The Potential Social Impact of COVID-19 Lockdowns on Agricultural Households in South Africa: An Integrative Review

Abstract

This article attempts to establish a synergy between two strands of literature. On the one hand, the findings focused on the elderly, who had already been suffering from mild illnesses and comorbidities, and the poor and rural dwellers, who then represented the population groups most likely to be killed by the virus, as the population groups most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. On the other hand, the findings on smallholder farming households, as a population group, share the same attributes as the elderly group. The research data was gathered through an integrative literature review using secondary sources from Statistics South Africa and the Department of Health. Our findings suggest that the smallholder farmers who are elderly with a greater reliance on agriculture and the wage labourers were most vulnerable to the impact of COVID-19. Although our findings suggest a likely impact on all the pentagon capitals of smallholders identified through the SLF lens, the odds are higher in the social, human, and financial capitals. Therefore, in future outbreaks, the available support should prioritise the smallholder farmers largely defined by these capitals.