‘If you want to be here next year, you cannot go on as before’ Accumulation and differentiation in ’s large-scale agricultural sector Paper presented at the Conference on ‘Land Divided: Land and South African Society in 2013, in Comparative Perspective’, , 24 – 27 March 2013 Amelia Genis Research Group on Land Reform, Food Systems and Agrarian Change in South Africa under the DST/NRF Research Chair in Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies at the Institute of Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, South Africa. Working draft – not for citation 20 March 2013 ABSTRACT Commercial agriculture in has been an arena of constant change since the state began to withdraw its substantial support and protection to white farmers in the 1980s. When globalisation and neo-liberalism gained momentum after the formation of the World Trade Organisation in 1994, the South African government became a signatory to agreements that would do away with protective trade measures and liberate trade, while state control of agricultural marketing was abolished through a swift deregulation process in 1996. As a consequence of deregulation, farmers were increasingly drawn into systems for input procurement, price-forming and marketing controlled by international corporations. Fierce competition and the pressure to increase productivity and efficiency on a bigger scale resulted in a “shake-out” of farmers and increased concentration in land and markets. Farmers who survived the changes have responded in a range of ways to remain competitive and facilitate accumulation, e.g. expanding the scale of production, acquiring more productive land, reducing labour costs, increasing production, enhancing the productivity of labour through mechanisation, exploring new markets and investing up and downstream of farming. This paper draws on the results of a questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews to develop a typology of farmers, shed light on accumulation strategies that have been pursued by farmers in ’s and the extent to which different types or categories of farmers pursue different strategies. Key words commercial farmers, change accumulation strategies, trade liberalisation, deregulation of marketing, typology of farmers 1. INTRODUCTION
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