2012/13 Budget vote by Limpopo MEC for Agriculture, Mr Jacob Marule

Honourable Speaker
Honourable Premier Cassel Mathale
Honourable colleagues in the executive
Honourable Members of the House
Veterans of our struggle
Magosi/traditional leaders
Dearest farmers and farm workers
Invited guests
Friends

Honourable Speaker, it is a privilege and honour for me to present my maiden Budget Speech for the department which I have close affinity with. As the world and the country grapples with poverty and hunger, it becomes imperative that we have our priorities right. We have to ask ourselves difficult questions in terms of what we need to do with the scourge of hunger. I am reading this budget when global warming and other environmental and natural disasters are not helping the situation any more the better. The past few weeks have seen a great heat wave that dried almost all crops in the province. As we speak, farmers are struggling in harvesting crops like maize and tomatoes, because of the heat. This budget, is being read at a time when we need to belt tighten ourselves, and find alternatives to produce more affordable and accessible food.

Honourable Speaker

Looking back on the year 2011, I am pleased to see that the Department of Agriculture has performed in ways that will certainly contribute towards the realisation of its vision, being a “United, prosperous and sustainable agricultural sector”. Despite a difficult international economic climate we have continued to implement our programmes.

The budget that we are tabling here today will be judged by the public according to the three E’s, which are Efficiency, Effectiveness and Economy. I would humbly like to state that for the past few years this department has delivered services being guided by the three E’s. The evidence for this statement is that for the past two financial years we have received an unqualified audit report, the last financial year being declared as a “clean audit”.

Honourable Speaker

This means that for both financial and non-financial information we have systems and controls in place to be accountable for resources allocated to us. We have a slogan in the department that says, “If you can’t prove it, you have not done it”. We will continue to be guided by this slogan and utilise the funds allocated to us in a manner that we abide by the Constitution of the Republic which requires that the South African Government be accountable and transparent to the public. In Chapter 10 of the Constitution these principles are dealt with in that “Public administration must be accountable” and “Transparency must be fostered by providing the public with timely, accessible and accurate information” (Section 195).

Honourable Speaker

Central to the performance of the department is the ruling party’s manifesto which calls for the creation of decent work, sustainable livelihoods, rural development, food security and land reform. At national level the Presidency, allocated the coordination and implementation of rural development to the Department of Rural Development and Land reform.In the Province, the Premier has delegated this responsibility to the Department of Agriculture. In pursuance of the creation of sustainable development, inclusive of economic growth and sustainable rural communities, the department has developed and adopted the Limpopo Integrated Rural Development Strategy. The strategy endorsed by the Provincial Cabinet was adopted on 10 November 2011 by a cross section of stakeholders that include amongst others, national departments, provincial departments, municipalities, the Traditional Leadership, civil society and communities. This process came about as a result of protracted consultation with various stakeholders in the province.

The strategy incorporates the approved Agricultural Development Plan for the province read and interpreted together with the Limpopo Employment Growth and Development plan and the Comprehensive Rural Development Programme. This strategy will enable the province to deliver against defined programmes that will result in accelerated delivery highlighted in government’s outcomes based strategy.

Honourable Speaker

The Limpopo rural development programme must be seen in the context of both global and regional development perspectives. There exist great economic opportunities for Limpopo given its geo-political position. In our province, mining, tourism and agriculture are the key economic drivers; therefore agriculture has a key role to play in rural development. It is therefore important to note that agrarian and land reform have a direct impact on rural development. We welcome the efforts to review land reform processes with the intention to remove all the hindrances that delays the smooth and effective transformation of the land and agrarian landscapes.

As a department we have long realised that most of our programmes must biased towards rural development in such a way that it responds to food security, commercialisation, Job creation and supporting economic growth.

The combined budget in support of Rural Development, spread through different budget programmes is R149 million. The budget will amongst others be used to address and support the following projects:

• Veterinary Services for the prevention and treatment of livestock diseases
• Expansion of the Mokopane Veterinary Laboratory, which is a first in the province
• Construction of 52 animal handling facilities
• Implementation of 4 projects in the agricultural hubs
• The grafting of 17 000 fruit trees under horticulture
• The supply of inputs to 338 projects
• The implementation of the Integrated Poultry Production Model
• Continuous support for the IDC Nguni Cattle project
• Implementation of phase 1 of the Moletjie commercial Dairy Project
• Provide support to livestock farmers by providing abattoir cooperatives.

