Loemat-Pettersson encourages smaller farmers

Addressing the 2012 African Farmers Association of South Africa Congress in Irene‚ south of Pretoria on Monday ‚ Joemat-Pettersson conceded that the government has been slow in addressing the needs of smallholder farmers saying some of the constraints facing them were poor physical and institutional infrastructure and the lack of access to fertile agricultural land.

She said South Africa has 230‚000 land reform beneficiaries and emerging farmers and 35‚000 commercial farmers. Most smallholder farmers were located in rural areas and mostly in the former homelands where lack of infrastructure such as roads‚ limited their expansion prospects.

This increased their transport costs‚ and affected their produce.

The department's objective was to encourage the smallholder farmers to take small risks and strive to grow into being commercial farmers. She said the same sort of courage was needed from "emerging farmers" so they could develop into more efficient "smallholder" farmers.

"We need them to take part in the economy‚ in the export businesses and to make money just like commercial farmers do," the minister said.

She said the primary goal of her ministry was to develop small-, medium and micro-enterprises and to facilitate the transformation of unrepresentative sectors and industries within her portfolio.

"The government is working extremely hard to assist smallholder farmers to become commercial farmers. We want to turn rural areas into commercially viable agricultural zones‚" she said.

Joemat-Pettersson said the government was focusing on eradicating deeply entrenched poverty in rural areas through programmes that were aimed at overhauling the entire social system.

These involved the allocation of tractors to provinces along with seeds and implements. She said this meant her department was finally taking agriculture to the people and encouraging every family‚ every school‚ and clinic to start planting vegetable gardens on their small plots of land.