Challenges and Critical Success Factors for Rural Agrarian Reforms in Limpopo Province, South Africa

The need for rural land agrarian reforms has reached heightened levels in South Africa in recent years. Resultantly, the communal land use effectiveness is questioned due to persistent poor performance and declining agricultural output that fails to address rural poverty and food insecurity. This is one of the major causes of why South Africa's rural economies are generally characterized by stagnant economic growth. This points to deep-rooted and unique challenges that need urgent attention if meaningful support and resilience systems are to be built for rural agrarian land reforms to be realized. The present study investigated challenges and characterized factors that lead to the prosperity of rural agricultural projects in communal land ownership. An exploratory study design was followed, and the data was collected using interviews and focus group discussions from communal farmers and key informants. Data were analyzed thematically with the aid of Atlas. Ti version 8.1.4. “Information challenges” and “water scarcity” describe some of the common challenges faced by rural farmers. Six critical success factors were identified and found to be related. “Effective project management and control” and “improved support from and partnership with local community stakeholders” are success factors that, if targeted first, could address most challenges faced in rural agrarian reforms. The results suggest that partnership with the private sector can help farmers commercialize and move swiftly towards agro-processing. Identified threats and successes must be prioritized in designing and formulating region-specific rural agrarian support programs for communal farmers.

Agrarian reforms of Russia at the turn of the XIX–XX centuries in the coverage of economists of the XX century

The article analyses the features of the development of agriculture in Russia at the end of the 19th century - the beginning of the 20th century. The paper studies and considers attempts to solve the agrarian issue in the specified period. The study considers the course and results of the reform of 1861, as well as economic reforms of the beginning of the 20th century. The author gives an assessment of these reforms, as well as the situation of the peasantry made by the leading economists of that time: N.D. Kondrat'ev, S.L. Maslov, A.V. Peshekhonov, A.V. Chayanov, and also analyses the measures aimed at alleviating the situation of the peasantry and solving the agrarian problems of that period. The research paper also presents a comparative analysis of the consequences of the 1861 reform, its impact on the solution of the agrarian issue in different parts of the Russian Empire, in particular in Poland after the Polish Uprising of 1863.

CENTURIATED LUCERIA: A LATIN COLONY AND ITS TERRITORY

The extensive traces of Roman centuriation and its associated farms identified from aerial photographs near Lucera, ancient Luceria, in the plain of northern Apulia, have generally been attributed to the Gracchan agrarian reforms of the 130s/120s BC. However, the dating of these land divisions, on the basis of the excavation of the farms and centuriation roads by John Bradford and Barri Jones in 1949–50 and 1962–3, is of questionable reliability, and their work at Luceria was never properly published. This study reanalyses the scattered records and dating evidence from the excavation of seven farms of Bradford and Jones and three other sites surveyed by Bradford in the ager Lucerinus. This study argues that the farms and associated grids belong to Rome's establishment of a Latin colony at Luceria in 326 or 315/314 BC during the Second Samnite War, and that the farms were abandoned due to the Hannibalic War. This study therefore presents the earliest certain Roman centuriation for a colony, and it observes the devastating impact of Hannibal's invasion and prolonged occupation on landholding in southeastern Italy, which has been doubted in recent work on Italian agrarian history. In no other part of Italy does there exist a coherent group of nearby excavated small-scale farms, which provides new insight into Roman colonization in Apulia and the consequences of the Hannibalic War.