Deagrarianisation and Forest Revegetation in a Biodiversity Hotspot on the Wild Coast, South Africa

Abstract

Deagraianisation is a worldwide phenomenon with widespread social, ecological and economic effects yet with little consensus on the local or higher level causes. There have been contested views on the causes and consequences of deagrarianisation on South Africa’s Wild Coast, which is an international biodiversity hotspot. Using GIS, household interviews and ecological sampling, we compared the perspectives of current and former cultivators as to why some have abandoned farming, whilst also tracking the uses and woody plant cover and composition of fields abandoned at different periods. The GIS analysis showed that field abandonment had been ongoing over several decades, with a decline from 12.5 % field cover in 1961 to 2.7 % in 2009. The area of forests and woodlands almost doubled in the corresponding period. There was a distinct peak in field abandonment during the time of political transition at the national level in the early 1990s. This political change led to a decrease in government support for livestock farming, which in turn resulted in reduced animal draught power at the household and community level, and hence reduced cropping. The study showed it is largely the wealthier households that have remained in arable agriculture and that the poorer households have abandoned farming. The abandoned fields show a distinct trend of increasing woody biomass and species richness with length of time since abandonment, with approximately three woody plant species added per decade. Most local respondents dislike the increases in forest and woodland extent and density because of anxiety about wild animals causing harm to crops and even humans, and the loss of an agricultural identity to livelihoods and the landscape.

Changing Livelihoods and Landscapes in the Rural Eastern Cape, South Africa: Past Influences and Future Trajectories

“…For data on agrarian change, we draw on the published results of Shackleton et al [14], which investigated farmers' opinions of landscape change, ecological succession in abandoned fields, and changes in land-cover categories. In addition, we report on unpublished research undertaken in 2013 and 2014 by Shackleton and colleagues on arable production in the Eastern Cape.…”

“…This is a substantial decline relative to the past (i.e., from greater than 20 percent of income in 1950) [12], and is reflected in changes in the landscape, especially the increasing area of abandoned fields. This field abandonment and decline in arable farming for both cash and subsistence purposes has been happening over several decades and can be viewed as a social-ecological transformation in itself (Table 1) [12,14,28]. In the Gatyana study site, landscape change over a 50-year period involved mainly a decline in cultivated fields and an increase in woodlands, primarily due to the establishment of the thorny, pioneer species Acacia karoo in old lands ( Table 1).…”

“…This was expedited through the creation of "labor pools" to supply the mining industry and the marginalization of black farmers, while white farmers were heavily subsidized [8,47]. At the same time, the policy of so called "Betterment" that placed people in villages and zoned land for particular uses, served to separate and distance households from their fields and contribute further to their disuse [7,8,14,47,48]. However, some farming still continued, facilitated by income from jobs in the mines, which in those days could mainly be sent home because accommodation (in hostels) and transport were provided by the mining companies [47,49].…”

“…The greatest levels of field abandonment have occurred in recent years, with Shackleton et al [14] finding that most of the past farmers interviewed in Gatyana had stopped farming on distant fields, on average, about 18.5 years ago. This timing coincided with the democratic transition and an increase in social welfare [5,50], as well as changes in the process of "formal" migration of mine workers, which has now ceased [50].…”

Modelling and control synthesis of a micro-combined heat and power interface for a concentrating solar power system in off-grid rural power applications

“…Therefore, the South African Department of Science and Technology (DST) supports renewable energy related Research& Development activities aimed at technologies capable of generating electricity from renewable energy (RE) sources [9]. The DST views RE as a potential energy solution for remote off-grid communities [10], and as a potential solution to overcome service delivery challenges faced by rural municipalities in terms of water pumping and purification within certain rural constituencies [2].…”