C Dowry: Launch of West Cape Agri Magazine

5 April 2006

OUR AGRICULTURAL LAND IS OUR HERITAGE AND OUR RESPONSIBILITY

Let me at the outset congratulate Johnnic Communications for taking the
initiative to launch a publication focussed on agriculture in the Western Cape.
This initiative will also be a publication aiming to bring news and views on
agriculture to a wide spectrum of readers and will hopefully also be a tool
which will inform people in agriculture, those dependent on agriculture and I
also want to add for the benefit of the editorial staff of this publication
those who are interested in making agriculture a career as this is my personal
vision.

I had a look at your last publication of East Cape/Oos Kaap Agri and I find
it to be informative and providing a perspective on wide ranging agricultural
issues. Let me therefore invite you to provide the Western Cape with a tool
that will inform and that will give scope to our wide ranging success stories
of agriculture in general, our emerging farmers which against all odds are
succeeding, our struggles with nature, our human interest stories and most
importantly our people which work in agriculture, farmers and farm workers
alike.

Let me use this opportunity to address one concern, which I am coping with
everyday, and I want to fully support and endorse my colleague in the Western
Cape Cabinet, Ms Tasneem Essop. She was quoted in weekend papers with a strong
stance against developers and here I must add developers of golf estates and
luxury housing estates. On a daily basis I am approached by developers who
bring proposals and we are provided with promises of the huge economic impact
for the province, the black economic empowerment (BEE) benefits and the job
creation potential. Let me give you our perspective. Approximately 85% of the
area of South Africa is utilised for some form of agricultural production and
forestry. However, it is estimated that only approximately 14,6 million
hectares of the total land area of the country can be regarded as "arable
land". A mere three percent of all arable land in South Africa can be
classified as "high potential agricultural land".

The total surface area of the Western Cape is 12 938 600, hectares of which
11 560 609 hectares have been classified as agricultural land with 2 454 788
hectares potential arable land and 9 105 821 hectares for grassing. In other
words only 18,9% of land is potentially arable. This places a huge burden on us
as government to protect the land as this is our heritage. As Minister of
Agriculture have done my utmost to protect agricultural land and I will most
definitely do so in future.

But the responsibility is not ours alone. Our farmers and our municipalities
must be cautious in making agricultural land available for development. They
also have a responsibility to protect our land instead of making a short term
profit.

Promises of Agri-BEE benefits and BEE ventures alone will not convince me to
release agricultural land for development. This morning Ms Su Birch of Wines of
South Africa was quoted in the Cape Times that South African wine exports will
drop in international rankings currently on ninth place as we cannot compete
with, for example Spain, in the amount of hectares with vines. New luxury
developments in wine estates for instance are also adding to less land
available and this will not contribute to the wine industry and to agriculture
in general.

Further to this, the Provincial Spatial Development Framework of the Western
Cape does not support housing developments outside the Urban Edge as well as
the change of land use of high and unique potential agricultural land. We must
in this responsibility of ours prevent urban sprawl at the cost of high
potential agricultural land.

Enquiries:
Jan Bosman
Cell: 083 630 6187
Tel: (021) 483 4700

Issued by: Ministry of Agriculture, Western Cape Provincial Government
5 April 2006