Determinants of commercial farmers’ willingness to mentor emerging farmers in South African land reform

Abstract

ABSTRACT To address the challenge posed by a lack of commercial farming skills among beneficiaries of redistributed farms, the South African Government has introduced a mentorship program, by which established commercial farmers share expertise with newly settled farmers. However, commercial farmers’ willingness to mentor emerging farmers, and the determinants of their willingness at a national level, are not explicitly known. This article attempts to contribute in this regard by implementing a binary logistic regression model, preceded by descriptive statistics, to a sample of 475 commercial farmers. Our findings show that a majority (76 per cent) of commercial farmers are willing to mentor emerging farmers. Younger farmers with higher levels of education are most likely to show willingness to mentor. Farm characteristics, such as high turnover and low perceived threat regarding a “lack of dependable labour” also contribute to the willingness to mentor. Therefore, a farmer and his or her farm performance should be key attributes in the criteria for mentor selection.