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A development path for South Africa that will create jobs and reduce poverty must include the encouragement of greater labor intensity in agriculture, especially of smallholder farming, which was suppressed under apartheid. There is, however, widespread skepticism -- on both the left and the right -- about the prospects for more labor-intensive farming. But this skepticism is called into question by both theory and evidence of the advantages of small-scale production in certain products and circumstances; there are now numerous examples of this in many parts of the world. The paper discusses the preconditions for the development of such farming in South Africa, including land reform and the need to reorient investment and supporting economic and technical services (research, training, marketing, credit) from the privileged, large-scale "white" farms to the undercapitalized and neglected black smallholders.