This is a socio-economic study of agriculture and its contribution to livelihoods in Venda, one of the black "homelands" created in South Africa under apartheid. It is based on a survey of households in the Tshiombo irrigation scheme, a project in central Venda with around 600 plot-holders.

Three-fourths of the world’s poor are rural poor. Most of the rural poor remain dependent on land-based livelihoods for their incomes and reproduction despite significant livelihood diversification in recent years. Land issue remains critical to any development discourse today. Market-led agrarian reform (MLAR) has gained prominence since the early 1990s as an alternative to state-led land reforms. This neoliberal policy is based on the inversion of what its proponents see as the features ...