Prospects for On-Farm Self-Employment and Poverty Reduction: As Analysis of the South African Income and Expenditure Survey 2000

This paper explores aspects of the relationship between rural poverty and the cash income (or consumption goods) that black rural households are able to derive, after almost a decade of land reform, from farming their own land. In the South African context, as well as elsewhere in suyb-Saharan Africa, there is general agreement that small-plot agriculture "remains important for most rural households, mostly for domestic consumption", and it is claimed that "people look to farming or natural resource harvesting as sources of livelihood". Many have echoed Michael Lipton's old call for "abandoning negative stereotypes of smallholder production, and embracing a positive view of the possibilities for land-based rural livelihoods" (Cousins 2005a; International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) 2002; New Economic Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) 2002; Commission for Africa 2005:44). Their policy conclusion is that the central thrust of anti-poverty strategy should focus on these promising possibilities for family by implementing a land reform that improves the access of the poor to productive assets including not only land but also micro-credit, access to inputs, marketing facilities, and extension advice. "Possibilities" are not the theme of this paper, partly because the theoretical underpinnings and flawed logic of these arguments for redisributive land reform and small-holder support have been criticised in earlier work (Sender and Johnston 2004). Instead, the present aim is to examine the characteristics of the poorest rural people in south Africa to account for their failure (or refusal) to rely on farming in their struggles to survive. The evidence offered here suggests that, in the politically surprising event that these very poor rural households were granted access to more land, or event to credit and the necessary farm inputs, marketings facilities and extension advice, they would still be unlikely and unwise to rely on own-account farming in their mix of survival strategies. Part of the explanation for this is to be found in the demographic and structural features of the poorest rural households.