South Africa to establish a national farmer register

Following a call to roll out a national farmer registration process, KwaZulu-Natal will become the first South African province to establish an up-to-date register of all its agricultural producers. The process is set to establish a central database to tackle issues like insufficient data and requests for baseline information about farms and farmers who interact with the government.

According to Department of Agriculture Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF) Director-General Langa Zita, a regularly maintained Farmer Register would help the department and other government institutions to measure the sector's performance accurately, and make informed decisions on priority settings and resource allocation, regarding, for example, the delivery and monitoring of land redistribution, tenure, and restitution targets.

The census-styled Farmer Register initiative will start in the Mgungundlovu District Municipality and eventually cover the entire country. A team of eight department representatives and 100 contracted field workers - together with local agricultural extension officers - will be visiting each farm and farmer and capture information on ownership, demographics, employment, production capacity and the type of products produced per geographical area.

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