Abstract:
Small-scale farmers in the land reform programme are faced with many challenges which affect their
operations adversely that they cannot maintain a sustainable farming momentum and grow into competitive
farming enterprises. Instead they are failing and recently some are already selling the land back. Some of the
challenges facing them include lack of access to the markets, lack of finance, poor business planning and lack
of business know-how. This study assesses the business management competencies among the small-scale
farmers on the land reform programme. The central desire of this study is to establish whether or not small
scale farmers have the necessary business management competencies to drive and grow their farms into
competitive commercial farms that can contribute to employment creation, rural poverty alleviation, rural food
security and economic growth.
Outcomes from this study reflect that small-scale farmers do not have capacity on the critical functional areas of business management and as a result their business operations are on the brink of collapsing, and thus directly failing the intentions of land reform programme. With all other factors held constant, this study has
revealed that business management competency is a huge vacuum amongst the small-scale farmers, and if business oriented training is not prioritized as a post-settlement support, the land reform’s small-scale farming performance is heading towards a complete collapse.
