A strategy that seeks to insert smallholders into
the large-scale, industrial, export-oriented model
can only succeed in broadening and diversifying
the producer base slightly. The large-scale model
also brings with it the deepening problems of
concentration in the value chain, which, in turn,
entrench the production model. The ANC in
government has identified the major contours
of the challenge, but its responses tend towards
seeking to deracialise that model while keeping
its core intact. An alternative has to confront
the existing economic power of commercial
agriculture and agro-industry with the aim of
transforming it in the interests of the poor.
Deracialisation is necessary, but is not sufficient
to realise this. The logic of a smallholder strategy
must be followed beyond the farm gate, to the
institutions that support agriculture and the
value chains that feed off it.The Norwegian government, through the Norway-South Africa Programm
