Co-operatives could be a magic wand for smallholders, said the president of the World Farmers’ Organisation, Dr Theo de Jager.
Speaking at the recent Potatoes SA Transformation Symposium, De Jager said he regarded smallholder farming as a poverty trap.
“Smallholders can only be successful if there is ambition to grow. People who only live to eat and eat to live will never get out of the poverty cycle. If you’re a smallholder farmer, it must be for profit – it’s not about size. Small farms in the Netherlands show large turnovers and profits,” De Jager said.
He also said that while financial support to smallholders needed to continue, the approach needed to change.
He said history showed that co-operatives were the answer to getting many people out of poverty.
“Agriculture in South Africa was not always the way it is now. After the Anglo-Boer War, many white farmers lost their land because of the British scorched-earth policy, and they went to work on mines. To stop migration to urban areas, a Danish government development programme sent six consultants to assist Afrikaner families who lost land.
“They taught the families to organise themselves into co-operatives. A document from 1940 shows that within 10 years, 222 small co-operatives had been set up. Some grew and some swallowed others. Today 12 of them still exist, and they’re now companies like Afgri, Kaap Agri and Suidwes Landbou,” De Jager said.
However, the Achilles heel of co-operatives was that they needed quality governing bodies, and training was needed to give skills to managers of co-operatives and communal property associations, he said.
