Department of Agriculture production cost surveys and wage studies

Literature › Primary sources

Kind	official statistical series
Producer	Department of Agriculture
Coverage	1945-1985
Works using it	5

Debates

Debate	Works
Farm labour: mechanisation, labour shedding, wages and labour control	5
Agricultural policy, productivity, farm size and land reform	1
Agrarian transition to capitalism and the fate of the African peasantry	1
Data reliability and econometric method	1

Works using this source

Work	As cited	Period	How used
De Klerk (1984a)	Department of Agriculture annual surveys of costs of maize production (about 80 farms visited in Western Transvaal)	1969-1977 and later years	Supplies average cash wages of seasonal harvest workers and all-inclusive annual wages of permanent workers, set against the author's 1981 survey estimates.
De Klerk (1984a)	Department of Agriculture time studies (labour-saving reorganisation of threshing)	1960s	Used to calculate the share of the seasonal employment decline due to reorganised hand-harvesting before combines.
De Klerk (1984b)	Department of Agriculture postal records of 103 Western Transvaal maize farmers	1981	Second comparator for average permanent wage (R1164 p.a.).
De Klerk (1984b)	Department of Agriculture survey of the cost of maize production, 1981, Western Transvaal (Fenyes, Statistiese Bylae tot die Verslag oor die Benutting en Vergoeding van Plaasarbeid in die Suid-Afrikaanse Landbou, 1983, vols I and III)	1977-78 to 1980-81	Benchmark for permanent wage levels, cash component, bonus and food values, against which the author's sample is shown to be biased upward.
De Klerk (1984c)	Department of Agriculture estimates of average all-inclusive annual wage of permanent farm workers, 1970-1977	1970-1977	Series (R220 to R653) extended with the author's 1981 estimate (R1 777) to trace permanent worker wages.
De Klerk (1984c)	Department of Agriculture time studies of threshing/harvesting labour	1960s	Basis for calculating the share of employment decline attributable to reorganisation of hand-harvesting.
De Klerk (1984c)	Department of Agriculture wage data for seasonal maize-harvest workers, 1969-1976	1969-1976	Provides the benchmark average cash daily wage of seasonal workers (39 to 77 cents) against which the survey's 1981 wage is compared.
Van Zyl et al. (1987a)	Maize production cost surveys, Department of Agriculture and Water Supply (rotation basis; ~80 random farmers each with >100 ha maize; NW Free State, Western Transvaal, Transvaal Highveld)	1945-1985	Core dataset for farm-level labour use, remuneration, machinery investment, costs, income and productivity trends fitted with exponential growth curves.
Vink (2012)	Annual Department of Agriculture surveys of production costs	Apartheid era	Described as the basis for setting the maize farm-gate price (cost plus margin); not analysed.