This project will measure the risk and time attitudes of Western Cape fruit farmers using experimental and econometric techniques. It will assess how these attitudes interact with the adoption of new cultivars, wealth levels and access to capital, and a variety of other socio-economic variables. The results will be used to construct policy advice for a priority area of South African industrial policy.
Agri-processing for export was selected by the South African government in 2007 as a priority sector for industrial policy. This includes farming of stone fruits (peaches, pears and apricots), at least 80% of which are exported in canned or other processed form, in the Western Cape. In this instance, specific industrial policy has targeted support for innovation in varietals, cultivars and farming practices to ensure international competitiveness. As such innovation would have to be attempted, in the first place, by farmers, design of such policy requires robust understanding of their attitudes toward risk and time between investment and return. Little is currently known about the factors influencing those attitudes, and the effect of those attitudes on willingness to innovate among the farmers. The central problem is to provide a sound empirical basis for much needed policy advice by using state of the art techniques and by drawing on hitherto untapped data sources.
The study is intended to directly inform industrial development policy aimed at stimulating employment rates in semi-rural and rural communities. One particular aim of the research is to identify respects in which industrial policy mechanisms currently under consideration might have unintended consequences that undermine transformation goals by entrenching historically unequal opportunities as between White fruit farmers and fruit farmers from among previously disadvantaged groups.
