Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
mostly at a lower scale. Beinart and Wotshela (1995) noted that the rate of cultivation in
Stutterheim has dropped during the past few years probably because very few landowners
or tenants are able to command sufficient land, capital and labour to produce significant
amounts of output.
The study employed household and community data collected from Stutterheim in March
2008. Primary data were generated by means of structured questionnaires administered
on a total of 79 households, as well as interview schedules and checklists for purposes of
collecting community-level data. Secondary data were gathered by means of extensive
document analysis and discussions with knowledgeable persons, including extension
workers serving the two study communities.
3.6 Results and discussions
In this and subsequent sections, the results of the study are presented and discussed.
Following this introduction, the socio-economic characteristics of the survey households
are presented while the diverse sources of rural incomes are examined in the sub-section
that follows. The dynamics of poverty reduction and how these are affected by the choice of
activity are then discussed on the basis of those findings. The final part of the section takes
a look at the determinants of poverty.
3.6.1 Socio-economic characteristics of survey households
The characteristics of the sample households were analyzed by means of descriptive statistics
as shown in Table 3.1. Characteristics included gender, age, marital status, main source
of income and education of household head interviewed, in addition to the size of the
household's field. From the evidence, the average household size was more or less the same
in both study communities although the Mlungisi households seemed marginally larger.
On average, household heads in the rural community were older than those in the peri-
urban location, reflecting the tendency for individuals to move back to their villages as they
grew older. There were correspondingly more widowed persons in the rural area, where
household heads were relatively older, less educated, and cultivated relatively larger fields
than those in the peri-urban location of Mlungisi (Table 3.1).
3.6.2 Sources of rural income
Households in the two communities derive income from several activities, both farm and
non-farm activities (Table 3.2). Most households pursued at least one of the following
activities: crop farming, livestock rearing, own business, wage employment, and augmented
income by means of pensions, grants and remittances. The average total income for the 12
months recorded for each community was computed. According to the data, households
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