A reply to Atkinson

Atkinson makes a case for supporting smallholder agriculture in South Africa, using arguments that are unoriginal and unconvincing. She misreads the article by Palmer and Sender to fashion a flimsy peg on which to hang a series of unsubstantiated arguments. The first page of Palmer and Sender makes it clear that the main aim of their paper 'is to examine the characteristics of the poorest rural people in South Africa", focusing "the demographic and structural features of the poorest rural households". Atkinson, however, does not focus on the prospects for the poorest rural people, but discusses homogenous smallholders,, or emergent farmers, or agriculturre in general. So she begins by inventing and attributing to Palmer and sender an argument and a policy conclusion that cannot be found int their paper. Palmer and Sender certainly do not conclude "we should direct resources away from agriculture", as asseerted by Atkinson. In fact, the conclusion to their paper explicitly makes the case for state interventions to "improve rural infrastructure (such as irrigation and roads)", as well as to "to increase output on wage-labour-intensive farms". Atkinson not only ignores this clearly-stated policy conclusion, she also suggests that recommending support for these xage-labour-intensive farms amounts to relying on "new kinds of unproven and untested labour-intensive industries". It is difficult to believe tat Atkinson regards wage-labour-intensive cultivation and agro-processing of grapes, deciduous fruit, and a wide range of other fruit and horticulrural commodities as "new, unproven and untested" in the South African context, or that she is unaware of the labour intensity of investment in construction geared to improving the productivity of the agricultural infrastructure. It is much easier to believe that her faith in the familiar mantras of support for smallholder farming prevents her from paying serious attention to less conventional discussions of prospects for millions of the poorest rural people who will continue to depend on access to wage labour. The meagre new evidence on samllholders cited by Atkinson concerns the growth and alleged prevalence of livestock enterprises in the civinity of established towns and the "phenomenal improvements in the prospects of farmers" in Qwa Qwa, and the former Ciskei and Transkei. In neither case does she provide any avidence that the poorest rural households have benefited.