Status report on land and agricultural policy in South Africa

Abstract

A strategy that seeks to insert smallholders into the large-scale, industrial, export-oriented model can only succeed in broadening and diversifying the producer base slightly. The large-scale model also brings with it the deepening problems of concentration in the value chain, which, in turn, entrench the production model. The ANC in government has identified the major contours of the challenge, but its responses tend towards seeking to deracialise that model while keeping its core intact. An alternative has to confront the existing economic power of commercial agriculture and agro-industry with the aim of transforming it in the interests of the poor. Deracialisation is necessary, but is not sufficient to realise this. The logic of a smallholder strategy must be followed beyond the farm gate, to the institutions that support agriculture and the value chains that feed off it.