It is therefore important for us to remind communities that the role of government is to create an enabling environment while their role is to initiate and implement ideas that will become a reality as we jointly implement our Rural Development Slogan “Ntlatše ke go tlatše”.

Honourable Speaker

Food Security is a right as outlined in Chapter 2 on the Bill of Rights in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa. It refers to food in Section 27, 1 (b) of the bill of rights, which states that “everyone has the right to have access to sufficient food and water” and the State must take reasonable legislative and other measures, within its available resources, to achieve the realisation of this right.

The National Department of Agriculture in South Africa has recognized several key food security challenges in the Integrated Food Security Strategy for South Africa. However, as Altman (2009) points out, South Africa still lacks specific and accepted measures for food security and currently has no regularised way of monitoring the food security status of its population.

According to the National Agriculture Marketing Council the cost of a basket of basic food commodities has increased by 10,3 % from December 2011 to January 2012.

The Council’s Food Monitoring Report stresses that consumers in rural areas pay more for the same food commodities as their counterparts in urban areas. Seen against the fact that Limpopo has the largest rural population in terms of the percentage of their citizens living in rural areas, the fight towards zero Hunger has been intensified through the establishment of a food bank in Seshego Industrial Park, which will be officially launched next week on 27 March 2012. In partnership with 60 NGOs the food park is already distributing food parcels in the Capricorn District to 5548 beneficiaries. The  food park is also providing a market outlet for subsistence and small holder farmers to supply their produce and 67 farmers from Lepelle Nkumpi municipality has been contracted to supply.

The total budget set aside for food security and the food park is R27 million which will be used for:

• supporting the provincial food park
• the establishment of five district food parks and
• giving support to food security micro enterprise projects developments to address household food security.

Honourable Speaker

Land reform has put thousands of hacters in the hands of communities through the restoration of land rights and in the hands of groups and individuals as a way of transforming the land ownership pattern in the country. It is our responsibility as a department through our post settlement support programmes to support new land owners in such a way that their lands continue to make a contribution to food security, job creation and the economy.

In this regard we have increased our performance in the development of small irrigation projects (5 to 20 hacters) through CASP, which is almost double what it was in the previous year. Thirty five projects are at various stages of completion. These projects have created 235 jobs during their development. Complementing the irrigation projects and in an attempt to add value to products and create more jobs within the province, a pack-house was completed within the Letaba municipality for a black farmer, Mr Steve Mohale who is known to have created more than 200 jobs through agricultural production business on communal land. Once commissioned, the pack house will increase his workforce by 25 additional workers.

The integrated poultry projects are close to achieving its final milestones with the upgrading of Lebowakgomo abattoir almost complete. The state of the art development will be commissioned during May 2012.

While on the integrated poultry, I need to make this house aware that one of the biggest players in the poultry industry, Rainbow Chicken has bought a chicken abattoir business that used to belong to Bushvalley in Tzaneen. This take-over had a direct impact on emerging poultry producers who had marketing arrangements with Bushvalley. Fortunately, Rainbow Chicken has committed to adopt all broiler farmers and even more, to improve their efficiencies in production in order to achieve the Rainbow standards and bring more money into the pockets of the participating farmers. Engagements between our department and Rainbow Chicken have intensified to ensure that their best practices in terms of management expertise across the poultry value chain, benefits the integrated poultry projects.

Honourable Speaker

Those who have used the Tzaneen road via Makgobaskloof in the past months will have witnessed the restoration of the aesthetic beauty of the area. Just over 500 hectares of tea bush has been pruned. Although the performance is below what was anticipated, the milestone is remarkable, considering the protracted internal conflicts within the community which does not make our facilitation and consultative processes any easy. So far 503 permanent jobs have been created. Engagements with Trade & Investment Limpopo on exploring tea markets are going on while other players are engaged to diversify the enterprises and spread risks.

Our partnership with KPMG which had focused mainly on enterprise development is being expanded to accommodate the Socio Economic Development Initiatives as the need was identified to focus on the upliftment of individual farming entrepreneurs. This will help improve the farmer’s business management expertise through workshops, training sessions as well as one-on-one mentorship. An agreement in this regard will be concluded before the end of this month.

