THE AGRARIAN RURAL HOUSEHOLD ECONOMY

The assumption is that access to land and agro-ecological
food production enhances the lives not only of those
directly involved, but of those around them. The survey
indicates a solid base to work with.
TA’s focus is mainly on those with some kind of access to
land, but who are nevertheless severely land constrained,
mostly with access to under 2ha of land for production.
They are small-scale producers with potential to produce
surpluses for those around them and, in so doing, improve
their lives. The underlying assumption of TA is that
agricultural production will improve livelihoods. The aim
is to test this belief in practice, through a collaborative
partnership of organisations.
The survey reflects this constrained access to land as well
as low levels of production, coupled with high levels of
hunger and food scarcity. What role can agriculture play
in improving these conditions? The most obvious is the
production of food for households and neighbours, and
then beyond, if possible. The goal is to expand food
production, but the form this takes needs to be discussed
in interaction with producers or potential producers and
their broader communities, with an emphasis on
ecologically and socially sustainable surplus production.
There is a ‘hidden economy’ in rural areas that must be
recognised and stimulated. The focus of TA is therefore
not the farmers who are poised to enter into supply
contracts with Walmart or Woolworths or any of the other
big food retailers; it is on those who are not yet producing
enough even to meet their own household needs. .
MARKETS, VALUE CHAINS AND FOOD SOVEREIGNTY
TA has an explicit focus on both markets and food
sovereignty. Further consideration is required of the
relationship between the two. Food sovereignty emphasises
local production for local consumption, whereas markets
and value chains tend to emphasise the sale of surpluses
to others. They are not necessarily incompatible. The key
is the expectation of what food production can achieve
in the context of the broader agri-food system in South
Africa and globally. Concentrated inputs and output
markets and entrenched large-scale agricultural production,
coupled with landlessness or constrained access to land
and insecure tenure, have contributed to marginalising
the contribution of smallholder agriculture in South Africa.
The National Planning Commission (NPC, 2011) plan
for agriculture focuses on commodity chains and integration
of smallholders into the formal agri-food system, controlled
by the state and capital. This translates into a focus on
THE AGRARIAN RURAL HOUSEHOLD ECONOMY REPORT
employment and entrepreneurship, both regenerating
the capitalist economy. Value chain analysis is useful in
understanding the links between inputs, production,
storage, processing and distribution of food, and even
consumption. However, the tendency is to look only at
formal systems. The challenge for TA is to consider these
elements of the agri-food production cycle in alternative
forms. Input supply, processing, storage and distribution
have received little investigation from NGOs to date.
Most of the TA’s partner organisations had a primary
focus on access to land. As access to land (even if small
amounts) has expanded, there has been an additional
focus on productive use of the land. This improved
productivity has proven difficult to realise in the absence
of resources or appropriate technical support. In the
context of low and inconsistent levels of production, the
issues of storage, processing and distribution have not
been systematically tackled.
The linear model of development of value chains fails to
take into account the holistic character of agri-food systems,
where storage, processing and distribution do take place
but in ways that are not considered to have much
economic or financial value. Food sovereignty poses a
challenge to the ‘nodal’ approach to value chains, with
the latter’s emphasis first on production and later on
processing and distribution. Production of agricultural
products, their processing into foodstuffs, methods of
storage and distribution of the products take place
simultaneously and are socially and culturally embedded
activities. Food sovereignty calls on food producers and
their immediate communities to consider methods of value
addition and distribution of food as part and parcel of
the production process.
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