This paper investigated factors influencing value addition agricultural choices of smallholder farming agribusinesses in the Gauteng Province, South Africa, using the Ordinary Least Squares regression model. The study used randomly sampled data collected from 102 smallholder farmers by the National Agricultural Marketing Council and the Gauteng Department of Agriculture and Rural Development. Four types of value addition were identified, namely postharvest, food preservation, milling, and post-slaughter. The results revealed that the number of people in the household, permanent workers, and access to training influences smallholder farmers’ choice of post-harvest, food preservation, and post-slaughter value addition. Besides, milling value addition is influenced by the size of the farm, grain, and livestock production, together with access to information and training. These results call for government intervention in promoting agro-processing and value addition activities to encourage farmer participation, income generation, and poverty alleviation, thus improving the farmers’ livelihoods.
Women’s economic empowerment has been South Africa’s policy priority since the country became a democracy. This paper examines the domains associated with the economic empowerment of small-scale female agro-processors in South Africa. A sequential exploratory mixed methods research design and a close-ended questionnaire were used to collect quantitative data from 503 small-scale agro-processors in five provinces. Qualitative data were collected during five focus group sessions aided by the focus group guide. The results show that production decision-making (β = 0,140; p = 0,003), access to productive resources (β = 0.140, p = 0.001), time allocation (β = 0.327, p = 0.000), and intervention (β = –0.353, p = 0.004) are the critical domains of small-scale agro-processing empowerment. The study revealed that only four domains of women’s economic empowerment have significantly improved the economic status of small-scale agro-processors. However, the combination of income, leadership, and intervention (β = 0.009, p = 0.015) was also a significant influencing factor. The study recommends that small-scale agroprocessors be provided with necessary policies and legislative control over their production decisions. This authority is coupled with broadening access to productive resources, time allocation, grants, leadership, and projects to actively empower these entrepreneurs.
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