Abstract
The purpose of the study was to characterize irrigated smallholder agricultural enterprises (ISAEs) in selected areas of Vhembe District, Limpopo Province. The characterization focused on the geophysical environment and on participants in ISAEs. Precipitation was at most 460mmpa for villages along Madimbo Corridor and 701-1380mmpa for those along Mutale Valley, and temperatures were 38.1℃-44.0℃ (Madimbo) and 30.0℃-40.0℃ (Mutale). Groundwater supplemented surface water and was utilized more at Madimbo Corridor compared to Mutale Valley. The study area was characterized as semi-arid to sub-humid, hence technologies for efficient irrigation should be promoted. Participants in ISAEs were female (94.9%), and adult (52.72%) with low education levels (67.7% ≤ secondary education). The majority (88.65%) were not formally employed (54.61% self-employed, 34.04% full-time farmers). Participants experienced some level of poverty, 68.03 percent received low household incomes (R1001-R5000/month), 77 percent received social grants. Interestingly, the majority (65.31%) stayed in multiple-roomed houses, had cement brick walls, and corrugated iron roofs (54.42%), and all had electricity, a stove, and a fridge. Also, majority-owned radio (96.67%), DSTV (87.45%), vehicles (65.56%), and cellphones. Participants mostly provided adequate food supply (91.84%) with three meals/day (79.38%) except during hard times where 49.56 percent provided fewer meals mostly due to delayed readiness of farm produce. Strategies to empower ISAE participants to be more effective should consider their gender, age, education, and economic status estimated by income, asset ownership, and food security.
Highlights
Improving household livelihood through smallholder-irrigated agriculture will remain a key strategy for rural poverty alleviation in most of the low-income countries, where most of the rural poor depend directly or indirectly on agriculture
The main rivers flowing through the study area were Sand, Mutamba, Nwanedi, and Mutale with boreholes more densely distributed in the southernmost Mutale Valley compared to the north most Madimbo Corridor (Figure 1)
The irrigated smallholder agricultural enterprises (ISAEs) located in the Madimbo Corridor used more groundwater than their counterparts located in Mutale Valley (Tshiombo, Matangari, and Maraxwe)
Summary
Improving household livelihood through smallholder-irrigated agriculture will remain a key strategy for rural poverty alleviation in most of the low-income countries, where most of the rural poor depend directly or indirectly on agriculture. The antiquity of smallholder-irrigated agriculture in South Africa specifies that it suffered considerable neglect and was a mixture of success and failure. Those may have been caused by the adverse effect of water unavailability, which resulted in decreasing agricultural production leading to food insecurity, unemployment, and poverty. With improvements in infrastructure done over the years, it was anticipated that access to reliable water for irrigated smallholder agricultural enterprises (ISAEs) would lead to increased productivity and greater returns from farming.
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