Agricultural Development

1
Agricultural Development Land Research in the
CPEG

• Presentation to Parliaments Joint Budget
  Committee

16 October 2008
2
Centre for Poverty, Employment and Growth

• CPEGs policy research work is coordinated to
  answer
• How can SA achieve the objectives of halving
  unemployment and poverty by 2014 on a sustainable
  basis?
• What would people be doing? What are the
  trade-offs and choices?
• This is done through
• Think tank processes especially the
  Employment Scenarios and supporting sector
  based workshops
• Policy research
• Demonstration projects
• Research infrastructure including reviews of
  data quality, surveys, and modelling.
• Employment Policy Network

3
CPEG scope of research work

• Employment studies
• Macro-economic policy
• Infrastructure and economic bias most recently
  with work on commercial transport and electricity
• Industry policy
• Food and agriculture
• Labour markets, migration and social protection
• Public employment
• EPWP, with a special emphasis on the social sector

4
CPEG Examples of research capacity

• Dr Miriam Altman is the Executive Director. She
  is an economist, with wide ranging experience in
  employment, labour markets and industrial policy
• Catherine Cross is a migration specialist and
  economic anthropologist
• Dr. Innocent Matshe is a professor of economics,
  with a speciality in agricultural economics
• Tim Hart is an agricultural development
  specialist and social anthropologist
• Dr Peter Jacobs is an agricultural development
  specialist and economist
• Mompati Bhaipeti is an agricultural economist and
  research intern
• Stewart Ngandu is an economist with a specialty
  in economy-wide modelling
• Cooperation with other parts of HSRC GIS,
  Surveys, gender, etc

5
Agricultural Employment ScenariosDepartment of
Science and Technology

• Policy oriented research problem and questions
• What role can agriculture play in meeting the
  targeted 50 reduction in poverty and
  unemployment by 2014 and getting the economy to
  grow at a rate of 6 per year?
• Despite low cost per job for unskilled labour,
  agricultural employment in commercial farming
  sector is still falling
• Estimate a number of the plausible and
  practically realizable rural employment scenarios
  using 2014 and 2020 as time horizons
• What are the costs and benefits of policy options
  to boost job creation in agriculture?

6
Research approach and methodology

• This research started from baseline information
  farm employment and livelihoods in the former
  homelands and large-scale commercial farming in
  the rest of South Africa.
• Within these extreme agrarian structures, the
  study defined ten possible ways in which this
  agrarian structure could evolve up to 2014 and
  2020.
• To keep track of overall impacts and extract
  realistic employment scenarios, the study defined
  the following collective scenarios
• Continuation of current trends
• Large-scale land reform re-peasantisation of
  former homelands
• De-racialisation via land reform commercial
  development in former homelands.

7
Main findings

• Continuation of current trends
• 100 000 to 200 000 fewer farm jobs
• 75 000 to 100 000 livelihoods created or boosted
  via land reform
• 1 million additional food security plots
• Large-scale land reform re-peasantisation of
  former homelands
• 170 000 to 300 000 fewer farm jobs
• 1 to 1.5 million livelihoods created or boosted
• 1.25 to 1.5 million additional food security
  plots
• Significantly changed racial ownership pattern
• De-racialisation via land reform commercial
  development in former homelands
• No change in farm jobs, but some relocation
• 85 000 livelihoods created or boosted, but almost
  exclusively black commercial farmers
• 0 to 0.5 million fewer food security plots
• Significantly changed racial ownership pattern

8
Recommendations

• Continuation of current trends
• No major change in policies, or improved ability
  to implement policies we have
• Policy questions Could lend itself to popular
  frustration and political opportunism?
• Large-scale land reform re-peasantisation of
  former homelands
• Large investment in redistributive land reform
  Large investment in supporting land reform
  beneficiaries and agriculturalists in former
  homelands
• Policy questions Impact on farm jobs ? careful
  targeting of under-utilised commercial land
• De-racialisation via land reform commercial
  development in former homelands
• Large investment in redistributive land reform
  Large investment in supporting black commercial
  farmers
• Policy questions Political acceptability
  ambiguous

