Livelihoods, institutions and the small farmer - Institutional Constraints to Small Farmer Development in Southern Africa - page 290

12.7 Institutional innovations in research and community outreach
The University of Fort Hare is among the 'black institutions…in outlying, often rural areas,
'disarticulated' from the economic heartland of industrial South Africa' (Swartz, 2005).
For most of these institutions, linkage arrangements that enhance their relevance to their
catchment areas are quite limited if not non-existent. To that extent, the innovative activities
related to the development of the community outreach programme around the indigenous
Nguni cattle represents a significant break with tradition. The efforts around the Nguni
cattle also endorse contemporary intellectual views regarding the importance of market
access. As Jooste and Van Rooyen (1996) concluded, the transition of the small scale sector
towards commercial production will ultimately be determined by its access to markets where
produce can be marketed profitably to serve as incentives for output expansion. According
to Stroebel (2004), several constraints affect the efficient marketing of livestock in the
Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, chief of which are related to market availability
and high transactions costs. Currently there is poor response of consistent cattle supplies
to existing market outlets by small-scale farmers on communal lands (USAID, 2003). It is
often convenient to explain low off-take rates in traditional livestock production in terms
of customs and traditions, but this is clearly simplistic and tends to uphold the stereotype
of the tradition-bound peasant who is unresponsive to economic incentives.
The empirical tests carried out in Chapter 6 suggest that the severe marketing constraints
faced by small-scale cattle farmers are the reasons they sell few of their cattle. Factors
such as market availability, market distance, transport availability, transport affordability,
information access, current market price and condition of cattle, herd size, method of
payment, household size, gender, age and level of education of head of household are
all linked to the institutional architecture and were examined. The indication is that
addressing marketing constraints will enhance off-take rates thereby increasing household
income earnings and standards of living of the beneficiaries of the University of Fort Hare
livestock improvement programme. There is immense scope for a long-term adaptive and
collaborative research on these issues to integrate natural science know-how with socio-
economic analysis to gain deeper insights into the dynamics of the traditional livestock
economy. It is also important to identify areas of flexibility in the system where science
can help to enhance livelihoods in an environment that still remains depressed many years
after democratic rule was enthroned in South Africa. Designing such a collaboration and
ensuring that it works effectively is an important step towards improving rural livelihoods.
12.8 Impact of trade regulation
Maize production in Swaziland has been falling in recent years, forcing the country to
increasingly rely on imports from neighbouring South Africa. Weather patterns that have
featured unrelenting droughts in the country, as in the other Southern African countries,