Evaluating the Green Revolution after a decade: a Swaziland case study

Abstract

This paper analyses the impact of the Komati Pilot Project (KPP) upon members and their neighbours. The KPP was a Government of Swaziland (GoS)-financed irrigation scheme that enabled 43 subsistence and semi-subsistence farmers to change from rain-fed maize and cotton to irrigated sugar cane. It provides an opportunity to evaluate the impact of Green Revolution technology upon an African rural community where adopters and non-adopters live close together and where little income differentiation existed prior to the development because the common experience was poverty. A baseline survey of the KPP was carried out in 1997 in advance of the Komati Downstream Development Project. Of concern are the extent and direction of any trickle-down effects from the KPP participants for their neighbours and the consequences of any such impacts 10 years after the project started producing sugar cane. The expectation of the GoS was that sugar cane would benefit KPP participants and neighbours creating a multiplier effect through increased demand for services and increased demand for agricultural labour. Ten years later, these expectations are unrealized.