Agriculture has been identified by the government of South Africa to play pivotal role in socio-economic emancipation of rural people and those living in common-ages. The government has made
commitment to provide agricultural support services in order to increase and promote black
entrepreneurs by 5% per annum. Given the socio-economic profile of the South African population
and the acknowledgement of the importance of agrarian development in other countries, South
Africa started its land reform after democratic government in 1994. Prior 1994, agrarian reform was
based on the fact that very few black producers were actively involved in commercial farming.
Attempts to correct this disparity through agrarian reform have led to several challenges such as
distribution of land without balancing it with capacity-building programmes and have proven to be
unsustainable and costly. Major causes of poor performance of farming based on Small, Medium
and Micro Enterprises is lack of capacity in many aspects of running farming as a business and
farmers are usually smallholders, producing crops in mixed inter-cropping, which result in persistent
and continuous poor yield in a&' cultural production leading to poor financial returns and increase
in pover1y level. Sustainability of agricultural projects are affected by the fact the at smallholder
farmers do not have acquired knowledge and required skills needed for good management and
proper daily operations of the project at technical level and lack of support ·om the community in
buying local products
Gauteng Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (GOARD) invested its efforts on
poverty alleviation projects on smallholder farmers who have demonstrated their potentials tor
agricultural activities and have experienced benefits in the form of government programmes such as
CASP (Comprehensive Agricultural Support Programme), Agro-Processing Infrastructure, and
Letsema among others. The study has identified the constraints that smallholder farmers face in
their agricultural activities and made recommendations to policy makers that will assist smallholder
farmers based on their level of participation in the agricultural sector which will assist in creating
comprehensive, sustainable and appropriate capacity building models and strategies for agribusiness
in order to contribute significantly to the eradication of poverty, reduction of unemployment
through agriculture and creation of sustainable and market driven agribusiness in Gauteng Province,
South Africa.
There are six hundred and thirty five agricultural projects in Gauteng Province that are practicing
intensive and extensive agriculture for vegetable production and supply the formal and informal
markets with their produce. However, during the sample survey, only 160 projects were selected tor the survey to identify factors affecting sustainability of agricultural projects on poverty alleviation.
The farmers that participated are located in City of Tshwane (20 farmers). West Rand District (60
farmers). Ekurhuleni District Municipality (25 farmers). Sedibeng (15 farmers) and City of
Johannesburg (40 farmers).
Data collected was subjected to analysis using SPSS and the regression analysis was used to
determine factors affecting sustainability of agricultural projects tor poverty alleviation in Gauteng
Province, South Africa. The results show that 40% (the majority) of the sampled farmers were
between the age of 50-59 years, while 18% of these farmers never attended school. The results of
the study revealed that 65.6% of farmers had a household size of between 4-6 people and generated
farm income was less than R200 000 per annum.
The linear regression technique reveals a significant determinants of sustainability of agricultural
projects for poverty alleviation are attitude (t=-2.71 ): impact (t=5.86): farmer participation (t=2.82).
educational level (t=2.16): farming experience (t=-2.84.): farming income (t=2.28): land tenure
system (t=-2.58): and land acquisition method (t=-3.98). / Thesis (M.Sc (Agric economics) North-West University, Mafikeng Campus, 2012
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:nwu/oai:dspace.nwu.ac.za:10394/16194 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Mokgadi, Justine Fikile |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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