9
15 Year Review of Rural DevelopmentThe Office of
the Presidency

• Policy oriented research problem and questions
• Synthesis evaluation of various government
  interventions to raise the level of well-being of
  citizens since 1994
• Pro-poor rural policies with specific emphasis on
  agricultural and land reforms social wage
  policies
• Research approach and method
• comprehensive review of published and unpublished
  reports, peer reviewed and grey literature.
• meaningful descriptive analysis of accessible
  official statistics Labour Force Surveys, the
  General Household Survey and ME reports of
  government departments

10
Main findings

• Smallholder farming 3-4 million households
  engage in small-scale farming, albeit mainly to
  supplement their food requirements
• Land Reform Programmes approaching 5mha in total
  target of 25 mha reasons for slow pace range
  from willing seller willing buyer model to
  limited budgets and poor institutional
  coordination
• The CASP agricultural development support after
  land transfer roll-out since 2004 uneven and
  almost exclusively concentrated on selective
  on-farm infrastructure (often consuming more than
  70 of CASP budget)
• The ISRDP sound principles but without a
  ring-fenced budget instead depends on the
  allocations from the individual line departments
• Social wage transfers transfers in the form of
  grants, health and education services are
  significantly higher in rural areas on average,
  the bottom 40 of the rural population benefited
  slightly more than the rest of the rural
  population

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Recommendations

• Practicable rural policies can help to ensure the
  supply of food to urban areas while also
  slowing-down unplanned demographic pressures on
  non-rural localities
• Further investigations are needed into how land
  markets can facilitate or constrain elements of
  the land reform process
• Criteria to judge the success or failure of land
  reform projects must be more nuanced projects
  considered a commercial failure might be success
  stories in terms of sustaining livelihoods and
  food security
• Other factors that affect the success of the
  projects require attention institutional
  arrangements among beneficiaries and the capacity
  of land reform departments
• The need exists to up-scale CASP to broadly
  enhance post-transfer agricultural development
• Social wages in the form of services can
  substantially reduce structural poverty and
  therefore need to be accelerated
• More needs to be done to understand and measure
  the rural livelihoods impacts of coordinated and
  participatory governance (ISRDP)

12
Baseline Information on Technology-Oriented
Initiatives in Rural Areas to Promote Economic
DevelopmentInternational Partnerships Unit,
Department of Science and Technology

• Main Problem
• Slightly less than 50 of poor reside in rural
  areas but most of these are poor.
• It is generally recognised that the fight against
  rural poverty must be multi-pronged.
• The Department of Science and Technology (DST) is
  perpetually seeking to define and refine its
  contribution to this collective effort.
• Among other things DST is seeking to ensure that
  technology is harnessed towards the objective of
  rural development.
• DST required an overview of technologically-orient
  ed poverty reduction initiatives in rural South
  Africa.

13
Research

• The study involved a literature review and a
  preliminary national audit of technologically-orie
  nted poverty reduction initiatives.
• Technologies being developed and/or implemented
  but only tip of the iceberg.
• Focused on the following sectors
• Agriculture
• Small-scale mining
• Manufacturing
• Information and Communication Technologies
• Energy, and
• Environment
• Agriculture is the sector presented here.

