The study was conducted in Mbozi and Ciko villages in Mbhashe Local Municipality of the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. Two irrigation projects in the area were studied. Consumers and agricultural commodity traders in Willowvale Town, Dutywa, Butterworth and East London were also interviewed. The major objective of the study is to profile and map cabbage, maize and cattle food value chains broadly, and to understand their nature, constraints and opportunities in smallholder agriculture. A multi-stage random sampling procedure was used in which the first stage involved selecting the local government areas. This was followed by the selection of the district and then the respondents. A total of 168 participants were sampled in the proportion of 82 smallholder farmers, 41 consumers, 26 hawkers and 20 agricultural commodity traders. Focus group discussions and key informant interviews were also used during the data collection process. Value Chain mapping was done using the commodity based approach. All value chains under study indicated that they are short and commodities were transacted in unprocessed form. As cabbages and maize move from the farm to retail outlets, value addition start to take place through transportation to the market and processing in supermarkets. The cattle value chain however does not have a forward linkage beyond the two administrative boundaries of the two communities. Less than 3% of the farmers traded livestock, and this was mostly through private sales to neighbours. The farmers‘ major goal in agricultural production is assumed to be an important aspect in lengthening the value chain. As such, results of a Pearson‘s correlation exercise indicated that there is a significant relationship at 0.05% level between goals of the farmers and the village of origin. Some factors that showed significance (p=0.05) in influencing farmers‘ goals are membership of an irrigation project and household sources of income. An analysis of determinants of technical efficiency at farm level was performed using the stochastic frontier model for cabbage, maize and cattle enterprises. The results showed that rainfall adequacy, input costs, market channels and quantity sold are important determinants of cabbage production efficiency. On the other hand, maize production efficiency is positively determined by market price, area under production and rainfall adequacy. Market related variables are major drivers of the cattle value chain efficiency and these include cattle prices, market satisfaction, market channel and farm labour.
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