Subaltern Agroecological Knowledge and Environmental Justice in the New South Africa: Farm Worker Insights and Land Reform in the Western Cape Province

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Since the end of white minority rule in 1994, South Africa has embarked on a grand experiment to address past injustices. Among a wide range of racist and discriminatory policies during the Apartheid era were formal restrictions on the ownership of farm land by non-whites outside of the homelands or Bantustands. One of the campaign promises of the ANC government was to redress the legacy of discriminatory land ownership policies in the farming sector through land restitution and land redistribution (collectively known as land reform). The commercial farm worker population (including permanent and seasonal laborers) is one of the poorest segments of the South African society. Given this group's poverty and background in farming, they would appear to be a logical target group for land redistribution efforts. The objectives of this research project are to 1) explore the subaltern (or repressed) knowledge of farm workers regarding agricultural landscapes and their management in the Swartland natural region of the Western Cape Province in South Africa; and 2) to examine the extent to which these insights could be leveraged for sustainable land redistribution. These objectives will be explored via a series of semi-structured interviews with white farm owners, permanent farm workers and land redistribution beneficiaries. The PI also will analyze a time series of aerial photography (1960 - present) to validate perceptions of landscape change, perform an economic analysis of land redistribution projects to understand their financial viability, and undertake an energy output-input analysis, as well as an inventory and assessment of farming practices, to determine the ecological sustainability of land redistribution initiatives. The research project conceptually relates two rarely linked fields of inquiry, subaltern knowledge and land reform, and employs a mix of research methodologies.This research comes at a critical juncture in South Africa's land reform process and bears directly on current debates concerning the pace, objectives, organization, and sustainability of land reform. Understanding the agroecological knowledge of permanent farm workers, and the extent to which it influences (or has influenced) land management decisions, is a critical first step in re-examining the landscape and farming narratives of the Apartheid regime. Furthermore, should the PI find that the ad hoc incorporation of subaltern agroecological knowledge into land redistribution projects has led to more economically viable and ecologically sustainable initiatives, such a finding would validate the importance of local knowledge in the land reform process and empower farm workers to more actively engage with, and make greater demands upon, land redistribution initiatives. Finally, it is possible that ecologically sustainable land redistribution efforts are not necessarily the most profitable in the short term. Such a finding would inform the current debate on the objectives of land redistribution (in terms of a priority on commercial vs. subsistence vs. mixed farming enterprises).