Agriculture projects in Cape meet goals

AFTER the provincial Department of Economic Opportunities announced the results of an independent evaluation on agricultural land reform yesterday, a land expert also called for farmers to have more access to irrigation.

Economic Opportunities MEC Beverley Schäfer released the results of an independent evaluation done to determine the success of agricultural land reform projects in the province which receive support from the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.

Professor Ben Cousins from the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, said support from the department of agriculture for farmers was important. “But there is still the problem which farmers experience with irrigation and water rights, which are essential. This is very important because then farmers cannot water their crops or give water to their live stock,” Cousins said.

Schäfer said the study – which rated the projects on 39 indicators in environmental, socio-economic and economic categories – found that 72% of projects were successful in the period between 2014 and 2019.

She said the department set itself the goal of a 70% success rate for land reform. “These results show that the Western Cape’s commodity approach to land reform is creating successful businesses and farmers,” Schäfer said.

“The study evaluated 105 of the projects which received support from the department and found that 16% of farms were classified as ‘highly successful’ while 56% were classified as ‘succeeding’.”

Schäfer said that with the additional project implementation support provided by the agency Casidra, they were able to provide mentorship, training, market access contracts, access to grant funding as well as equipment and infrastructure.

“It is clear from this survey that the farms that are run as a business are the most successful. Farmers that are tax compliant, and keep sound financial and production records are the most likely to succeed.

Unfortunately, the environmental indicators, like the use of renewable energy and waste recycling seem to be among the lowest scoring indicators, which gives us an indication of where our support and extension services should be focusing going forward.”

Schäfer said most of the challenged projects were situated in the Central Karoo and Eden districts and many farms with livestock.

She said the areas were still dealing with the impact of the drought. They have also seen that these farms have a smaller degree of financial and tax compliance, and have lower ratings of relations between beneficiaries.

These results show that the Cape’s commodity approach is creating successful businesses Beverley Schäfer Economic Opportunites MEC