Premier Mabuyane says farmers should ensure value for money from government investments
Eastern Cape Premier Lubabalo Oscar Mabuyane together with Rural Development and Agrarian Reform MEC Nonkqubela Pieters handed over cattle and goats with superior genetics to Eastern Cape communal and small- scale farmers as part of the ongoing implementation of the livestock production improvement scheme (LPIS) aimed at improving poor genetic make-up of their livestock to enable them participate in the formal markets with better animals.
The scheme promotes sustainable and profitable livestock production within the resource potential farming systems. Since 2017 the Department injected R137 million in livestock production improvement schemes.
MEC Pieters announced that the province will soon launch livestock traceability programme that will assist farmers in livestock theft and tracing where the livestock they acquire comes from.
Mabuyane urged farmers to go an extra mile to ensure that there was value for money for the government investment in their enterprises by jealousy guarding the enablers they are provided with.
Mabuyane was speaking during the handover of quality breed cattle and goats to the province’s small-holder and communal farmers as part of commercialising and growing livestock production in the province at the Dohne Agricultural Development Institute in Stutterheim.
He said it was important for farmers to protect the livestock, go an extra mile to ensure value for money for what government has given to them.
“There more you improve the livestock, the more the market opens up but you won’t access the market will less quality,” said Mabuyane, adding that Eastern Cape farmers are already exporting through the support provided by government.
He said he was quite excited with the difference he was seeing as it was proof of a better life government has been making since 1994.
“Let’s maximize what agriculture can do in our province to change lives. We want to strength that by ensuring that it is not only those that are in commercial space that access markets but we should have farmers in rural communities accessing markets. That why we are creating that as government hence the livestock improvement programme.
Mabuyane said he was “glad” that through this programme the Department supported 1 441 livestock production improvement enterprises since its inception.
Between 2009/2010 and 2022/23 financial years 9 233 cattle, goats and sheep with superior genetic were distributed to farmers across the Eastern Cape Province.
In the 2023/24 financial year, the Department has invested R12.8 million in further supporting more livestock communal and smallholder farmers with 250 cattle, 500 sheep and 200 goats to enhance redmeat and animal fiber development in the Province.
One of the farmers who received animals from government, Mongezi Sihlahla, who is a military veteran, said
government’s intervention will help future generations, adding that agriculture was the backbone of the province’s economic growth.
“This intervention will assist me a lot to change the quality of my livestock. We will now have a higher grade livestock compared to what I now have. I feel very happy and we must be grateful about being assisted by your own government so that we can grow towards commercial farming,” said Sihlahla.
A young award winning farmer Dintle Maphala, who farms with Angora goats, cattle, poultry and produces fodder, received financial injection from Isiqalo Youth Development Fund, livestock through DRDAR’s LIPS said she was glad because government investment was assisting her to make a mark in the male dominated industry where there is less youth.
“Sometimes you want to work but you don’t have the financial muscle to do that. I was assisted by the DRDAR and the Office of the Premier. So now I can see the future is bright in the farming business,” Maphala said.
She said the assistance has led her to employ three full-time workers and also mentor agricultural graduates. “Now I have two graduates who I’m grooming to become more prosperous than I am,” she said.
Maphala received a poultry structure with a capacity of carrying 1 800 birds as well as with 1 000 chicks, feed and meditation while DRDAR gave her a tractor and its implements.
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