Enhancing smallholder sweet potato production and reducing susceptibility to inefficiencies in South Africa

Smallholder farmers often face challenges in adopting improved technologies to increase their crop outputs. To address this issue, it has been acknowledged that increasing resource use efficiency can be a significant factor in enhancing farmers' resilience to inefficiencies and increasing outputs. Resilience to inefficiencies is crucial for increasing output, as quantity is a vital prerequisite when taking produce to market. It has also been argued that investing in the economic research of minor crops, such as sweet potatoes, can offer lucrative opportunities for poverty alleviation and employment creation in rural and poor communities. This paper analyses the resilience of smallholder sweet potato farmers to inefficiencies using the Data Envelopment Analysis and drivers (using the Tobit Regression Model) of resilience to inefficiencies in STATA. The study was warranted to see areas that need improvement to achieve a sweet potato production system that is resilient to inefficiencies. As part of the assessment, Gauteng, North West and Limpopo Provinces were purposively selected and a total of 119 sweet potato farmers were selected using a snowball sampling technique. Face – to – face interviews were used to collect the quantitative and qualitative data from the respondents. Results indicated that smallholder sweet potato farmers in South Africa are generally not resilient to inefficiencies and this is influenced by the quantity of their outputs, land sizes, access to credit, employment statuses and use of chemicals.