Abstract
AbstractSouth African agrarian policy aims to integrate smallholder tree‐crop farmers into high‐end value chains with growth and employment potential, generally neglecting socio‐economic differentiation amongst them. This paper aims to analyse socio‐economic differentiation amongst tree‐crop farmers in Vhembe District, Limpopo, using a class‐based analysis based on livelihood diversification and accumulation. Cluster analysis of survey data and semi‐structured interviews reveals that most tree‐crop farmers engage in petty commodity production, internally differentiated by their combination of income sources and livelihood strategies. Farmers' ability to engage in accumulation and upward class mobility is generally severely constrained by limited access to capital. Agricultural diversification offers livelihood potential but limited possibility for accumulation, whereas salaried nonfarm work offers more promising prospects for accumulation but limited livelihood opportunities. A minority demonstrated characteristics of small‐scale capitalist farmers, internally differentiated by their reliance on salaried employment or agricultural production. The findings challenge the notion of an undifferentiated class of market‐oriented smallholders.
Highlights
South Africa's former homelands continue to exhibit some of the highest levels of poverty and unemployment in the country
There has been little analysis of socio-economic differentiation processes amongst commercially oriented macadamia and avocado smallholders. This paper explores these processes to illustrate that these smallholders are highly diversified, with access to capital through different livelihood sources as a key mechanism of differentiation, which subsequently determines the capacity for accumulation and socio-economic differentiation within class categories
This paper challenges the simple notion of an undifferentiated class of market-oriented smallholders and has illustrated the multiple axes along which these smallholders are differentiated
Summary
South Africa's former homelands continue to exhibit some of the highest levels of poverty and unemployment in the country. Evidence comes from case studies of smallholder irrigation schemes (Cousins, 2013; van Averbeke & Mohamed, 2006) and amongst smallholders more generally (Aliber et al, 2009; Aliber & Hall, 2010, 2012; Cousins, 2010; Greenberg, 2013; Hazell, Poulton, Wiggins, & Dorward, 2007; Hebinck & Cousins, 2013; HLPE, 2013; Okunlola, Ngubane, Cousins, & Du Toit, 2016), including rural Africa more broadly (e.g., Akram-Lodhi & Kay, 2010a, 2010b) This calls into question transition narratives such as the one that broadly informs current agrarian policy in South Africa, which sees the category of market-oriented smallholders as largely undifferentiated with limited consideration of contextual factors that produce and exacerbate the potential and unevenness between them. Where heterogeneity is acknowledged to some degree, what shapes the understanding of these differences and their underlying processes illustrates important assumptions about smallholders and their livelihood trajectories
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