Concern over land ceilings and its affect on sustainable redistribution of land

24 Mar 2017

The concept of land ceilings has been hotly debated since 2011. Despite Agri SA making it clear why organisations regard this as an ill-considered idea and some of the advisors appointed by Minister Gugile Nkwinti's own department advising him against such a step, Nkwinti has decided to publish the draft Bill on 17 March 2017. He has allowed only 30 calendar days for public comments. Agri SA will request an extension of the deadline.

Fluglotse2000 via Wikimedia Commons

Ernest Pringle, the chairman of Agri SA’s Policy Committee on Agricultural Development, said that international experience with ceilings demonstrated that land ceilings had many negative impacts.

Negative impacts include:

• The fragmentation of agricultural land;

• Affecting productivity adversely;

• That it has contributed towards agricultural being a low-profit venture in several parts of the world;

• Neutral or negative effects on poverty;

• Unsatisfied levels of equity and efficiency;

• That it had, to a large extent; failed to change agrarian structures - large inequalities continue to exist;

• A negative impact on functional land rental markets;

• It has proved costly and difficult to administrate;

• It has been characterised by circumvention, contestation, corruption and litigation;

• It led to tenure insecurity; and

• It discouraged land-related investment.

Proposed system would be costly

Pringle added that the proposed system would be costly and that the huge administration cost would outweigh any potential benefits that government was punting. Also, the proposed scheme will make planning extremely difficult if bits and pieces of agricultural land were to be excised from farms all over the place.

This would likely leave farmers and beneficiaries with uneconomical units. Provision of services to far-flung beneficiaries will also be a huge challenge. This policy would deliver fragmented pieces of land spread across the furthest reaches of a district. Small parcels may end up being ‘sliced-off’ larger landholdings with little or no access to natural resources, infrastructure or services.

Agri SA is of the view that the Bill also faces constitutional challenges and is in the process of getting senior counsel opinion on that, said Pringle. Agri SA has proposed alternative approaches to achieve speedier and sustainable redistribution of land.