IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/deveza/v20y2003i1p67-73.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Socio-economic dimensions of small-scale agriculture: A principal component analysis

Author

Listed:
  • John Essa
  • W Lieb Nieuwoudt

Abstract

In order to study the different dimensions of small-scale farmers in KwaZulu-Natal, a principal component analysis was conducted on data obtained from a sample survey of 160 households. The following socio-economic components were extracted: Component 1 is an emerging commercial and mechanised household (i.e. it uses machinery), while Component 2 is a landless farm household that is more educated and earns more non-farm income, largely from contractor services. Component 3 is a non-farm female-headed household that depends on income from land renting and a non-farm job. This is a resource-poor household. Component 4 is a small intensive garden farmer household headed by a more educated female with better access to institutional services. Component 5 is a less educated, female-headed and land-poor household that rents in more land and is an intensive producer. Component 6 is a land-less household that rents in land and is also involved in contractor services. The implication is that policies aimed at assisting small-scale farmers should take into account the different dimensions of farmers, as economic policies may influence different households differently.

Suggested Citation

  • John Essa & W Lieb Nieuwoudt, 2003. "Socio-economic dimensions of small-scale agriculture: A principal component analysis," Development Southern Africa, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(1), pages 67-73.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:deveza:v:20:y:2003:i:1:p:67-73
    DOI: 10.1080/0376835032000065462
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0376835032000065462
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/0376835032000065462?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Goodness C. Aye & Eric D. Mungatana, 2013. "Evaluating The Performance Of Small Scale Maize Producers In Nigeria: An Integrated Distance Function Approach," Review of Urban & Regional Development Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(2), pages 79-92, July.
    2. Louw Pienaar & Dieter von Fintel, 2013. "Hunger in the former apartheid homelands: Determinants of converging food security 100 years after the 1913 Land Act," Working Papers 26/2013, Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics.
    3. Pienaar, Louw & Traub, Lulama, 2015. "Understanding the smallholder farmer in South Africa: Towards a sustainable livelihoods classification," 2015 Conference, August 9-14, 2015, Milan, Italy 212633, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    4. repec:ags:ijag24:346824 is not listed on IDEAS

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:deveza:v:20:y:2003:i:1:p:67-73. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/CDSA20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.