On Family Farms and Commodity Groups: Rural Livelihoods, Households and Development Policy in the Eastern Cape

Abstract

In recent years, and especially with the realisation that many of the GEAR-driven initiatives for encouraging growth and development in the former homelands, have not delivered on their promises, a new emphasis has crept into policy debates: Food security and self-reliance are now placed much higher on the rural development agenda in South Africa. Many have welcomed the emphasis on food security and speak increasingly of an agriculture-led growth strategy with a strong focus on livelihoods in the rural areas. But as the development discourse begins to shift away from the language of commodity groups and export production towards an engagement with food security, the focus has come to rest on rural households and their capacity to deliver as agents of local economic development. In this paper, I argue that those who apply ‘sustainable livelihoods’ approaches to South Africa should not under-estimate the extent to which rural households in areas like the Eastern Cape have already moved away from household -based agricultural production and have embarked on new livelihoods strategies. The new strategies are less critically reliant on household cooperation than they are on new solidarities. The paper argues that researchers and policy makers would do well to recognise the social fragility and weakness of many rural households as they reflect on the capacity of rural households to driven local economic development in rural areas.