Forms of agricultural support and the “culture of dependency and entitlement”

ABSTRACT

The paper is based on a study that sought to understand the nature of the interaction between small-scale farmers and government in the Eastern Cape from a variety of different perspectives. The study involved a sample survey of farmers, and in-depth interviews with farmers, extension officers and other government staff, and leaders of farmer associations. This particular paper explores two themes that emerged in the course of the larger study: first, what is popularly known in South Africa and elsewhere as the “culture of dependency and entitlement”, and second, the forms of support that government chooses to offer to small-scale farmers. The paper argues that government is stuck in a vicious cycle whereby it seeks to placate expectant small-scale farmers with material support, which it can most effectively do via problematic group projects; although generally ineffective, the practice has the effect of maintaining widespread demand for such support, even to the point that small-scale farmers form group projects for the sole purpose of attracting it. In seeking to compensate for the weaknesses of this approach, government has sought to introduce compensatory measures such as “strategic partnerships”, sometimes with the ironic consequence that small-scale farmers no longer play a role in farming in “their” agricultural projects. The paper concludes that the government in the Eastern Cape needs to return to the basics of effective extension support aimed at supporting individual farmers; to the extent material support is still needed, it should no longer be given away for free.

KEYWORDS:

• smallholder development
• South Africa
• dependency
• entitlement

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• Q18
• agricultural policy

Acknowledgements

The author would like to express its thanks to the Programme to Support Pro-Poor Policy Development, the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, and the European Union for the financial support that made the overall study possible [grant number EuropeAid/134258/M/ACT/ZA PSPPD2/ CfP2/2014/15/34]. The author would further like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions.

Notes

1. These responses were given to an open-ended question which was included at the end of the questionnaire in order to provide respondents an opportunity to express anything in their own words on the theme of farmer support: “Is there anything else you would like to let us know about the support you get or don’t get from government or from other farmers?”

2. This is where our research tends towards “content analysis”, an approach akin to thematic analysis but in which the expression of themes is counted and therefore rendered available for quantitative analysis. For purposes of this paper, we are generally not concerned with precise counts or quantitative analysis as such, but make do with generalisations such as the one in this paragraph to the effect that some themes articulated by our sample of small-scale farmers are more or less universal.

3. One might suppose, however, that coverage of more commercially-oriented small-scale farmers would be more encouraging, and this is correct. However, this detail goes beyond the scope of this article. For some discussion about such distinctions, see, for example, Aliber & Hall, forthcoming. Among other things, that source indicates that, nationally, for the period 2014–2017, the share of “commercially-oriented black smallholders” receiving support in an average year was about three times higher than for all black small-scale farmers.

4. While this figure is not encouraging, it is important to point out that it is far higher than for South Africa as a whole, whereby the average extension officer only interacts with 17 farmers in a year.

5. The mystery is the fact that two thirds of the farmers who receive free inputs do not also seem to receive extension support. As a matter of principle, why would free inputs ever be given to farmers who are not also assisted with extension?

6. To be precise, for purposes of the graph the expenditure for, say, fiscal year 2014/15 is associated with “2014”, since most of the months of that fiscal year fall in 2014.

7. The argument is not that the R350 million spent per year on extension is extravagant – extension is important and it is a big job, in the sense that farmers are numerous and are widely distributed across space. Nor is there a concern about the supposed “trends” in the budget shown in Figure 2; in truth there is no real trend, and the “volatility” is less than the vertical axis scale makes it appear. The concern is how few farmers are supported through this budget.

8. Ulimicor and Tracor were the agricultural development corporations for the Ciskei and Transkei, respectively.

9. There is some official support for the idea of the “project approach” as one of a larger number of “extension approaches” discussed in the Department of Agriculture’s Norms and Standards for Extension and Advisory Services document of 2005. However, what these projects actually consist of – in particular whether or not they are meant to be “group production projects” – is not very clear: “The approach of ‘Managing by Projects’ is a powerful instrument whereby planned, targeted extension actions are introduced. All funded projects have to be registered, with clearly defined objectives, action plans, timelines, deliverables, key performance indicators and resource assignment and execution responsibilities. Within these broad approaches, provinces should develop their situation-specific implementation strategies in conformation with norms and standards. The diversity of farming practices and systems should be considered in developing appropriate implementation strategies at provincial level.” (DoA, 2005: 6)

10. This is not to say that there are no problems. In June 2016, a number of these “business owners” from the community sought to damage the project; as quoted in a Dispatch Live article under the headline “Ncera residents go nuts destroying R100m project”, one irate community member said: “There have been sales of plants and macadamia nuts since 2013 but no one knows how much we have made. We need those answers, yet when we call government to come and address this, they don’t come” (Charter, 2016). According to a more recent Dispatch Live article, the 2017 harvest was a record high for the project, in which “The state has invested R147-million … to date with 151 people having been employed” (Oreilly, 2017). The point, however, is that the nature of these “group dynamics” are different to those that have tended to afflict traditional group-based production projects, for the simple reason that “the group” is not involved directly in production except as labourers.

11. “WIPHOLD runs the farming operation. Community members contribute by: erecting and maintaining the fencing (provided by WIPHOLD); guarding the fields against livestock intrusion and theft; monitoring crops for diseases, insects, and other things; assisting with harvest pickups and ensuring harvest security; recruiting tractor drivers and other workers from participating villages; and nominating individuals to be trained and mentored by WIPHOLD as farm managers” (Wiphold, 2017: 6).

12. One clear exception to this pattern is the development programme run by Grain SA, which does work with farmers in groups, but in such a manner that they farm as individuals on their own land. Perhaps not coincidentally, the programme receives little government support apart from the Jobs Fund.