The contribution of emerging farmers towards food security in Makhado local municipality, Limpopo province

Abstract

Food security has become one of the most important items on today’s international political agenda and a serious issue for governments around the world. The aim of this study was to assess the contribution of emerging farmers towards food security within Makhado Local Municipality, Limpopo Province mainly through the quantitative research design. To achieve this, a structured questionnaire which had three sections (socio-economic characteristics of respondent, farm characteristics, and challenges encountered by respondent) was used to collect data from 182 emerging farmers within MLM. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were employed to analyse the collected data. Variables that were used to determine the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents included age, gender, marital status, household size, education level, and employment status of an emerging farmer together with their access to irrigation water. In general, the descriptive statistics results have shown that only 20.4% of emerging farmers were food secure. The study also established that emerging farmers within MLM are educated at different levels, while the sector is male dominated, with few young people, and most of the farmers without access to irrigation water. Inferential statistics have illustrated that variables such as gender (females), age (young and middle adults) had a negative but significant impact on the net income (as proxy for food security) generated by emerging farmers from the various farming practices. On the other hand; age, household size and access to irrigation water have shown a positive and significant impact on the food security status of the emerging farmers. Based on the findings of the study; it is recommended that strategies that will encourage young people to participate more in agriculture as a way of food production and income generation be introduced. To address the issue lack of markets among emerging farmer; both big and small markets need to communicate their product expectations with the emerging farmers. Besides focusing solely on farming, emerging farmers can also venture into other means of generating income in order to enhance food security.