Programme Director;
President of AFASA, Mr Mike Mlengana;
Managing Director of AFASA, Mr Aggrey Mahanjana; Emerging Farmers and Producers;
Representatives of Agricultural Unions; Civil society;
Business;
The entire membership of African farmers' association of South Africa;
Officials from all spheres of Government; Ladies and Gentlemen
Molweni; goeie more; good morning
Thank you African farmers' association of South Africa (AFASA) for inviting me to their fourth Annual General Meeting and Conference and affording me the opportunity to address you today.
It is an honour and a privilege to be addressing AFASA's 4th Annual General Meeting and Conference—an organisation that is committed to creating a sustainable united body of African farmers with capacity to influence policies through lobbying and advocacy.
AFASA’s mission is to facilitate the development of African farmers in order to increase their meaningful participation in the agricultural sector.
Talking about meaningful participation, I wish to mention that I have interacted and had engagements with AFASA as one of our key stakeholders. I wish to reiterate that I will continue to engage AFASA and other stakeholders on sector matters.
There is no arguing that agriculture is a catalyst for economic growth and food security. The National Development Plan (NDP) and New Growth Path (NGP) concur that agriculture remains critical for employment and food security and sets a target of 1 million jobs by 2030.
Our targets are very clear; we want to create one 1 million jobs by 2030 and transform rural areas into sustainable economies. To achieve these targets, we are guided by the NDP, NGP and the Industrial Policy Action Plan.
As the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, we are responsible for the formulation of policy and regulations and creating an enabling environment for the sector. As a result, we developed the Agricultural Policy Action Plan (APAP) which seeks to provide both a long-term vision, and focused interventions in a five-year rolling schedule. Furthermore, it presents institutional arrangements and processes for achieving our targets and objectives.
It is reassuring and encouraging to know that AFASA supports the APAP as a means for a coordinated and targeted approach to agricultural development in South Africa, which involves all role players. This was articulated in May when we met to discuss the budget that I had tabled in Parliament and also to hear AFASA’s budget proposal.
During that meeting, AFASA proposed the development of the red meat and vegetables industry value chains. The APAP outlines a value chain approach in which it identifies priority commodities.
The selection criteria of the identified commodities, as acknowledged in the National Development Plan, include those with high growth potential and high labour absorption, e.g., fruit, specifically citrus. We further added commodities with the potential to contribute to a positive trade balance, e.g., wine; and food security, such as vegetables. These are as follows:
- Red meat
- Poultry
- Fruit and vegetables
- Sugar
- Wine
- Wheat
- Forestry
- Fisheries and Aquaculture
- Biofuels.
You will agree with me that there is likely to be much public debate on the selection of these commodities. It must, however, be noted that the identified commodities were consulted on through an inclusive process with commodity organisations, state-owned enterprises, provincial departments and other national departments.
Ladies and gentlemen, as you can hear, I am mentioning commodity groups and other entities because I believe in building strategic and meaningful partnerships that will help us to foster inclusion and collaboration to advance agriculture as a catalyst for change.
You will remember that during the 2015 State of the Nation Address, the President announced a “Nine-point Plan to ignite growth and create jobs,” one of which is “revitalising the agricultural and the agro- processing value chains”.
If we want to revitalise the agricultural and the agro-processing value chains, we need to work together. We need to work together to have a shared vision; seamless governance between national, provincial and local government; and a social compact with social partners.
Our success in the revitalisation of agricultural and the agro-processing value chains will be measured in terms of economic growth, job creation and food security.
The department will continue working with all stakeholders to revitalise agriculture so as to position food security and agrarian transformation high on the economic development agenda of the country.
We will continue to engage our stakeholders through various structures and gathering. These include:
- Industry Forum
- Farmer Organisation
- Value Chain Round Table
The Service Delivery Forum that was held at the beginning of this month is a perfect platform for sector stakeholders to contribute towards the refinement of government delivery services.
I have spent countless hours meeting stakeholders from the agricultural, forestry and fisheries sectors.
I have also met with organised labour, commodity groups and youth organisations. I believe, if we work together, we can help create more jobs in both smallholder and commercial farming.
We can increase contribution to the gross value of the agricultural GDP from R32,9 billion (21,8%) to 41,13 (25%) by 2019.
We can increase the current levels of smallholder and subsistence producers from 10% to 16% in 2019.There’s no denying that there are challenges in the sector such as:
- Market dominance and concentration-job loss
- Increasing labour costs
- Rising input costs and an increasing dependency on capital-intensive models of production
- Unprotected sector in an uneven international trade environment and other challenges that I cannot mention because of time constraints.
The department has identified new markets in the East, Middle East and Africa. Further opportunities identified for the Chinese market, include our animal products. We are engaging the relevant Chinese authorities in our request for market access of SA diary, beef and live dairy cows amongst others, the process of negotiations is on-going. With the conclusion of the Apples Protocol, Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF) is currently negotiating access for SA Pears, Lucerne and Soybean.
Focus within South East Asia (Thailand, Vietnam, India, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia), engagements is on-going with our counterparts on developing new markets for fresh fruit exports. We are also engaging a number of these markets for market access of SA beef and pork.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I am aware of the drought that farmers are facing. My department has been embarking on an accelerated intervention to mobilise animal feed to provide for emergency relief in order to mitigate against the impact of the drought.
This process is being followed up at provincial level with support from my department. In addition, DAFF continues to monitor conditions in the provinces and issue updated early warning information/ advisory information to the sector which includes strategies to implement during dry conditions. Farmers are further encouraged to adapt to the changing conditions i.e. consider suitable farming activities and implement good farming practices as conditions are also aggravated by poor farming practices.
We can address these challenges if we pull together and work towards a shared vision. We can start by addressing the growing concentration within the market which impacts job creation. We can start by localising food networks through infrastructure development, incentivising support for small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs) and small-scale producers across the agricultural, forestry and fisheries value chains.
In conclusion,
Let the farmers farm
Let Government govern; and
Let Industry provide investment and markets.
I wish you all a successful conference and I am looking forward to hearing the recommendations and resolutions of this conference.
Thank you.