14
Main findings

• 209 different types of agricultural technology
  were identified
• Research has largely focused on technologies that
  are appropriate to the better resourced
  commercial farming sector and consequently
  inappropriate for poor agrarian rural households.
• Insufficient and underskilled extension services
  in some provinces make diffusion of relevant
  technology to poor rural areas a serious problem.
• Constraints to technology development and
  transfer
• Accessibility of information - problematic
• Institutional knowledge management poor and not
  shared
• Monitoring and evaluation - limited
• Indigenous knowledge - scant
• Markets and business models - inappropriate
• Massive agricultural programmes too many,
  ineffective and no cross-sectoral linkages

15
Recommendations

• The diffusion of relevant technology to poor
  rural areas requires concerted effort by policy
  makers and state organs to ensure that it reaches
  the poor.
• South Africa is developing and transferring more
  appropriate technology in the agricultural sector
  than it was two decades ago, but much needs to be
  done to make this effective.
• Other economic sectors are lacking behind the
  agricultural sector. Their stimulation will
  ensure better service delivery in the rural areas.

16
African Indigenous Knowledge Systems in
Agricultural ProductionNational Indigenous
Knowledge Systems Office, Department of Science
and Technology

• Main Problem
• Can indigenous knowledge (local knowledge)
  contribute to food security and thereby reduce
  the poverty of rural agrarian households?
• If so how best may this be achieved?
• This question is aligned to three specific
  government interventions, namely poverty
  reduction (various Departments including DoA),
  addressing food insecurity (various departments
  including DoA) and the integration of
  scientific and indigenous knowledge systems
  (DST NIKSO).

17
Research

• Carried out in a rural village situated in the
  former Gazankulu Homeland of the eastern Limpopo
  Province.
• High levels of poverty in the Limpopo Province,
  located in a former homeland and situated in a
  semi-arid to arid zone.
• Fieldwork was conducted for a period of 16
  months.
• Participatory Rural Appraisal techniques,
  participant observation, qualitative interviews,
  focus group workshops and a random sample survey
  of 13.5 of the households in the village.
• Research focused on the agrarian activities in
  home garden plots, fields and two communal
  vegetable garden projects supported by the
  Limpopo Provincial Department of Agriculture and
  Environment (LPDAE).

18
Main findings 1

• The majority of households are poor.
• Social grants (pensions and child grants) are the
  most common source of income reaching 83 of
  households in 2005.
• 83 of residents lived on less than US 2/day and
  49 live on less than US 1/day.
• 90 of households produced agricultural crops
  during the summer rainfall season.
• 80 of households said that these were vital for
  their food security.
• But less than 5 able to produce exotics.
• Most produce traditional crops, various plants
  for marogo, and a few hardier exotic vegetables,
  also mainly for marogo .
• Dried marogo was consumed by 95 of households
  during the winter period - no rainfall for about
  six months.

19
Main Findings 2

• Traditional crops, including marogo, were grown
  at the two communal vegetable garden projects due
  to their hardiness.
• The theft of the borehole pumps and the
  subsequent inability to grow exotic crops -
  projects not functioning well.
• Membership means only reaching 4 of the
  households and extension services did not reach
  out to other households.
• When functioning projects demand use of
  conventional technologies and crops.
• All households practise traditional agricultural
  at home. Unable to afford the technologies
  typically promoted and associated with the
  projects.
• Peoples socio-economic and agro-ecological
  circumstances not considered prior to engagement.
  Support of more than 10 years has been
  inappropriate.
• Most households rely on local knowledge of
  agricultural.
• indigenous knowledge systems breaking down or
  ineffective in the light of rapid social,
  economic and agro-ecological change.

20
Recommendations

• Interventions need to build on what people
  already know and do.
• Alternative and low external input technologies
  required - fit in well with the current local
  agricultural practices and the socio-economic
  circumstances.
• Urgent are water harvesting and management, and
  soil conservation, technologies. This would
  improve crop quality and quantity.
• Technologies need to be adapted to local
  requirements in a participatory fashion in order
  to reach most households.
• Active cultivation of marogo plants needs to be
  encouraged for food security and biodiversity.
• Local people - support in improved seed saving
  and storage - reduces agricultural input costs.
  Also requested support with regard to livestock
  nutrition, disease and breeding due to
  illnesses and losses.
• Given the indigenous knowledge base of most
  households there is strong potential for
  collaboration between indigenous and
  scientific knowledge.

