Explaining land size demand among potential emerging farmers in South Africa: what does it mean for land redistribution policy?

ABSTRACT

The South African land redistribution is stalling, and frustration in both citizens and politicians has gained momentum in recent years. Among its numerous recommendations, the Advisory Panel on Land Reform and Agriculture, appointed by the presidency to ease the frustration, has recommended research to better understand the beneficiaries of land redistribution. Using a sample of 469 potential emerging farmers randomly selected and surveyed from three provinces, this article endeavours to understand factors affecting land size demand of commercial-oriented smallholders, who are the prime beneficiaries of land redistribution. Existing studies report a small land size demand from smallholders and have advocated that land reform farms should be subdivided to meet this demand despite the Land Subdivision Act of 1970, which prohibits subdivision of farmland. This repeated request implies that the government has done little so far to subdivide land reform farms. Results from the ordinary least squares regression of the present study show that mostly socio-economic variables, followed by ‘currently owned arable land’ and ‘risk attitude’, statistically explain land demand of potential land reform beneficiaries. Considering the farm subdivision debate, the results of this study substantiate the argument of subdividing farms because smallholders demand a land size that meets their working capabilities and their willingness to accept the associated risk.

KEYWORDS:

• Land reform
• land demand
• OLS
• survey
• commercial-oriented smallholder
• South Africa

Acknowledgments

The financial assistance of the National Research Foundation (NRF) and Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) towards this research is hereby acknowledged. Opinions expressed, and conclusions arrived at, are those of the author and are not necessarily to be attributed to the NRF and SNSF. I would also like to thank Christian Ritzel for assisting with the empirical analysis.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Using a series of census datasets, Liebenberg (2013) estimated the average commercial farm size to be 2000 hectares.

2. This support occurs despite the existing Land Subdivision Act of 1970, which prohibits subdivision of farms beyond viable size. Cousins and Scoones (2010) provided a detailed discussion of the concept of viable farm size.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation-DAAD [NA] Doctoral scholarship; Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung [IZLSZI_170836].