This paper examines whether the development path of South Afiic.an agriculture has been consistent with its resource endowments. Within an induced innovation framework the two stage constant elasticity of substitution (CES) production function is used and results in a direct test of the inducement hypothesis which are applied to data for South Afiic.an commercial agriculture for the period 1947-91. Cointegration is established, RJld Ril error correction model (ECM) constructed. The results indicate that factor price ratios are not the sole cause of factor-saving biases of technological change. Public choice and macroeconomic incentives played a significant role resulting in a distorted development path.
