Water Wheel July/Aug 2026: Smallholder Farming

Abstract

This is evident in one of the country’s most impoverished provinces, the Eastern Cape, where more than 53% of the communal land with irrigation installed is currently unused. (Most of this land falls under communal tenure and is farmed by smallholders on fragmented plots where they grow produce for household consumption and to sell at local markets.) Despite significant public investment over several decades, many irrigation schemes have fallen into disrepair, water delivery has become unreliable, and large areas of farmland have been abandoned. As an agricultural economist specialising in land systems, irrigation, and food security, I examined whether revitalising smallholder irrigation schemes in the Eastern Cape is economically and socially viable, and what actually makes them work.

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