Over the past couple of years, the South African government has been offering varied
support to households that are engaged in small-scale farming, with the objectives of
improving their livelihoods, income and food security. Although the various rounds of
the General Household Survey (GHS) gathered information on the type of agricultural
support received by the farmers, their production, agricultural income and food security
status, there is limited empirical evidence on the extent to which the agricultural
support programme is yielding the intended results. Very little is also known about how
the beneficiary households perceive the agricultural support programme as either
relevant or otherwise. This study fills these gaps in the literature using the GHS data
spanning the period 2013 to 2016 to assess how government agricultural development
support influences the livelihoods of small-scale farmers in South Africa. This broad
objective is divided into two specific objectives: (1) to assess the effects of government
agricultural development support on agricultural income, production and food security
of beneficiary small-scale farmers in South Africa; and (2) to assess the usefulness of
the government agricultural development support for the beneficiary small-scale the government agricultural development support for the beneficiary small-scale
farmers in South Africa. By combining descriptive analysis with Propensity Score
Matching (PSM) and logistic estimation techniques to address these objectives, the
results indicate that from the year 2013 to the 2016 survey years, the proportion of
households who have access to agricultural development support has decreased
marginally by about two percent. Access to support has remained higher among males
than females; farmers who have low levels of education than those with high levels of
education. Across provinces access to agricultural support is high in the Eastern Cape,
KwaZulu-Natal, Northern Cape, North -West and Mpumalanga, but very low in the
Free State, Limpopo, Gauteng and Western Cape. The agricultural development
assistance given by the South African government is effective in reducing food
insecurity, as well as in improving the production and income of the beneficiary smallscale
farmers. However, the results suggest that the agricultural support system is
having a heterogeneous impact on beneficiary small-scale farmers, depending on their
gender and geographical locations. / Agriculture and  Animal Health / M. Sc. (Agriculture)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:unisa/oai:uir.unisa.ac.za:10500/26919 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Mokgomo, M. N. |
| Contributors | Chagwiza, C., Tshilowa, F. P. |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Format | 1 online resource (x, 88 leaves) : color illustrations, color graphs, application/pdf |
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