Smallholder Farmers' Platform South Africa

The Smallholder Farmer (Horticulture) Market Access Platform was initiated by a group of organisations including Solidaridad Southern Africa, the Southern Africa Food Lab, WWF SA, Deciduous Fruit Development Chamber (DFDC) and LIMA Development Foundation at a workshop in February 2016.

The workshop engagement brought together a diverse group of stakeholders of over 50 participants including smallholder farmers from the horticulture sector, major retailers and market agents, government, finance institutions, development organisations and academics to address and endorse the need for the establishment of a collaborative smallholder farmers’ platform. Smallholder farmers are a vital part of the South African agriculture industry and poor household livelihoods but it is an enormous task to address the challenges smallholder farmers face in production and accessing markets in isolated support projects. People at the workshop agreed that there are many service providers, programmes and projects committed to supporting the smallholder farmer sector, but that this support is very fragmented, has given rise to unnecessary duplication, and overall has not been successful in creating a viable smallholder farmer horticulture sector.

It was agreed that there is a need to link the various initiatives supporting smallholder farmer development in the horticulture industry and to ensure smallholder farmers become a central priority.

Smallholder farmers at the workshop, as well as other stakeholders, agreed that a holistic and collaborative approach is required, with a matching supportive policy environment, to address the needs of smallholder farmers and balancing the requirements and demands of the market. The stakeholders endorsed the establishment of a market access platform that would act as a catalyst in aligning projects and programmes aimed at supporting smallholder farmers.

The Platform should be a means of supporting and enabling the transition towards a successful smallholder farmer sector through aligning projects and programmes aimed at farmers.

Various themes were identified by stakeholders as being the main focus areas requiring support from the Platform.

The key themes included:
• Market readiness and looking at the barriers to market access as well as the factors that impact on market readiness
• Information-sharing and mapping initiatives
• Strengthening Smallholder farmer voices and ensuring they remain at the centre
• Influencing policy and advocacy to support market access for farmers
• Alternative supply chains as a means of bypassing the conventional supply chain system which is dominated by large commercial farmers.

What does the Platform aim TO DO:
- It will create networking opportunities for people working in the smallholder farmer horticulture sector
- It will strengthen collaboration amongst stakeholders to avoid duplication of services and resources
- It will create opportunities for communication and information-sharing about available services, resources, programmes, and policies
- It will keep a library of resources in a single place to enable easy access for farmers and development agencies
- It will allow for greater visibility of smallholder farmers to markets and vice versa through access to a comprehensive database of farmers and their products
- It will support public and private initiatives where these are aligned to the Platform focus areas.

What does the platform NOT DO:

The Platform does not create or manage its own projects but rather supports initiatives and synthesises work that is already being done by organisations working with smallholder farmers.

Coordination of the Platform

Solidaridad has committed to coordinating and developing the Platform with wider support from the Platform partners and has appointed a coordinator, Colleen Chennells, to manage the activities of the Platform. However, wider support from Platform members and additional funding streams are necessary for the long term functionality and sustainability of the Platform to ensure that the Platform is ‘owned’ by the sector and not by a single organisation.