Roscoe van Wyk sees the need for climate-smart farming, now

Research shows that the impacts of climate change threaten up to a 50% decline in South Africa’s agricultural production by 2050, thereby threatening food security in the country.

ESG Global recently spoke with Stellenbosch Business School research fellow Roscoe van Wyk, asking him three clever questions on climate-smart farming, social wellbeing metrics and the top environmental and governance challenges – and solutions – being faced by small-scale farmers.

From an ESG perspective, what specific financial incentives or structured support must big businesses and government provide to truly help small farmers, who cannot afford smart agri or sustainability plans on their own, become both profitable and climate-smart?
To support smallholder farmers in becoming both profitable and climate-smart, several government and private sector interventions are already in place, though more effective implementation and scale are needed.

Government support includes blended finance schemes, the Agro-Energy Fund, conditional grants, tax incentives, land tenure reform, Insurance subsidies and farmer training and extension services.

Private sector and big business support includes access to credit, ESG-driven procurement and supplier development, public-private partnerships (PPPs) and digital aggregation and market access tools.

These measures — if well-coordinated, adequately funded and properly implemented — can enable smallholder farmers to thrive in a climate-smart, sustainable, and commercially viable manner.

Beyond just increasing food supply, how can the efforts to improve the social well-being of farming communities be measured, in terms of integrated enterprises and climate strategies?
Improving the social well-being of farming communities through integrated enterprises and climate strategies requires a multi-dimensional set of indicators that track transformation across social, economic, environmental and institutional domains — capturing both short-term welfare gains and long-term systemic change.

Key indicators can be used to measure areas like income diversification and enterprise integration; employment and decent work; social inclusion and equity; access to services and infrastructure; climate resilience and ecosystem co-benefits; as well as governance, voice and accountability.

By applying such integrated and inclusive metrics, stakeholders can effectively track whether farming communities are not just producing more, but also thriving socially, economically and ecologically.

What are the top environmental and governance challenges that small-scale farmers face and how can these be overcome to jump-start climate-smart farming into action across the country?
To scale up climate-smart farming across the country, several key enablers must be prioritised including blended climate finance and grants (to reduce the costs of inputs); digital farmer services (offering weather alerts, market access, and remote advisory support); localised land and water reforms to ensure fair access to production inputs; farmer aggregation and cooperatives to pool resources and reach larger markets and performance-based incentives like carbon credits and input vouchers to reward sustainable practices.

Small-scale farmers in South Africa face severe environmental and governance challenges that limit their ability to adopt climate-smart practices. These can be overcome through integrated policy, financing, and local empowerment initiatives.

Water scarcity and unreliable rainfall is one of the top environmental challenges. This can be addressed through subsidising water-efficient technologies like drip irrigation, solar pumps, and rainwater harvesting, expanding water use licenses and legalising smallholder water rights as well as building community-level off-grid infrastructure: dams, boreholes and reuse systems.

Soil degradation, caused by overgrazing, monoculture, and poor extension support, is another factor. Solutions to this include promoting regenerative practices like minimum tillage, intercropping and mulching; expand government and NGO-led soil health extension services; subsidising compost, cover crops and conservation inputs as well as supporting community composting and indigenous soil training.

The third top challenge is high exposure to climate shocks. Without insurance, smallholders risk losing entire crops to drought, pests, or floods. This can be mitigated by scaling up climate index insurance (for drought/pest damage), subsidised by the government; developing mobile-based early warning systems in local languages and funding local seed banks; and resilient seed systems with drought-resistant crop varieties.

Looking at governance challenges, the top four are:

• • Land tenure insecurity: Millions farm on communal/informal land, limiting access to credit and investment. Fast-tracking land titling in communal areas; allowing alternative collateral (equipment, group guarantees); strengthening land administration and providing legal aid for tenure disputes; and promoting cooperative land holding and land trusts are ways to solve for this.
  • Inaccessible and fragmented support services: Many smallholders receive little post-harvest business guidance. Extension officers are under-resourced and ineffective. Solutions here include deploying para-extension workers from within communities using mobile or solar-powered agri-tools; developing public-private extension platforms using AI, SMS advice systems; and linking training to vouchers and input support.
  • Weak market access and price volatility: Smallholders often sell in informal markets at low prices, excluded from value chains. Ways to address this include promoting aggregation models: co-ops, digital hubs and mobile markets; incentivising big retailers to buy from smallholders; and encouraging ESG-aligned procurement contracts.
  • Lack of financing pathways: Smallholders lack access to affordable loans or climate-smart grants due to a lack of collateral and perceived risk. There are ways to address this like expanding blended finance through banks, DFIs and the Land Bank; use group-based lending models based on social collateral; and link finance to climate-smart readiness plans and productivity tracking.