12 pages., The study reported on in this paper investigated smallholder farmers’ access to extension services. The study sought to distinguish the varying degrees of access to services of smallholder farmers engaged in different production systems, that is, home gardening, field cropping, and livestock production. The study was conducted in Raymond Mhlaba Local Municipality in the Eastern Cape, specifically in two communities, namely Ngcabasa and Phathikhala villages. Research activities included a survey of 100 farmers as well as focus group discussions. Employing logistic regression analysis, the study aimed to understand what influences whether or not a smallholder farmer accesses extension. The study also used various types of comparative statistics (T-test) to assess the implications of access to extension support, for instance for production and farm income. The main findings of the study were that 68% of the farming households interviewed in Ngcabasa and 71% of those in Phathikhala had access to extension services. Farmers who had access to extension had more farm income in both enterprises compared to those who had no access to extension services. From the regression analysis, farmers who were more likely to receive extension support appeared to be those who were older, those with less education, and those farming with livestock.
11 pages., This paper was initiated in order to find the usage and relevance of theInformation and Communication Technologies(ICT) by the smallholder farmers of the Umzimvubu Local Municipality of the Eastern Cape Province in South Africa. A survey questionnaire was then developed to collect the relevant data from randomly selected six villages of Umzimvubu Local Municipality targeting 138 respondents. The questionnaires structure employed both closed and open-ended questions that were administered using a face to face interview, conducted on the sample population in each village. There seems to be a correlation between ICT usage and the economies of scale in agricultural development, where smallholder farmers tend to use less of highly modernized ICT, while commercial large scale farmers use more of the modernized ICT. This disparity amongst farmers is exacerbated in many areas by the differing support systems employed by the public extension services.
15 pages, The novel Corona virus pandemic has been extremely overwhelming at all levels causing massive economic setbacks for many countries including South Africa. The country witnessed an unprecedented scaling-down of its national economic activities, which called for an emergency response from the government. Several Covid-19 relief schemes were instituted by the government to ensure that farms of all sizes would survive. A support fund of R1.2 billion was allocated to the agriculture and food sector through the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development (DALRRD). The fund was primarily meant to assist financially distressed small-scale farmers to ensure continued production and food security for the country. This study collated the conditions for financial Covid-19 stimulus support required from smallholders and analysed several factors that prevented some members of this vulnerable group from benefitting from the relief funds. These factors include complexities associated with satisfactorily categorizing smallholder producers, productivity, marketing and policy challenges, glitches in formalising smallholder producer operations, the farm-business record keeping pitfall, and the exclusion of subsistent producers. The paper suggests some possible corrective measures that could allow for more inclusive support to these categories of farmers; some of which includes a simple but robust financial traceability system for the farmers, and a need to continue to push for the completion of national registration process of smallholder producers.
15 pages., In the National Development Plan, cooperatives and agriculture development are identified as possible solutions for addressing rural poverty and unemployment, especially among the youth. However, according to most research/literature, agricultural cooperatives fail for many reasons, including but not limited to lack of capital, incompetent management and organizational deficiencies. This study applied a qualitative analysis to the qualitative data using a case study of Zanokhanyo Food Security Cooperative (ZFSC) in Ndabakazi, Butterworth. Interviews with the project members, ex-members, extension officers and youth were conducted through a semi-structured questionnaire administered in IsiXhosa. According to the results, lack of intensive production resulting in very low incomes is one of the reasons why projects such as ZFSC fail to attract young people and provide employment for rural people. Agricultural extension advisory services play a very limited role because of their generalist approach; they lack depth of knowledge about diverse agricultural subject areas. This study recommends that agricultural extension and the farmers’ support system be improved by employing or outsourcing specialists to cater to the needs of agricultural cooperatives in order to improve the productivity and income of agricultural cooperatives.