Assessing participation in homestead food garden programmes, land ownership and their impact on productivity and net returns of smallholder maize producers in South Africa

This paper examines the determinants of participation in homestead food garden programmes and its impact on productivity and net returns of smallholder maize producers in the Gauteng province of South Africa. The paper further establishes the nexus between land ownership and outputs from homestead food garden programmes. The data was obtained from 500 maize-producing households. The findings demonstrate that participation in homestead food garden programmes could significantly enhance the welfare of rural households by increasing their yield and net returns. Participation in the programme increased maize yield and net returns by 43.37 per cent and 22.01 per cent respectively. Cultivating more than one hectare of farmland enhanced the outcome of participation in a homestead food garden programme more relative to cultivating less than one hectare. Homestead food garden programmes should be run in conjunction with land ownership. Our findings demonstrate the need for policymakers and evaluators of agricultural interventions to consider farmers’ decisions to participate, programme outcomes and land ownership in their assessments in order to avoid biased judgement. The willingness of people to participate in farming should be paramount to the homestead food garden programme and land ownership policy, otherwise the redistribution of farmland to people who are not willing to farm will be meaningless.