There are fewer households involved in agricultural production today than there were in 2011, down from nearly 2.9-million to 2.4-million at the last count.
This is driven by a combination of factors such as limited access to capital and the expensive inputs needed to farm, and environmental stressors including soil fertility and extreme weather. Changes in socio-cultural dynamics as more young people migrate to urban centres instead of taking over family plots are also factors.
When households stop farming, it breaks the generational transfer of knowledge and skills essential for sustaining rural farms.
Overall, the decline in agricultural households contributes to a decline in local food production in rural communities, with a knock-on effect on household food security — whether rural families have access to enough nutritious food.
While there are policy and programmatic solutions to the problem, such as increasing support to smallholder farmers through state extension services, in practice there isn’t enough support personnel.
The current ratio of one extension officer to about 1,400 farmers is far higher than the ideal standard of one for every 250 farmers. This shortage impacts the quality and reach of support services, particularly for smallholder and emerging producers.
This year, the government has committed to hiring 10,000 extension officers to address the shortage. Even then, technical support alone is not enough. Smallholder farmers also need mentors.
Often overlooked is the role of mentorship as a mechanism for transferring skills, reinvigorating interest in farming among young people and boosting productivity. Research shows effective mentoring is the invisible scaffolding supporting smallholder farmers.
Mentorship and technical training
Too often, agricultural development is limited to one-time training sessions, such as disease management courses or a pest management demonstration.
Technical training is usually given as a brief course that focuses on a particular skill. Though helpful, these interventions are predicated on the idea that information transfer is enough for sustainability. It is not.
Mentorship is interactive and ongoing, linking problem-solving and long-term knowledge exchange. It builds longer term capacity and plays an essential role in bridging the transfer of skills across generations.
Mentorship and technical training must be carried out through accessible, locally available channels such as NGOs, extension services, co-operatives and “demonstration sites” to ensure smallholder farmers are not excluded.
In practice, this means government can’t simply treat the recruitment of 10,000 new extension officers as a standalone fix.
NGOs already embedded in rural communities, such as Thanda in KwaZulu-Natal, Biowatch in the north of the province, and the Siyavuna Abalimi Development Programme on the south coast, have spent years building the trust, local language fluency and farm-level knowledge that state extension services typically lack.
A smarter model, for instance, would second extension officers into these organisations (and others like them) for structured placements, pair them with experienced NGO mentors, and co-fund joint field visits so public and civil society expertise reinforce rather than duplicate each other.
Co-operatives and farmer associations offer a parallel channel as they can host rotating mentorship clinics, aggregate demand for specialist advice and negotiate collectively for services that individual smallholders can’t access alone.
Demonstration sites, including agroecology hubs, community gardens and farmer field schools, should be recognised as formal training infrastructure and resourced accordingly, allowing farmers to learn from peers who have adapted practices to local soils and climates.
The training curriculum itself must shift decisively towards agroecological practices. An extension service still orientated around high input, monoculture farming will equip officers to give advice that today’s smallholders can’t afford to follow and that degrades the soil on which their livelihoods depend.
Curriculum reform, delivered jointly by universities, NGOs and the department of agriculture, is the quickest way to ensure a new cohort of officers arrive in rural communities ready to support the transition farmers are trying to make.
Building confidence, not dependency
To effectively apply agroecology, farmers must completely redesign their production systems, a process that requires ongoing modification and learning since agroecology is not a one-size-fits-all approach.
This is where mentorship is crucial. It provides the type of support needed to turn theoretical ideas into practical choices, helping farmers learn through making mistakes, reflection and modification.
Mentorship is not a luxury add-on — it’s a necessity. Evidence from NGOs such as those mentioned, and others implementing agroecology programmes, shows smallholder farmers who receive regular mentorship perform better than those who only get technical training.
This is because mentors visit farms regularly, assist with production planning and provide hands-on guidance. Mentors help farmers to better understand soil conditions, show them how to adapt planting schedules, respond to pest outbreaks and plan harvests according to market demands. Consequently, these farmers achieve higher yields, better crop diversity and improved market access.
Good mentorship strengthens a farmer’s problem-solving skills, confidence and agency. This is particularly important for small-scale producers who operate in highly constrained conditions, with limited access to extension services, finance or infrastructure.
The good news is that models for successful mentorship programmes exist. What we need is for government, funders and the private sector to treat mentorship as a core investment and build synergies between government and non-government efforts.
- Peacock is an innovation manager at the DG Murray Trust (DGMT); Drimie is co-director of the Southern Africa Food Lab; and Carden is a consultant with a focus on small-scale agriculture in Southern Africa.
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