Magister Philosophiae - MPhil / In this mini-thesis I explore the key characteristics of the farming household and the
livelihood strategies they employ with particular reference to their farming systems. The
study sought to determined the contribution made by agriculture to the total household
income, as a means to justify for promoting booth subsistence and smallholder production as
a policy direction.
I established that rural households who are former labour tenants engage in both on and off
farm income generating activities as a response to capital and labour accessibility. A fairly
moderate contribution was made from cash cropping; however, I argue that the value could
be much higher if considering high proportion of produce is for home consumption. There is
a pattern where subsistence production intensifies to smallholder production with
accessibility to water, high potential land and markets. I also found cattle herd sizes to be
highly variable amongst households and goat production being correlated with a pattern of
feminisation in agriculture. I give evidence that calls into doubt common claims of land
degradation and instead call for more clearly defined communal range land management
research.
I then argue that farming systems are driven and adapted to farmer‟s non-static objectives and
subsequent opportunistic strategies employed. This mini thesis concludes that with realistic
comprehensive support to small scale agriculture there is potential for petty commodity
production which will stimulate rural economies.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:uwc/oai:etd.uwc.ac.za:11394/4267 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Mthembu, Nonhlanzeko Nonkumbulo |
| Contributors | Cousins, Ben B. |
| Publisher | University of the Western Cape |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | University of the Western Cape |
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