21
Achieving Food Security in South Africa
Characteristics, Stressors and Recommendations to
2019The Office of the Presidency

• Main Problem
• Despite strong government commitment tremendous
  disparities in food security exist between
  communities and households across the country -
  reflects continuing social and economic
  inequalities.
• Despite interventions, there are signs that there
  is increasing food insecurity in specific places
  - related to factors unemployment, HIV/AIDS,
  food prices, climate change etc.
• In rural areas, most households are net deficit
  food producers, their access to food is partially
  or wholly reliant on household income.
• Food security is largely about (direct or
  indirect) access to cash to purchase food.
• Study focuses on poverty reduction, specifically
  in the light of food insecurity, policies and
  programmes of various Departments and the
  collaboration within them and with non-government
  agencies.

22
Research

• Draws on recent literature and research of the
  multiple facets of food security in South Africa.
  
• Compiled by sixteen specialists in this field
  along with contributions from their institutional
  collaborators.
• Current government initiatives, such as AsgiSA
  and an expanded welfare safety net, were also
  considered.
• Specific focus areas included
• Overview of food security in South Africa
• Food accessibility and stability
• Food availability
• Food intake and utilisation including nutrition
• Policy and institutional issues
• Scenario developed iro the institutional
  framework required to achieve food security by
  2019.

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Main Findings 1

• Pro-poor growth path required as current growth
  is increasingly excluding the poor jobs not
  created in sectors where they find employment.
• Success of initiatives such as AsgiSA, are
  central to the higher rates of food security.
• Social protection system must take cognisance of
  the 8.3 million people in households in which no
  one has access to either formal employment or a
  state pension. These are the most vulnerable.
• Chronic, structural food insecurity is the most
  prevalent and urgent food insecurity problem in
  SA.
• Agriculture has a role to play but at the
  household subsistence level in the poorer rural
  areas and former homelands.
• Dietary diversity must be encouraged to ensure
  nutrition is optimal.
• Must recognise diverse character of the
  livelihoods of the rural and urban poor.
  Complementary rural enterprises and employment
  must therefore be part of this strategy.

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Main Findings 2

• Initiatives must be congruent on current
  livelihood strategies and choices and must be
  founded on strong participation of those
  affected.
• Food insecurity is highly shaped by local
  context.
• Food prices and other inflationary issues are key
  drivers of food insecurity in South Africa.
• A collaborative institutional framework that
  provides a broad range of services by bringing
  government and non-government together is
  required.
• Food security must become part of governments
  integrated anti-poverty strategy which includes
  social grants, employment, agricultural policy,
  etc.
• IFSS requires clearer, dedicated funding, greater
  participation by civil society and dialogue with
  other stakeholders. Legislative backing would
  strengthen the process.
• Food insecurity needs to be monitored continually
  and must be part of new institutional
  arrangements.

25
Recommendations

• Recommendations made in light of the existing
  institutional framework.
• Continue to develop an integrated policy
  framework for poverty reduction that incorporates
  within a cohesive policy strategy
• Pro-poor economic growth policy that will enable
  the majority of South Africans to achieve food
  security through employment and effective service
  delivery by the state.
• Comprehensive, affordable, and sustainable social
  protection measures, in particular social grants,
  to provide safety nets for those unable to engage
  effectively with the economy and who are
  vulnerable to hunger.
• Actively encourage agricultural development and
  allied non-farm enterprises to promote the
  livelihoods of those on the periphery of the
  formal economy.
• Alter and strengthen the institutional
  arrangements of the IFSS to transform it into an
  enabling structure for state and non-state actors
  to coherently address food security within the
  context of its multiple dimensions, and as part
  of an overarching poverty reduction strategy.
• Establish a well coordinated and well managed
  monitoring and evaluation and information system
  for food security.