The impact of economic policies and instruments on conservation agriculture in South Africa

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In South Africa, sustainable land use and management is paramount as the country'sagricultural natural resources are diverse, complex and vulnerable to degradation. To realisesustainable agricultural production and development, an agro-ecosystem-specific approachentailing soil, water and nutrient conservation agricultural practices is imperative.Conservation Agriculture is one of the agricultural production method that can be employed toameliorate and prevent the degradation of South Africa's agricultural land. The major aim ofthis study was to investigate how the uptake and adoption of conservation agriculture isinfluenced by economic policies and instruments in South Africa. To achieve this, aninteractive research approach was followed initially involving an extensive literature reviewbefore scientific and empirical analysis was conducted.Firstly it was noted in the study that currently there is not any specific policy for conservationagriculture that has been promulgated in South Africa, but however there are a number ofpolicies (i.e. Climate change policy, Carbon Tax policy, Land Reform policy, Trade policy,Water policy, Food and nutritional security policy, NEMBA regulations, CRDP, CARA,Organic production policy, Policy on Agriculture in sustainable development and theEnvironmental policy) that have been drafted which have the potential to positively influencethe uptake and adoption of conservation agriculture by farmers across all the farmingtypologies (i.e. small scale, emerging and commercial farmers). The afore-mentioned policieswere described and analysed with the purpose of establishing how they affect conservationagriculture using analysis criteria adopted from the field of political sciences. Criteria ofeffectiveness, unintended effects, equity, cost, feasibility and acceptability were constantlyemployed. In this regard, all the policies were tested to see how they affect conservationagriculture and to check if there was any alignment and harmonisation within the policyenvironment. It was found in this study that an alignment of the aforementioned policies isimperative in order to make the policies politically and administratively feasible which willlead to the swift implementation and effectiveness of the policies in meeting their coreobjectives. On this basis, it was deduced that the aforementioned policy mix has the potentialto advance the uptake and adoption of conservation agriculture to further contribute to anenhanced food security and a sustainable resource base in South Africa. The policy mix analysed in this study, is however under specific constraints. These wereidentified and subsequently recommendations were made to ameliorate these constraints, inorder to make the policies align with each other and to maximise the contribution of the policiestowards the advancement of conservation agriculture in South Africa.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University