Commodity groups commit to another five years of farmer development

The private sector has  shown its commitment to developing black smallholder farmers in the province, with all eleven of the agricultural commodity groups who have been part of the Western Cape Department of Agriculture’s commodity approach to land reform, signing new MOUs last week.

Under the commodity approach, the commodity groups have committed to helping black smallholder farmers and land reform beneficiaries become more successful through access to markets for their goods, mentorship and training. The commodity groups have also contributed funding and in-kind support towards the implementation of successful land reform projects in the province.

"Minister of Economic Opportunities, Beverley Schäfer   said "Agricultural development is a process and government alone cannot achieve success without private sector involvement. New black farmers are supported by the Department of Agriculture through all of its programmes, but the required information and skills sets lie in the broader agricultural sector. Government most often does not have enough funding and capacity to support the new entrants to run a successful agricultural business. The success confirmed through an independent evaluation on the support to agricultural land reform beneficiaries and new entrants, shows a great achievement, but this was not done in isolation. So the continued commitment of the private sector was confirmed through the signing of Memoranda of Agreements last Friday."

Over the next three years, the Western Cape Department of Agriculture will allocate over R1 billion of its budget towards land reform projects, with R315.655 million allocated to farmer support and development in the current financial year.

Since 2014, over 200 mentors across the commodities have been appointed to support smallholder farmers and land beneficiaries, at no cost to the Department of Agriculture or to the farmers themselves.

Minister of Economic Opportunities, Beverley Schafer said: “As a result of this valuable partnership between the Department, the commodity groups and our public entity, Casidra, the farmers we support are seeing real success. A recent independent study found that 72% of all land reform projects receiving support from the Department, are successful.”

Among the successful projects under the commodity approach, was a commercialisation programme for fruit farmers, funded by the Jobs Fund. Under this project, over 210 hectares of fruit have been planted since 2016 for black producers.

Minister Schäfer said: “The Western Cape is the only province to have perfected the commodity approach and we believe that with continued partnerships like these, we have the ability to build black smallholder farmers into commercial success stories.”

The 11 commodity groups are:

The Deciduous Fruit Producers Trust

Potatoes South Africa

Grain SA

The South African Poultry Association

The Red Meat Producers Organisation

The National Wool Growers Association

The South African Table Grape Industry

Vinpro

South African Pork Producers Association

The South African Citrus Growers’ Association

And the Seed Industry.

Minister Schäfer said: "We want to thank these groups for partnering with us for another five years and invite other commodity groupings to speak to us to see how they can help in the future."