AgriSA to farmers: seek engagement, not confrontation

Theo de Jager, deputy president of AgriSA which represents the bulk of the country's commercial farming industry, isn't so sure. Farmers in South Africa do not have the culture of "organised confrontation" like they do in France, he says. There they can bring the country to a standstill if the government threatens their interests.

"What would we do? Block off the rural roads for a day; occupy Pretoria?" de Jager asks. Alienating public opinion is the last thing the country's 37000 commercial farmers, most of them white, need at this delicate stage of their existence. Lead by De Jager, AgriSA is trying to reach out to communities, for example by being the first to provide assistance to township victims of the recent East Rand tornado. De Jager, however, admits that AgriSA members, black and white, are putting pressure on the organisation "to go into confrontational mode" in order to force the government to remove the threat posed to the industry by its land reform policies.

The greatest threat is not land reform, De Jager tells Business Live. AgriSA knows how important land reform is. The real threat is the disastrous way it is being implemented. "The biggest threat to commercial agriculture is uncertainty," De Jager says. 13000 farms have unsettled land claims over them since 2000 - and Banks refuse to finance farmers who have land claims over their land. The farmers themselves will not invest in farms they may lose at any time. "So productivity on these farms is being scaled down. Some have gone bankrupt." De Jager believes AgriSA's strategy of "constructive engagement" has helped shift the mindset of government from seeing commercial farmers as the enemy, to a position where it is prepared to "consider the plans we bring to the table and negotiate with us. At least now we have an open door," he concluded.

Read the full article on www.businesslive.co.za.