A review of support services for smallholder and small-scale agricultural producers

Abstract

The CBPEP/GTAC Project: Employment intensive land reform in South Africa: policies, ‘programmes and capacities aims to formulate a set of options for rural land reform in South Africa aimed at generating a large number of employment, self-employment and livelihood-enhancing opportunities through the promotion of small-scale agriculture. The anticipated project outputs include: • formulating national policy guidelines on the promotion of employment intensive agriculture; • designing ‘programmes for implementation by national and provincial departments in conjunction with non-governmental partners; • costing such ‘programmes; • conceptualizing the provision of relevant support services for those acquiring access to land in different settings, including provision of extension advice and support for marketing of produce. This thematic study reviews support services for smallholders provided by state and non-state actors to date. It provides an analysis of recommendations from the High Level Panel (High Level Panel 2017) and the recent report of the Presidential Panel on Agriculture and Land Reform (2019). It provides an assessment of what needs to change to provide a range of appropriate support services for smallholder and black commercial producers in order promote employment intensive land reform. The final section of the report examines the institutional and capacity requirements of effective extension, institutional and production support systems, with a particular focus on smallholder and small-scale black commercial farmers. It examines what types of support should be offered to producers at different scales, what systems of extension management and institutional oversight are required to manage the provision of effective support systems, and how current support systems would need to be reconfigured to align with this objective.