SA agriculture done better together
Isaacs said the drought has been highlighted by media but farmers have been struggling despite the drought for a long time. “We need to say 'thank you' to farmers and farm workers because we are not celebrating the achievements they do despite the challenges. South Africa needs to stand back and understand where their food comes from.”
Advice and training
Isaacs tells agri-leaders how her department supports the agriculture economy and its challenges. She says where the government cannot provide money, it provides advice and training. For example, the government offers LandCare for the employed and education for the unemployed at the same time. “We pay for unemployed workers from the rural areas to work on a commercial farm and to look after the land, do contouring and remove alien vegetation. The government pays for that but it’s to the benefit of the farmer and the unemployed worker in learning more.”
Funding
An independent evaluation confirmed that many of the land reform farmers do not pay SARS, nor do they have good financial records. They also do not have good HR support on the farm. “We, as government, created a management improvement plan to focus on these areas to help even those successful ones to become even better.”
“There is still funding available for black farmers but for commercial farmers, it’s a little harder. The Land Bank, IDC, DTI, etc. still have funding available for farmers and farmer organisations but the demands and requirements for getting funding becomes difficult.
Land reform
We need to get agricultural land reform projects to at least a 70% success rate for all people, who have land in this province, in order for them to be sustainable and productive. Additionally, we can’t do agriculture without sustainable management so we must look after our water, climate change, and production methodology and how to use our resources better.
Skills development
Skills development remains one of the critical elements of agriculture. Agriculture is a science and we need to train young people across the board to take on the role of agriculturists for the future. But above that, it’s no use producing if we can’t have it made into food (or sell) so we have to focus on value and value addition.
Market access
Market access is important but often when we talk about market access, we are talking internationally, yet domestically we need to ensure that we first buy local and that food is available locally. In terms of the market trends, at a basic level our transformation in the agriculture sector needs to be fixed. If you bring in new black commercial farmers, you need to make sure they have markets. The challenge is to get them to produce and consider the market – that is fundamentally the department’s job.
Internationally we are seeing a lot of non-tariff barriers coming through, so the question is how do we position our farmers to take the opportunity to get into those markets. It sounds easy but at the moment we have about 120 standards from different importing countries that our farmers need to adhere to if they want to go into these markets.
Climate change
Climate change is also an issue. Production patterns in the province are changing. For example, we have seen a shift from wine in traditional areas moving to be grown in the Southern Cape due to the climate changing. This applies to traditional areas where apples are grown too. All this must be considered to give good advice to farmers and for farmers to be well-informed to make productive decisions.”
To tackle these challenges, one of the decisions the department made in 2009 was to make sure the people that received access to land were supported. The department set a strategic goal to say 60% of all people that it helps, that received land in the province, must be successful.
The commodity approach
“We set about creating a mechanism for the private sector and government to work together to help black farmers. We call it the commodity approach – when we invest one Rand so does the private sector. This has been ongoing since 2009. In 2012, we assessed the strategic goal to see whether we achieved it – and we had.”
More than 60% of the 248 projects that the department supported are successful. This means they have market access, a business plan and they have invested in their future. All of this was deemed as criteria for success.
“Our slogan in the province says ‘better together.’ We, as the government, can’t do everything, in fact, we shouldn’t do everything. The private sector has been helping us to achieve our goals of growing the agriculture economy.”