Limpopo Leader - Spring 2005 - University of Limpopo

Rural Community Empowerment:
SMALL VERSUS BIG –
AN IMPORTANT AGRICULTURAL DEBATE
iIN THE POST-1994 CLIMATE,
SOUTH AFRICAN UNIVERSITIES
WERE BEING CHALLENGED AS
NEVER BEFORE TO FOCUS THEIR
ATTENTION MUCH MORE
SPECIFICALLY INTO THE COM-
MUNITIES LIVING IMMEDIATELY
BEYOND THEIR CAMPUS GATES.
Thanks to the long impact of
apartheid, some confusion
seemed to exist in academic
circles between the notion of
‘pure’ scientific research
and research related to actual
African realities.
As a result of such debates,
and under the guidance of
Professor Naftali Mollel who is
acting Dean of the Turfloop
Faculty of Sciences, Health and
Agriculture, the then University of
the North (now Limpopo) did
something about the challenge.
They established the Centre for
Rural Community Empowerment
(CRCE) as the outreach arm of
the School of Agricultural and
Environmental Sciences.
That was in the year 2000.
Two years later, French-born
Thierry Lassalle arrived. He
had accumulated extensive rural
developmental experience in
Africa. His first 10 years were
spent in Tanzania (from 1988
to1998), working in the field of
rural market development. He
then consulted more generally in
Tanzania, as well as in Rwanda,
Kenya and Madagascar. And in
2002 he came south to advise
the CRCE’s newly appointed
co-ordinator, Mr Ernest Letsoalo,
who had just graduated from the
University of Limpopo with a
Masters in Agricultural Extension.
‘I think the debate is no longer
so much about pure versus
African research, not in agriculture
at any rate, as about commercial
versus small-scale agriculture,’
Lassalle says. ‘It’s important that
we legitimise the debate in the
academic arena. It’s crucially
important, I believe, that a
university like Limpopo should be
engaged in the challenge of how
to shape the future, and how to
bring a better share for everyone.
That’s certainly what the CRCE is
doing – working to legitimise the
debate.’
Lassalle points out that eight
out of ten farmers throughout
the world are community-based
small-scale farmers serving the
needs of the majority of the
developing world’s population.
Their development is therefore
of primary concern.
‘A lot of commercial farming is
moving in the direction of genetic
modification,’ Lassalle observes.
‘But this is proving to be highly
detrimental to development.
Everyone in agriculture
remembers the so-called green
revolution of the 1970s. Hybrids
were supposed to eradicate
hunger, but the economics of seed
production prevented that. Now,
too, genetically modified seeds
are very definitely the property
of the seed companies. So much
so that in some cases the
reproducibility of the seeds
developing on the plants has
been removed by the
biotechnologists. The idea is that
new seeds have to be purchased
every year.
‘Where does that leave the
small-scale farmer who operates
on or just above the subsistence
level?’ he adds with real concern.
In response to these
challenges, the CRCE has three
main areas of activity: action
research, documenting and
networking.
Action research can be
defined as a combination of
active assistance and postgraduate
research in several
defined pilot sites around the
Turfloop campus. The first site
involves the Ga-Mothiba
community where dry-land
agriculture and the sustainable
management of natural resources
are the main focuses. The second
site involves the Ga-Mampa
community that is situated within
a traditional surface irrigation
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