Is Agripreneurship The Future For SA's Smallholders?

‘Agripreneurship’ has become a catchphrase of international agriculture, particularly for largerscale commercial operations. However, Dr Maxwell Mudhara, director of the Farmers’ Support Group at the University of KwaZuluNatal, discusses whether this concept is applicable as a development tool for the world’s smallholder farmers, especially the women and youth of rural South Africa.

- Lloyd Phillips

South Africa has a dual agricultural economy of smallholder and large-scale commercial farmers. The smallholder farmers are typically family-based, and face a plethora of problems, including limited production resources and know-how, poor infrastructure, lack of produce transport, and limited access to markets. Within South Africa’s smallholder farming sector there is also a failure to supply consistent quantities and quality of agricultural produce. This is especially a result of these farmers’ lack of understanding of accepted marketing practices, such as grading, packaging and branding.

Exacerbating these challenges is government’s dismantling of the country’s agricultural marketing boards in 1996.

This action has meant that these smallholder farmers have to compete against larger-scale commercial farmers and agricultural imports, such as sugar from Brazil.

South Africa’s smallholder farmers are not ready for such competition and, as a result, unemployment and poverty remain dominant socio-economic traits of the country’s rural areas. This is despite the widely held belief that agriculture is the vehicle out of poverty and the driver of economic development. And so, rural-to-urban migration continues.

AGRIPRENEURSHIP TO THE RESCUE?

Agripreneurship encompasses the transformation of an idea or vision into what the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor defines as new business or new venture creation, or the expansion of an existing business by an individual, a team of individuals, or an established business, but specifically along the agricultural value chain.

However, participants in the agripreneurship space need important management and organisational skills if they are to achieve success with their ideas and efforts. These particular skills are commonly lacking among South Africa’s smallholder farmers.