Michael Aliber from Fort Hare University and David Neves from the University of the Western Cape spoke at a conference organised by the Eastern Cape Socio Economic Consultative Council (on 27 January 2017) which Ronald Eglin from Afesis-corplan attended. The presentations were titled “Government and small-scale agriculture: understanding the successes and failures in respect of learning, planning and implementation” and “Livelihoods and rural development”, respectively. To view the presentations, click on the above links. Their findings both point to the need to look more broadly at the issue of rural development as more than just an issue of agriculture development.  One needs to look at the whole value chain from extracting and using resources to adding value and marketing the products and services of the province.