Search for intellectual diversity to unmask policy denialism

Abstract

South Africa’s agricultural legislation has undergone substantial reforms in the past centuries, spanning the colonial, apartheid and democratic regimes. Notably, the policy framework evolved from a regulated landscape to one that ascribes to principles of a free market, liberalised trade and minimum government involvement, underpinned by the neoliberal epistemology. Since 1994, most sectoral laws have advanced inclusive agricultural growth, land equality and commercialisation. Notwithstanding the improved agricultural growth and footprint in export markets, the structure of agriculture remained characterised by dualism and skewed landownership patterns despite policy reforms. This signals the invisible hand of market forces that have unintentionally excluded small-scale farmers in the democratic epoch. Most policy studies in the past 31-years attributed the sustained dualism problem to small-scale farmers’ technical inefficiencies and budget limitations, coupled with the state’s executional deficiencies. This address argues that executional failure is not sufficient to explain small-scale farmers’ problems. It contends that the dominant research paradigm of accrediting small-scale farmers’ underdevelopment to implementation failures tends to mask policy denialism that has maintained market power relations and wealth distribution channels in the democratic dispensation. This address encourages intellectual diversity to stimulate a new wave of agricultural policy reforms for inclusive agriculture. It illustrates that, while commercialisation is a practical developmental model, it treats policy as a technical outcome instead of being a consequence of a contested space influenced by market and institutional structures. This tends to minimise structural and systematic challenges faced by small-scale farmers in the country.