Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
chapter will be on that: taking stock of what has been examined in the previous chapters to
provide some sort of summary and then drawing a few general conclusions that will help
point in the direction of change where needed. The first three sections of this chapter will
address the question as to whether institutions are relevant as a summing up of the literature
reviews and document analysis that are a feature of studies of this nature. In answering that
question, some of the shortcomings as well as strengths of existing approaches to both
analyse institutions, and deploy them, for reform will be examined. So, the questions will be
whether institutions still matter, the scope of the problem to be addressed by institutional
change, and what is being done and how that is being done. These sections will be followed
by a presentation of the chapter summaries with analytical discussions of the key findings.
The final section takes a look at the future directions of institutional analysis in relation to
the implications for smallholder development and provides an opportunity to proffer some
recommendations for policy as promised at the beginning of the topic.
12.2 Do institutions still matter?
It is appropriate at this point to attempt to draw together all the strands of the foregoing
chapters that deliberately expanded the theme of institutional analysis to capture the
multiplicity of the arrangements and issues that define the environment of the smallholder
farmer in Southern Africa. The initial observations that smallholder farming in Southern
Africa has been on the decline remain valid today as they were several years ago when many
of the studies reported in this topic were designed. he food security situation in the region
today is still desperate and many of the countries of the region still have a large part of their
populations listed as vulnerable and in need of humanitarian assistance. According to the
Southern Africa Regional Food Security Update issued by the Joint United Nations Mission
(2010) in January, 2010, Lesotho, Swaziland, Namibia, Mozambique and Zimbabwe seem
to be the most at risk. The problem of food insecurity in these countries has been blamed
on many factors over the years, including the policy framework in respect to the allocation
of resources to the farm sector, how much support small farmers receive from the extension
services, the institutional capacity of the extension services themselves in terms of the size
of their workforce and how much they know about what needs to be done to support
the small farmers, the condition of the infrastructure available, such as the road condition
and the facilities available to the farmers. These border on formal rules and the associated
characteristics for their enforcement which constitute 'institutions' in the way they are
defined (North, 1990, 1994). To the extent that the food security situation remains dire, it
is important to analyse these issues.
But there is nothing in the descriptions of these 'institutions' that provides adequate
guidelines on how to make a judgement about whether or not they matter. That insight
can only come from knowledge about their efficacy in transforming the smallholder sector
and causing growth to happen. In order to be in a position to pronounce on the precise
Search WWH ::
Custom Search