 Promoting competitiveness in South African agriculture and agribusiness: The role of institutionsGerald F. Ortmann Agrekon, 2000, vol. 39, issue 4, 33 Abstract: This paper considers private and public institutions that will help promote the competitiveness of commercial farms and agribusiness firms, and enhance the productivity of communal farmers and the competitiveness of emerging farmers in South Africa. Commercial agriculture and agribusiness are creating institutions (such as food safety standards and strategic partnerships), adopting existing private and public institutions (e.g. TQM, ISO 9000 and HACCP) or restructuring to add value to products and services, reduce costs and gain access to export markets. Government should focus its relatively scarce resources on providing physical and legal infrastructure (such as secure property rights and contract enforcement) to reduce transaction costs, including risk, so that markets work efficiently. A major challenge for local agricultural economists is to provide information about institutions that will promote the productive use of land in communal areas, and the competitiveness of emerging farmers on redistributed commercial farmland. Keywords: Agribusiness; International Relations/Trade (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:agreko:54203 Access Statistics for this article More articles in Agrekon from Agricultural Economics Association of South Africa (AEASA) Contact information at EDIRC. |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.