fact sheet

WWF South Africa is implementing a collaborative programme to transition smallholder farmers toward conservation agriculture, focusing on practices like minimum soil disturbance and diversified crop rotations. This initiative aligns with South Africa's commitments to the Paris Agreement and Sustainable Development Goals, targeting the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and the restoration of degraded landscapes. The strategy emphasizes capacity building, research, and the use of both formal and informal market incentives to integrate smallholders into value chains, with a specific geographic priority on KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape due to high rates of soil erosion and the presence of strategic water source areas.

• The agricultural sector in South Africa, comprising both commercial and communal farming, utilizes 80% of available land and two thirds of available water, despite contributing only 2.3% of the total economic value.
• WWF South Africa is promoting conservation agricultural practices—including organic soil cover, minimum soil disturbance, and diversified crop rotations—to increase production, build climate resilience, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
• WWF-SA's collaborative approach to supporting smallholders involves four main pillars: capacity building, promoting sector research, utilizing market incentives (both formal standards like GLOBAL G.A.P and informal systems like Participatory Guarantee System), and collective stewardship.
• KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape are priority areas for WWF because they are heavily affected by soil erosion and house over half of South Africa's strategic water source areas; these provinces contain 25% and 20% of smallholders, respectively.
• The South African government has committed to creating opportunities for 300,000 households within the smallholder agri value chain and generating approximately 145,000 jobs in agro processing.

APA

WWF South Africa (2017). fact sheet. http://awsassets.wwf.org.za/downloads/WWF_Smallholders_Fact_Sheet_D6_FINAL_6Jun17.pdf

Chicago

WWF South Africa. fact sheet. 2017. http://awsassets.wwf.org.za/downloads/WWF_Smallholders_Fact_Sheet_D6_FINAL_6Jun17.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=WWF South Africa |title=fact sheet |date=2017 |url=http://awsassets.wwf.org.za/downloads/WWF_Smallholders_Fact_Sheet_D6_FINAL_6Jun17.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{wwfsouthafrica2017fact, author = {{WWF South Africa}}, title = {{fact sheet}}, institution = {WWF South Africa}, year = {2017}, url = {http://awsassets.wwf.org.za/downloads/WWF_Smallholders_Fact_Sheet_D6_FINAL_6Jun17.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }