A budget analysis of different soil fertility treatments for conventional and organic vegetable farming on a smallholding in South Africa

[摘要] ENGLISH SUMMARY : The threat of food insecurity due to overpopulation led to the development of green revolution (GR) technologies in the mid 1900's. The principles and technology became popular due to their efficiency and form key components of conventional agricultural practices. In the 21st century the same threats are faced predominantly due to overpopulation, resource limitation and growing middle classes of developing nations. This time around the technologies developed during the green revolution have been queried as a result of their negative side-effects on the environment, societies and economies. Thus organic agricultural principles have been proposed as an alternative to conventional agriculture to sustainably uphold food security at present.Organic agricultural practices and philosophies aim toward a more systemic approach in farm management. The use of genetically modified organisms (GMO's) and synthetically produced agrochemicals is prohibited from use in organic production systems. The market for organic produce is growing globally; mostly in North America and Europe; African and South African markets in particular are growing less quickly. Due to the higher premiums earned from organic produce, as well as lower input costs it can potentially be a source of extra profit from smallholders.The dossier of information and technological developments for organic agriculture are miniscule when compared to those for conventional agriculture. Developments for use in organic agriculture needs to be technically efficient and financially feasibility at production level. In this way the economic sustainability as part of overall sustainability can be evaluated. Through gross marginal analyses, this study made use of enterprise and partial budgets to compare the relative profitability of using organic fertilizers as opposed to using conventional fertilizer in a small scale vegetable production system near Raithby, Western Cape Province. The data source for the budgets was a technical field study which quantified the biophysical responses in broccoli and green beans to the respective organic and inorganic treatments applied to each crop. It was found that for both crops grown, the conventional approach had the highest and most positive gross margin when no premiums were present (ZAR 180 583 for green beans and ZAR 246 482 for broccoli). It was also found that the profitability of growing broccoli organically could be improved by using 20% and 40% premium scenarios. The same observation was made for organically treated green beans. Adding premiums to the selling price of organic green beans for one of the treatments made it more profitable than farming the beans conventionally.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University