KwaZulu-Natal is set to become the first of the nine provinces in the country to establish an accurate register of all its existing agricultural producers.
This follows on a national call to roll out a farmer registration process aimed at establishing a central database to overcome data shortfalls and baseline information challenges on farms and farmers who interact with the government.
The census-styled Farmer Register initiative, which will start in the Mgungundlovu District Municipality in October and eventually cover the entire country, is expected to contribute to informed policy development, improved planning, decision making and service delivery by the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF) and the entire agricultural sector.
A team of eight representatives from DAFF and 100 contracted field workers are already in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) province and will be visiting each farm and farmer for the purposes of capturing data which include ownership, demographics, employment, production capacity and the type of products produced per geographical area.
The data collectors will be in the company of local agricultural extension officers who are familiar with producers.
DAFF Director-General Mr Langa Zita says a need for establishing a regularly maintained Farmer Register System was identified as a way that will help to address the needs of the department and other government institutions to measure the performance of the sector accurately, and to make informed decisions in terms of priority settings and resource allocation.
“Currently, challenges facing the department are in delivering and monitoring on Land Redistribution, Tenure and Restitution targets. Also the development of black South African farmers cannot be properly measured owing to a lack of statistics on these small-scale farmers”, says Zita.
The completion of the Farmer database will improve communication with farmers in terms outbreaks of diseases, measures that can be taken, existing opportunities and make it easy to estimate the impact and cost of damage at any given time.
This farmer register campaign will be done in all provinces but for now it is KZN’s turn.
Enquiries:
Steve Galane
Tel: 012 319 7960
Cell: 083 635 7346
E-mail: DAIS@daff.gov.za
