Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
stems from the fact that traditional markets are intimately linked with human interactions
and influenced by culture, values, history and social forces. One often-missed fact is that
markets in Africa are not only about prices and getting them right as required by the market
liberalization strategies of the international development institutions. Markets are points of
social and cultural interactions in many societies; men go to markets to look for future brides
and village governments punish wrong-doings by exposing culprits to the marketplace, thus
making markets 'multifunctional institutions associated with several non-economic aspects
of (local) cultures' (Hodder and Ukwu, 1969). As human cognitive ability to deal with
these issues is often limited, resolution requires immense investment of time and effort and
innovative analytical procedures, hence the focus on institutional analysis.
In South Africa, agricultural produce from smallholder farmers is often lost after production
due to spoilage and inability to access the markets. This is mainly because most smallholder
and emerging farmers are faced with a range of technical and institutional challenges that
affect market access and compromise the profitability of farming at that level. There are
also concerns about natural resource management especially in parts of the country where
customary tenure systems still prevail and conflicts arise about the optimal allocation of
common property resources. Whereas the marketing infrastructure is poorly developed,
smallholder and emerging farmers lack supportive organizations that represent and serve
them. These factors reduce smallholder and emerging farmers' incentives to participate
in formal markets. A reduction in formal market participation, in turn, makes it difficult
for these farmers to shift into commercial farming and thus, a reduction in economic
development. With these facts in mind, this study analyzes the extent to which technical
and institutional factors influence the marketing channel choices among emerging and
smallholder farmers in the Kat River Valley.
Literature on marketing constraints and market opportunities for indigenous cattle is still
limited since over the past years studies conducted were based on mixed and exotic cattle
breeds. In South Africa, off-take rates in the small-scale cattle sector is much lower than
in the commercial sector, i.e. an off-take rate of between 5-10% compared to 25% in the
commercial sector (Montshwe, 2006). This situation creates serious obstacles to developing
an effective cattle marketing system that targets the smallholders in the communal areas of
the country that suffered the most during the period of apartheid policies in the country.
After the implementation of Nguni cattle projects in the Eastern Cape Province by the
University of Fort Hare, market off-take is still very low in communities that benefited
from the project as evidenced by the deterioration of grazing lands in the province due to
overstocking.
In addition, the majority of the beneficiaries sell cattle by-products with no value added
to them and they get relatively lower prices that make production unsustainable and lead
to a view of agriculture as a business with low returns. As a result, the youths also view
Search WWH ::
Custom Search