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32. South African government palliative funds for agriculture amid Covid-19: challenges of implementation and suggestions for improvements
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Popoola, O. O (author) and Yusuf, S. F. G (author)
- Format:
- Journal article
- Publication Date:
- 2021-12-09
- Published:
- South Africa: South African Society for Agricultural Extension
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 205 Document Number: D12729
- Journal Title:
- South African Journal of Agricultural Extension
- Journal Title Details:
- Vol. 49, N. 3
- Notes:
- 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.
33. The Influence of budget allocation to implement the policy of extension and advisory services in South Africa
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Lukhalo, T. (author) and Zwane, E.M. (author)
- Format:
- Journal article
- Publication Date:
- 2022-10-20
- Published:
- South Africa: South African Society for Agricultural Extension
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 205 Document Number: D12725
- Journal Title:
- South African Journal of Agricultural Extension
- Journal Title Details:
- Vol. 50, N. 1
- Notes:
- 19 pages, Extension support is viewed as an enabler of food security. However, the literature reveals that extension within the public sector in South Africa is not yet geared to satisfy the needs of resource-poor smallholder producers to break away from poverty and food insecurity. This paper is aimed at reviewing budget allocation and public expenditure on agricultural extension support services to provide evidence-based recommendations to inform the implementation of the national policy on extension and advisory services. The study was conducted using budget allocation and expenditure data collected through a survey questionnaire directed at nine provincial departments of agriculture. The problem investigated was to establish whether the budget allocated to provincial extension services would be sufficient to implement the extension policy. Data analysis employed descriptive statistics including t-tests of differences in means. The study has delivered several findings: a). The budget execution rates were high for both the extension practitioners and the farmer programmes, with budget execution for farmer programmes being better than that for extension practitioners. b). The budget trends indicate an efficient system of budget execution for the benefit of the farmers. c). There were statistically significant differences between mean budget allocation for extension practitioners and farmer programmes. d). It was further found that the differences between the mean expenditure on extension practitioners and mean expenditure on farmer programmes were statistically significant. e). Consistent with budget allocation, mean expenditure on farmer programmes was higher than mean expenditure on extension practitioners leading to the conclusion that farmer programmes spent significantly higher than extension practitioners in the five financial years. f). On the other hand, it was found that the cost of implementing the newly developed national policy on extension and advisory services was found to be greater than the current budget allocation. The paper concluded that the budget allocation was insufficient, yet farmers received value for money.
34. The effects of internet usage, financial development and trade openness on economic growth in South Africa: a time series analysis
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Salahuddin, Mohammad (author) and Gow, Jeff (author)
- Format:
- Journal article
- Publication Date:
- 2015-11
- Published:
- South Africa
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 153 Document Number: D06901
- Journal Title:
- Telematics and Informatics
- Journal Title Details:
- 33(4) : 1141-1154
35. Utilisation of mobile phones in accessing agricultural information by smallholder farmers in Dzindi Irrigation Scheme in South Africa
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Holmner, Marlene (author)
- Format:
- Journal article
- Publication Date:
- 2021
- Published:
- International: African Journals Online
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 202 Document Number: D12100
- Journal Title:
- African Journal of Library, Archives and Information Science
- Journal Title Details:
- Vol. 29 No. 1
- Notes:
- 21 pgs., CTs (Communications technologies) have revolutionized agricultural information services at every level in the agricultural sector, thus impacting rural development and catalysing poverty alleviation strategies. This has largely been the case with small-scale farmers in rural areas in developing countries where mobile technologies have penetrated more than most other ICT tools. However, in some of the farming environments, mobile phone use is largely driven by agricultural extension workers. This paper seeks to examine the way mobile phones are used for information access in situations where agricultural extension workers are a critical intermediary in the agricultural information services. Interviews were conducted with 10 randomly selected farmers who were part of the Dzindi irrigation scheme. The findings were that from the variety of information available to the farmers the most important source was the extension officer. The extension officer and the radio were indicated to be the most reliable independent sources of information. The other sources, such as the radio, family members, and friends, suppliers of chemicals, books and magazines, were only considered reliable if the information could be verified or vouched for by the extension officer. Increasing the information handling skills of extension officers, training of farmers to use smart features of their phones and promoting the usual face-to-face communication use of conventional methods, which is what usually gives rise to the mediation of mobile phones, were recommended.
36. Welfare implications of home gardens among rural households: evidence from Ingquza Hill local municipality, South Africa
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Nontu, Y. (author) and Taruvinga, A. (author)
- Format:
- Journal Article
- Publication Date:
- 2023-05-07
- Published:
- South Africa: South African Society of Agricultural Extension (SASAE)
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 206 Document Number: D12934
- Journal Title:
- South African Journal of Agricultural Extension
- Journal Title Details:
- V.51, N.1
- Notes:
- 16 pages, Food insecurity is widely recognised as a global issue that requires immediate attention using multifaceted approaches. There is a generalised consensus about the positive role of home gardens in improving household income and food security. However, there is limited empirical evidence to support the above nexus worth exploring to enhance evidence of based programming. Therefore, this study used cross-sectional survey data from Ingquza Hill local municipality in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa (n = 200) to estimate the correlation between participation in home gardening, household food security, and household income. Results revealed that income from home garden sales was the least source of income for most households in the study area, contributing an average of 10.4% to total household income. An insignificant negative correlation was confirmed between home gardens and household food insecurity access score, suggesting that home gardens fall short of addressing household food security. A positive linear significant correlation was also confirmed between home garden participation and household income. The study concludes that home gardens designed for cash crop production may have a better food security premise than those intended for home food consumption and the sale of surplus.
37. Why do agricultural co-operatives fail to attract youth and create rural employment? Evidence from a case study of Zanokhanyo in Butterworth, Eastern Cape
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Zantsi, S. (author)
- Format:
- Journal article
- Publication Date:
- 2021-05-25
- Published:
- South Africa: Academy of Science of South Africa
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 203 Document Number: D12308
- Journal Title:
- South African Journal of Agricultural Extension
- Journal Title Details:
- Vol. 49 No. 1 (2021)
- Notes:
- 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.
38. Will digital technologies transform agriculture in developing countries?
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Deichmann, Uwe (author), Goyal, Aparajita (author), and Mishra, Deepak (author)
- Format:
- Journal article
- Publication Date:
- 2016
- Published:
- International
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 164 Document Number: D08261
- Journal Title:
- Agricultural Economics
- Journal Title Details:
- 47 Supplement, 21-33
- Notes:
- Focuses on results in World Development Report 2016: Digital Divide, published by the World Bank.
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