farmers must also accept that once they start to operate profit-

able agricultural production on their farms, support for them

will gradually be withdrawn and transferred to more needy

fellow smallholder farmers.

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