Large-Scale Farming and Land Reform Beneficiaries in South Africa: Lessons From a Case Study in Limpopo Province

Abstract

<jats:p> The South African government intends to improve rural livelihoods through land and agrarian reform. However, in doing so the government is enforcing large-scale production in the land reform projects with little regard for the beneficiaries’ background or capabilities, which are not suited to large-scale production. The article demonstrates how large-scale farming is negatively affecting land beneficiaries’ production by undermining their ability to produce the quality products (and adequate quantities) that satisfy the standards in the increasingly concentrated markets dominated by agribusiness. </jats:p>

Rethinking Land Reform and Its Contribution to Livelihoods in South Africa

“…The hegemonic influence of "modernist" orthodoxies in South African land reform policy-making can be attributed to various factors-local, regional and Africa Review 14 (2022) 125-150 international. At the international level, agriculture has become attractive in the long run as a safe investment for international capital and agribusinesses facing crises of accumulation (McMichael, 2011;Rusenga, 2021a), leading to increased international capital investments in farmland in the global South (De Schutter, 2011;mst, 2013). This rush to acquire farmland in the global South has been described as land grabbing by some scholars (Cotula and Vermeulen, 2009;Batterbury and Ndi, 2018), as governments sometimes dispossess the poor in favour of international investment (Hall, 2011).…”