The debate on smallholder commodification trajectories tends to be polarised between mainstream approaches that advocate tighter integration of smallholders into global value chains, and alternative approaches that favour localised markets on the grounds that these provide greater autonomy over production and marketing, and allow a greater share of value to be realised for producers and the wider community. This debate obscures the interrelations and possible synergies between them; a critique taken up in this paper. Using a case study on agricultural diversification in the former homeland of Venda, South Africa, we explore the usefulness of the nested markets concept to make sense of smallholders' patterning of markets by combining tree crops for export with seasonal vegetables for local markets. Exploring the drivers of diversification, we show how farmers’ patterning of markets depends on their profiles and corresponding trajectory of accumulation. Local markets are articulated systems that function as hybrid spaces of interaction that enable farmers without any alternative off-farm income to gain and sustain access to global commodity markets. This challenges the framing of nested markets as an act of resistance as well as the dichotomy between local versus global markets as mutually exclusive. Instead, we argue that these markets can be interconnected and mutually supportive and are opportunistically used as such by petty commodity producers to sustain their export-oriented production system. If these relations are better understood, they stand to enable agrarian policy, which currently favours high-value tree crops, to be more inclusive of young and less well-resourced farmers.

关于小农商品化轨迹的争论倾向于在倡导将小农更加紧密地整合到全球价值链的主流方法与以本地化市场为基础的替代方法之间产生两极分化，理由是这些方法在生产和销售方面具有更大的自主权，并允许更大的份额。为生产者和更广泛的社区实现的价值。这场辩论掩盖了它们之间的相互关系和可能的协同作用；本文进行了评论。通过对南非文达故乡的农业多样化案例研究，我们探讨了嵌套市场概念的有用性，该方法通过将出口的树木作物与当地市场的时令蔬菜相结合，使小农户的市场格局有意义。探索多元化的动力，我们展示了农民的市场格局如何取决于他们的个人资料和相应的积累轨迹。本地市场是铰接的系统，充当相互作用的混合空间，使没有任何替代性非农业收入的农民能够获得并维持进入全球商品市场的机会。这就挑战了嵌套市场的形成和抵制，也挑战了本地市场和全球市场之间的二分法。取而代之的是，我们认为这些市场可以相互联系和相互支持，而小商品生产者则利用这些市场来维持其以出口为导向的生产系统。如果对这些关系有更好的了解，它们将有助于实施农业政策，该政策目前有利于高价值的林木作物，