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Sustainable Livelihoods Approaches for Exploring Smallholder Agricultural Programs Targeted at Women: Examples from South Africa

by Stefanie Lemkea*, Farideh Yousefia, Ana C. Eisermanna, Anne C. Bellowsa

http://dx.doi.org/10.5304/jafscd.2012.031.001, pp. 25–41

Published online 17 August 2012

 

Abstract

Smallholder farming can play a crucial role in contributing to food supplies and autonomy at the household and community level in rural areas, yet this has been challenging to evaluate. In South Africa, smallholder agriculture faces multiple challenges due to historical injustices regarding access to land and resources and to post-apartheid policies that failed to promote rural development. Drawing on the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework and employing a mixed methods approach, we explore through participant observation and interviews the prospects of smallholder agricultural programs for establishing sustainable livelihoods, facilitated by civil society organizations and targeted at rural black and colored South African women. Participation in these programs enabled women access to various livelihoods assets: education and capacity-building (human assets); land (natural assets); tools and infrastructure (physical assets); stipends and income from selling their produce (financial assets); and networking (social assets). Operational challenges included divergent expectations on the side of project facilitators and participants; lack of communication; participant dependency on the organizations; lack of access to markets; and programs' lack of financial sustainability. Our findings suggest that, while these programs are not yet sustainable, they stimulate an awareness of possibilities, visions, ownership, and rights that can have a long-term effect on the livelihoods of these women. In evaluating program success, especially in the initiation phases, it must be remembered that structural barriers to the improvement of rural women's livelihoods are formidable, and few South African models or alternatives are presently available to help civil society organizations formulate new opportunities.

 

Keywords: civil society organizations, land reform, mixed methods approach, smallholder agricultural programs, South Africa, sustainable livelihoods framework, women

 

Affiliation

a University of Hohenheim; Department of Gender and Nutrition, Institute for Social Sciences in Agriculture (430b); 70593 Stuttgart, Germany.

Farideh Yousefi: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Ana C. Eisermann: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Anne C. Bellows: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

 

* Corresponding author: Stefanie Lemke; +49 711 459 22655; This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.


 

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Banner photos include a Cape Cod cranberry bog; a cranberry “screen house” used to grade fresh cranberries; farmland near Lake Placid, NY, in the Adirondack Mountains; Montmorency cherry trees on the Mission Peninsula of northern Michigan; the historic Round Barn in the South Mountain Apple Belt of Adams County, Pennsylvania; the “Sea of Grapes” district of the Lake Erie Concord Grape Belt, near Erie, Penn; a field of cabbages near Shortsville, NY, home to one of the world’s largest sauerkraut factories. All photos copyright by Duncan Hilchey.

 

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