Producing the cream of the crop

The trust, started from a partnership between 70 white farmers from the Tsitsikamma and the Underberg areas — through their company Amadlelo Agri — and the nearby University of Fort Hare, provides intensive hands-on training to black farmers from around the country.

“We met in 2004 and came to the conclusion that land empowerment is not purely the responsibility of the government,” says Amadlelo Agri CE Jeff Every.

“If land reform is to happen properly in SA white farmers have to play a role in providing skills training and resources. We have had all the privileges. We have to share what we know and have.”

The farmers signed on empowerment company Vuwa Investments, which was given a 35% stake in the company.

The farmers kept 49% and the rest of the company was shared between 600 workers from the 70 dairy farms.

Every then met the agricultural department at the University of Fore Hare and discussed the farmers' plan. “We said let's join forces to do research and training for aspiring black students and managers, so that they have a chance of being successful.”

The university offered to contribute research and scientific knowledge to the farm and donated R2m to the project. It also offered a piece of land outside town, which it owned through the Department of Agriculture.

Amadlelo contributed a further R5m and two amounts were received from the Land Bank — R7,5m in equity and R7,5m credit.

Now that it had the land, the farmers would need a manager. But Every already had someone in mind — Leonard Mavhungu from Thohoyandou, Venda, who was given an internship position in 2005 on the company's two-year farming programme. Some of SA's top pasture farmers were his mentors. When he graduated he was asked about starting up a dairy farm in the Eastern Cape.

Today the Fort Hare Dairy Trust is a state-of-the-art commercial dairy farm. It has an 800-cow rotary parlour that produces about 10000l of milk a day. Much of that milk is supplied to Clover Dairies.

Every predicts that at its peak the dairy will produce double this output. He credits the success of the project to Mavhungu's passion for farming.

“There is a very false but widely held belief that black people are not commercial farmers. Leonard showed that this belief is just not on.”

Each year Amadlelo takes on between 10 and 15 black interns, some of whom are sent to the Fort Hare Dairy Trust. Like Mavhungu, the students are put through a rigorous hands-on farming course. If the students last the internship they are posted to working farms in the province.

The success of the Fort Hare Dairy Trust cuts a stark contrast to a government-owned ostrich farm in Hammanskraal in Pretoria, which earlier this year was found stripped of furniture, without running water and with its livestock limping in their pens.

The government bought that farm in 2007 and rented it out to a group of small-scale farmers. By last August the farm was deserted. For the first time the Department of Agriculture applied a “use it or lose it” policy and last month claimed back the land.

Prof Ben Cousins, director of the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies at the University of the Western Cape, says a crucial element of land reform is to assist new owners to become productive users of their land. This is important for poverty reduction and to allay fears that land reform will undermine production for local or export markets.

“Land carries a powerful political charge, as is the case in neighbouring Zimbabwe, which had a similar history to SA's.”

Cousins says by last year a total of 5,8-million hectares, or just 5% of commercial farmland, had been transferred to black farmers through a combination of restitution and redistribution. This is short of the government's 30% target by 2014.

“If land questions remain unresolved, the possibility clearly exists for populist politicians to focus strongly on these issues in order to build a support base, leading to unrealistic policies that promise much but fail to deliver real benefits.… This in turn could lead to discontent and unrest.” Sapa

Source: Business Day

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