Obstacles to the profitable production and marketing of horticulture products in Lesotho: an offset-constrained probit modelling of farmers’ perception - Institutional Constraints to Small Farmer Development in Southern Africa - page 152

Lesotho's agriculture has been in decline for several years. It is hardly possible to recall
that Lesotho ever produced an agricultural surplus, but the fact is that the country was
a net exporter of maize until 1865 (Gill, 1993). In the foreword to the National Vision
2020 document launched in 2005, the Prime Minister of Lesotho, Professor Pakalitha
Mosisili, recalled the time following the discovery of diamonds in Kimberly (Northern
Cape Province of South Africa), in 1866, when Lesotho earned the reputation of being
the Granary of Southern Africa, , as the major supplier of wheat to meet the unprecedented
demand for grains for a population that had come into sudden wealth (Government
of Lesotho, 2005). But this seems to have been short-lived as hostilities from the Boers
intensified, culminating in the destruction of the grain farms of Lesotho, eventually chasing
the Basotho out of the fertile farm areas to the west of the Caledon River (SA History).
Since then, the sector's contribution to GDP has been declining, from over 30% in 1970
to about 20% in the mid-1990s (Moyo et al. , 1993), and just about 16% currently (CIA,
2008). Estimates of the sector's contribution are available for several years (FAO/WFP,
2003, 2004) and reflect the persistent downward trend. Correspondingly, agricultural
production has been on the decline, resulting in a complete reversal of the country's status,
to a net importer of agricultural produce. By the mid-1980s, the country was only able
to produce 14% of domestic food consumption needs (Government of Lesotho, 1996).
Studies conducted within the last decade suggest that agricultural production has fallen
further, with the country importing up to 95% of its domestic food requirements (Van
Schalkwyk and Jooste, 2002; Van Schalkwyk and Mhalanga, 2002). The situation is much
worse today as the food and humanitarian crises in the region deepens.
Despite this gloomy picture, the sector is the most important employer of labour in the
domestic economy. According to Moyo et al. (1993), the sector employed about 86% of
the population over much of the 1980s. The figure has fallen considerably since then and in
1999 stood at 57% of the domestic labour force (EIU, 2002). Official statistics provided by
the Ministry of Agriculture (GoL, 1996) indicate that despite its poor overall performance,
as much as 23% of the rural population depend entirely on agriculture for food and income,
while a further 32% regard agriculture as a secondary source of livelihood (GoL, 1996).
Government and the development community have responded to the decline of agricultural
production in a number of different ways. In the 1970s and 1980s massive investment of
resources were made in pursuit of self-sufficiency which reflected the dominant view of
food security as a demand-side problem (Sen, 1981 and World Bank 1986). But repeated
failures of the type and scale aptly captured by Ferguson (1994) in his book, The anti-
politics machine, engendered an atmosphere in which Lesotho's agriculture hardly excited
much intellectual and political interest. A situation was thus created in which Lesotho's
agriculture was virtually written off as irrelevant to the country's long-term development