Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
is building up. They worry that the term 'institutions' is now the 'porridge' concept that is
employed to cover up all the confusions we cannot resolve by standard and conventional
thought. But we have felt and continue to feel such exasperations with terms such as 'prices ,
'markets , 'industrialization' and all the other cure-alls, and this deinitely did not render
them irrelevant. What is needed is probably some caution and a lot more attention to
balance in seeking explanations to the imponderables in African development, of which
there are many. Dealing with the development challenges in Africa has all the trappings
of caring for a family member whose illness persists even after all known conventional
procedures have been exhausted. In some cultures, the care-giver is asked to 'look around'
and there is a tendency to hang on to anything that offers a bit of hope.
Given that the smallholder sector seemed most vulnerable, issues around its development
continue to dominate discussions and enquiry. In the light of the foregoing, a series of
studies were designed in two South African universities, namely the University of the
Free State and the University of Fort Hare, with the collective developmental objective to
contribute to poverty alleviation in Southern Africa by identifying the roles that institutions
can play and what options existed, in addition to the modification of trade patterns, for
revamping the smallholder farming sector in the region. On an overall basis, the studies
aimed to carry out a comprehensive assessment of the institutional factors that impact on
farm production, to not only identify the obstacles to agricultural and national economic
growth in the region, but also to find out what alternative options are available and how
they can be better delivered for greater effectiveness and development of sustainable small-
holder farming systems in Southern Africa. Thus, two obvious immediate objectives were:
•
to produce a comprehensive database on the institutional constraints on smallholder
farming in Southern Africa, and
•
to develop alternative designs that maximize market access for smallholders and lead to
measurable improvements in incomes of small scale farmers.
In order to achieve the foregoing immediate objectives, the following specific steps were
envisaged:
a. Conduct comprehensive assessment of the existing institutions and organizations that
serve the farm sector of the study countries.
b. Recalculate comparative economic advantages for the previously studied countries on
the basis of current macroeconomic, production and market data.
c. As a follow-up to the above exercise, conduct more detailed investigation with respect to
agricultural products/commodities in which each country has an economic comparative
advantage.
d. Comprehensively examine the factors, in terms of assets, institutions, and processes
that influence the household's flexibility in responding to alternative production and/
or trade regimes.
Search WWH ::
Custom Search