Farming as Life: Reframing Smallholder Farming as a Site of Self-Sufficiency and Cultural Heritage in Botswana

Dominant neoliberal frameworks often frame smallholder farming through a deficiency lens, reducing it to metrics of productivity, efficiency, and profitability. These perspectives overlook the deeper material, cultural, and social significance that farming holds in the lives of smallholder farmers. In Botswana—where approximately 70% of the rural population engages in smallholder farming—farming remains a vital part of everyday life, yet few studies adopt a culturalist or holistic lens to examine its meaning. To center smallholder farmers’ lived experiences and perspectives, this study is based on semi-structured interviews with ten smallholder farmers in southeast Botswana. Grounded in a culturalist framework and critical agrarian studies, this research finds that smallholder farming is practiced as a “way of life”: (1) as a form of self-sufficiency that provides a source of livelihood and sustenance, and (2) as a cultural practice rooted in familial heritage and community networks. By highlighting the material, cultural, and social value of smallholder farming through an assets-based lens, this study challenges reductive paradigms and advocates for greater recognition of community knowledge in scholarly and development discourse.