The remarkable recovery of the Levubu farms was reported to this house last year, with appreciations going specifically to Mauluma Farming Enterprise, owned by the Ravele community which was the first Communal Property Association in the province to receive unqualified audits and realise profits.

It is sad to announce that Khosi Vho Ravele Ndwayamiomva, the Traditional Leader of the Ravele Community has passed on and was laid to rest on Saturday, 3 March 2012. It is befitting to honour his departed spirit and honour this great leader who saw democracy not as a threat to his role but demonstrated his leadership as advisor both to the Ravele Communal Property Association (CPA) and the Board of Mauluma Farming Enterprise. Vha edele nga mulalo, mavu. A feasibility study into all Levubu farms will be concluded next month andwill assist by giving a full picture of the potential and challenges in the area, thereby informing us on further areas of possible intervention for development and job creation.

Honourable Speaker

The development of irrigation infrastructure through the RESIS programme to fight poverty in communal tribal areas is progressing well with the completion of 360 ha in two schemes. The department is currently revising its policy on the development and operation of communal schemes to mitigate on the risks associated with the operations of these schemes. Key to these is the strengthening on the business model in view of the difficulties experienced with the strategic partner model in some schemes.

In the 2012 State of the Nation Address President Zuma declared the “Year of Job Creation”, as a sector we will continue to support this noble pronouncement which is central to pushing back the frontiers of poverty. Agriculture has been identified as one of the five job drivers in the National Growth Path. A comprehensive report on jobs created within the sector as pronounced in the last budget speech will be reported on in the annual report later this year.

During the coming financial year the Department with its programmes aims to create more jobs through the Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) 11 000 job opportunities and Full Time Equivalents job opportunities will be created, as a contribution to the Environment and Culture Sector of the Programme.

Honourable Speaker

There is a consensus among the Agricultural Industry players that more jobs will be created by investing in upstream segments of the value chain.

The department has embarked on the development of an Agro-Processing Strategy with the aim of:

• addressing market constraints in order to determine, prioritise and create a conducive environment for agro processing development
• eExpand the existing agro processing firms in the Limpopo, and determine their contribution and role in economic growth and sector competitiveness
• develop a framework for collaboration between all role players at provincial and national level that will prioritise the allocation of public and private resources
• identify the opportunities for private investments and government interventions to respond to agro processing opportunities.

Honourable Speaker

South Africa is a developmental state, the success of the agricultural sector will depend on its capacity to plan and use tangible data to influence major economic decisions and in this regard the department:

• continues to award internal and external bursaries to address the skills shortage in the sector
• a number of  interns have been appointed this year, to gain working experience from the department
• we are in the process of developing a Human Resource Strategy to identify and respond to skills gap in the sector

Our Agricultural Development Strategy aimed at amongst others increasing production and industrialising the sector will also guide the Limpopo Agribusiness Development Cooperation (LADC) in fulfilling its mandate. We will continue to engage and utilise the planning and project implementation capacity of the LADC for high impact agricultural projects in the province.

With a budget of R93 million, the LADC will in this financial year focus on:

• the Integrated poultry Project
• the rehabilitation Makgoba tea Estate
• the development of the Tshivhase tea Estate exit strategy
• implementation of agricultural hubs
• develop a turnaround strategy for irrigation schemes.

Honourable Speaker

Our quest to implement the Agricultural Development Strategy will not be fruitful if we do not ring-fence high value agricultural land. Last year we alluded to the fact that we embarked on an Agro ecological zoning study that has since been concluded and now we are finalising a policy to protect and optimise the use of agricultural land so that prime agricultural land is used beneficially for food production.

The Zoning Maps will be used as a decision making tool to support various decision makers on land, to ensure that prime agricultural land is not lost to non-agricultural purposes. This is an area which will require interested parties in land use such as private land owners, municipalities, traditional leaders and other government departments to work together to protect agricultural land.

For agro-ecological zoning to have an impact on the ground we embarked on province wide survey to map all the agricultural activities. Comprehensive data has been collected for the winter season and the winter crop survey for the province has been successfully concluded. We can now scientifically advice on which winter crops are suitable for which area.

As we speak data is being collected for summer cropping survey to provide information on all the areas where summer crops can be produced in the province. The Summer Crop survey is running concurrently with the livestock production survey. This database will be completed during the 2012/13 financial year and information will be made available to all planners and decision makers.

