A Small Scale Cane Grower Sustainability Programme has been cultivated in the local municipality of Nkomazi, Eastern Mpumalanga, over the last two years to accommodate the needs of small scale farmers to bring in larger yields of sugar cane. A total of 1200 small scale farmers are involved in sugar farming on over 10 000 hectares of irrigated sugar on 36 individual projects, supplying the Komati and Malelane sugar mills. Yields from these growers were declining over time and they requested assistance from Tsb Sugar in dealing with issues of long-term sustainability.

Lima was then approached by Tsb Sugar to provide a range of institutional change and support mechanisms to growers and their associations. Participatory planning workshops were held with farmers to find solutions and help them remain at the forefront during the transformation process.

Lungile Mkhwanazi, a facilitator at Lima, explained that the participatory rural appraisal workshops were important at the beginning of the programme because it allowed each farmers association to build trust in each of their members. “Lima encouraged these farmers to describe their problems and to then draw up solutions as a team. Each association forms its own constitution according to their specific needs,” said Lungile.

Lima has aimed to improve accountability within each farmers group by incorporating more governance as to reduce members from “free riding.” Institutional changes include the introduction of a formal land rental model, consolidation and joint management of individual farming units, as well as improving the management of communal irrigation infrastructure.

The consolidated projects have required detailed business planning and in some cases additional grant funding has been raised to set up the new projects. Even though additional funding was required, with yield improvements these small scale growers have the potential of generating an additional R330 million into the local economy annually.