The purpose of this article aims to properly define emerging farmers in developing rural areas of the Eastern Cape Province in South Africa and evaluate their distinguishing characteristics. There is still remarkable scarcity of scientific information describing a more detailed picture of emerging farmers. The terminology ‘emergent farmer’ is globally a contentious issue and it is not commonly used by researchers owing to its vague connotation. It seems that the term ‘emergent farmer’ is used freely and interchangeably by many researchers to describe new entrant farmers in the agricultural industry who are mainly black and resource poor operating on a small scale. This paper uses data collected from 50 households in King William’s Town area in an effort to provide scientific information describing a more detailed picture of emerging farmers, their racial composition, the type of labour used by the group of farmers for production purposes and the production levels of the group. The results from the study are used to challenge the fallacy or negative perception that emergent farming relates to land size and production only. It is crucial that this group of farmers is correctly identified in order to correctly develop strategies, development models and programmes that can contribute to the development of these farmers.

Keywords: Emergent farmer, Eastern Cape Province, South Africa