Entrepreneurial activities among homestead food gardening and irrigation crop farmers in the North West Province, South Africa

Abstract

Homestead food gardening and irrigation crop farming is often neglected in terms of enterprise development and classified as subsistence, the population of the study consisted of all homestead food gardens and irrigation crop farmers in the North West Province of South Africa. Due to the lack of a proper list of smallholder homestead food gardening and irrigation crop farmers, a large sample size technique of n ≥ 30 was used to select 40 farmers from each of the four District Municipalities of the Province to give a total sample size of 160 farmers. Data was collected using a structured questionnaire and analysis done through the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 21 using frequency count, percentages and multiple regressions. The results show that the independent variables were significantly related with an F value of 5.21, p< .05. Also, an R value of 0.59 showed that there was a strong correlation between socio-economic characteristics and entrepreneurial activities. The results further predicted 35% of the variation in entrepreneurial activities. Seven out of fifteen independent variables were significant; with two variables being significant at 10% (household head and age); while five variables were significant at 5% (willingness for entrepreneurship, market outlet social participation, farming experience and types of land ownership). Significant determinants of entrepreneurial activities were entrepreneurship willingness (t = 2.289, p =.024); market outlet (t = 2.684, p = .008), social participation (t = -2.029, p = .044); household head (t = 1.691, p = .093); Age (t = -1.924, p = .056); farming experience (t = 3.189, p = .002) and types of land ownership (t = 2.166, p = 0.032). These findings imply that the higher the willingness for entrepreneurship, marketing outlets, male-headed households, farming experience and personal land ownership, the higher the entrepreneurial activities among homestead vegetable farmers. However, age and social participation are inversely related to entrepreneurial activities among farmers. This implies that the older the farmers become, and the more farmers are involved in social participation, the lower the entrepreneurial activities among farmers.