Water Wheel May/June 2026: Small-Scale Farmers

Abstract

Once heralded as the answer to food insecurity, unemployment and rural decline, the development of smallholder farmers into large-scale commercial farmers in South Africa has yielded uneven results. Billions of Rands have been channelled into infrastructure, inputs, irrigation systems, packhouses, and training programmes. Yet across many initiatives, the anticipated transformation into thriving commercial producers has not materialised. A recently completed WRC-funded study set out to understand why. What the project team uncovered did not point to a need for more funding, land, or training, but instead, asked for something more fundamental. They realised, says project leader and specialist researcher at the Nova Institute, Dr Betsie le Roux, that almost all stakeholders’ visions were misaligned with the farmers’ lived realities. “We are setting them up for failure.” And instead of asking the government to find another novel solution, their results call for a complete change in how current ones are applied.

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