Abstract
Sustainable agricultural system contextualizes cooperative practices to reflect competitive economic returns, the continuous supply of essential and life-supporting ecosystem services, and enhanced food security. The study seeks to establish the challenges of small scale farmers in transforming into mainstream sustainable commercial farming and accessing competitive markets through greener economic functionality of the agricultural cooperative. To address these challenging phases and gaps towards growth prospects, this paper provides a comprehensive literature review and phenomenological approach on the underlying paradigm of personal knowledge and subjectivity. The purpose of this paper is twofold: to assess the extent of sustainable socio-economic network influence of Sicabazini farming cooperative on the potential shift in the living standard, and to examine the antecedent economics of environmental farming cooperative challenges to traverse the growth prospects with the context of cooperative social capital networks. The paper adopted the qualitative paradigm using interviews as data collection instrument on fifty participants from Sicabazini farming cooperative. In providing richer understanding and more insightful and inductive discussions on the phenomena, the rigorous application of case study content analysis reveals credibility assurance that the role of the sustainable farming cooperative benefits the economics of dual objectivity (social and economic nature) while simultaneously elevating environment of agricultural prosperity and creating sustainable job opportunities in remote rural areas. Furthermore, to transferability value of this study, the lack of resources and less accessible larger markets coupled by languishing commercial growth prospects influence the progressive phases of environmental cooperative. Keywords: cooperatives, sustainable farming, social capital, stakeholder theory. JEL Classification: Q13, Q56, Q58
Highlights
Sustainable agriculture is using farming practices considering the ecological cycles
The cooperatives are described as having an economic mission with social impacts and positive social outcomes to build competitive idea (Mozzarol, Limnios and Rebound, 2013), while simultaneously cooperatives are driven by collective economic orientation and self-interest in ensuring the efficiency and capability to generate sufficient profit for longterm survival
If agrarian ideology begins with the premise that agriculture is the most basic institution in the South African economy, Hogeland (2013) stresses that agricultural prosperity ensures the nation’s prosperity in the environmental economics
Summary
Sustainable agriculture is using farming practices considering the ecological cycles. Growth in agricultural production to meet rising global needs using prevailing farming practices is unsustainable – a transformation is needed, especially on the small scale farming under greener cooperative schemes. Noxolo Somhlahlo, School of Management, IT and Governance, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Thokozani Patmond Mbhele, Ph.D., Lecturer of School of Management, IT and Governance, University of KwaZulu -Natal, South Africa. Social capital as a social network and the associated norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness in using sustainable agriculture (Stiglitz, Sen and Fitoussi, 2010) is critical for cooperative economics to thrive and for development to be sustainable. 24-31) astutely point out that social capital is a critical resource for efficient collective action and able to transform farming potential into environmental economic growth and sustainable development. Greater and more-sustained yields may increase access of households to a larger food supply as discretionary anticipation of elements of stakeholder theory
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