Joint ventures

Abstract

South Africa s land reform programme is based on the state providing grants to landless people who negotiate with white landowners to purchase land. The high price of land, among other factors, has led to the emergence of joint ventures. In these ventures, black people who have land rights or who are land reform beneficiaries engage in joint agricultural or other land-related production with white commercial farmers, corporations or sectors of government. Are these schemes the answer to the difficulties of entry into agriculture faced by land reform beneficiaries? Do they really contribute to agrarian reform, transforming the countryside in South Africa, or are they mechanisms through which commercial farmers and others are able to reduce their risk and in which poor people are exploited in new and different ways?