Honourable Speaker

The recently concluded COP 17 conference in Durban helped to create awareness to all of us of the impact of human activities on the environment. The days of development at the expense of the environment are over. The Agricultural sector is one of the more sensitive sectors of the economy to feel the impacts of climate change but at the same also a contributor to the greenhouse gas emissions. The dominant causes of greenhouse gas emissions are due to unsustainable practices such as conventional farming as well as lack of conservation ethos for land resources. We are well aware that Limpopo suffers from recurring droughts that alternate with devastating floods disasters and the farming sector bears the brunt of theses harsh climatic changes. When we were still recovering from the negative effects of drought and veld fires the Mopani District and in particular the Maruleng Municipality was swept by floods. Farmers suffered crop losses, livestock losses and damage to infrastructure.

To respond to the plight of the affected farmers an amount of R5 million was made available which was in addition to the R5m already made available for drought relief.

Honourable Speaker

In view of risks associated with climate change and for the province to anchor Climate Smart Agriculture; the 9 multiyear area wide LandCare projects implemented in all the districts of Limpopo are enabling communities to adapt and mitigate locally on the effects of climate variability, curb land degradation and contribute to food production.

As a measure to complement the LandCare Conditional Grant, the government introduced the National Fencing Scheme as of 2012/13 to promote protection of production and sensitive areas. An inclusive budget of over R20 million has been allocated for this purpose. This scheme is designed to address the infrastructure gap at farm level to assist communities who are affected by the lack of fencing for increasing agricultural production for different farming systems. An amount of R11 million has been budgeted for the fencing of 597 KM in all the five Districts. The scheme will further accelerate the economic growth and will transform the economy by creating sustainable work opportunities as well as sustainable livelihoods but most importantly, it will result in effective and sustainable resource management and the use thereof.

We are aware that the world wide need for agricultural land and food will rise dramatically in the next few years and as such productive land cannot lie fallow. This Province is in an ideal position to capitalise on the increased need for food worldwide. It is a fact that not only commercial farmers can produce for the export market as with the right technology small scale farmers can do the same. To ensure competitiveness of the emerging sector, the department has been subsidising farmer’s access to mechanisation through Mechanical Revolving Credit Access Scheme (MERECAS) for the past three years.

The race has begun to increase food production by fifty present (50%) by 2030. In the spirit of co-operative governance the Nnational Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries is donating seventy-two (72) tractors to the Limpopo Department of Agriculture (LDA) to further relieve the challenge of mechanisation faced by our farmers. The benefit this will bring to the province is that the amount of land under production can be increased and put to optimal use the communal farms that have been lying fallow.

This is yet another endeavour to contribute to food security amongst our people. However, having accepted and welcomed the donation, the department is challenged in that the donation requires substantial operational cost.

Our plea to this house is that it assists in mobilising resources for operations and to increase the number of units as seventy-two (72) are not near enough to meet the needs on the ground.

Program Director

It is with sadness to announce to this house that this will be the last budget speech we announce with Head of Department Professor Azwihangwisi Edward Nesamvuni still at the helm. Professor Nesamvuni has decided to move on back to the academic world at the end of this month. After painful negotiations, horse-trading and deliberations, we unfortunately could not convince him to stay.

It is under him that we manage to obtain clean audit for two consecutive years. It was his engaging style of leadership that set as aside as a department. Collectively of course we surprised ourselves as we collected award after award. In the past two years, we have collected more than 8 (eight) awards that includes:

• PMR awards for the best performing department
• PMR award for the best institution in alleviating poverty
• Second runner up in the Premier’s Excellence Award.

Professor Nesamvuni leaves a management that I am sure is prepared to take over the baton and take the department to greater heights. He took the great advice of Myles Munroe that says, “you are not a leader until you are prepared to hand over the baton to others”.

It is the leadership in this house that makes us what we are. It is the Young farmers who continue to win awards every year that determines the future of farming that is aging fast in this country. We are proud of you.

As we speak, our The Female Entrepreneur winners in the province are competing in the DAFF Female Entrepreneur of the year in Kimberley tomorrow night. As it is tradition every year, I do believe even this year, we are going to bring home some national awards. Malibongwe!!

These are the funds that the public, the Auditor General and the Legislature will hold us accountable for as we deliver service to our people and we commit to use it as we outlined in this budget speech and our Annual Performance Plan.

Thank you.