The objective of this paper was to quantify the levels of social capital of emerging raisin producers from Eksteenskuil, and to explore the relationship between the socio-economic characteristics of the farmers and their social capital levels. The respondents prove to have high levels of social...

Eksteenskuil raisin producers are a group of emerging raisin producers who are successfully participating in a sophisticated value chain. They collectively export their raisins through the fairtrade initiative. Emerging farmers typically face high levels of transaction cost. The high levels of...

About 70% of the Namibian population depends on agricultural activities for their livelihood. Moreover, agriculture remains an important sector to Namibia because its national economy is widely dependent on agricultural production. Cattle producers in the Northern Communal Areas (NCAs) have an...

Logistic regression is employed to analyse the factors which influence the decision of whether or not the respondent used forward pricing methods during the 2004/05 maize production season. Forward pricing methods include cash forward contracting and hedging with futures contracts and/or...

Risk aversion is the primary reason for farmers to use forward pricing methods to hedge against price risk. Previous international research on farmers’ forward pricing behaviour found inconsistent results with respect to the relationship between risk aversion and the use of forward...

The conditional volatility in the daily spot prices of the crops traded on the South African Futures Exchange (yellow maize, white maize, wheat, sunflower seed and soybeans) is determined. The volatility in the prices of white maize, yellow maize and sunflower seed have been found to vary over...

Despite volumes of research and substantial investments by government, the financial performance of smallholder farmers in South Africa remains poor. The past decade saw little change in the general behaviour of smallholder farmers, and the stumbling blocks faced by smallholder farmers who want...

The aim of this paper is to extend existing research that analyses technical and allocative efficiency and its determinants by quantifying and comparing the potential financial gains from improving technical and allocative (cost) efficiency levels of emerging raisin producers from Eksteenskuil...