Master plan’s transformation potential questioned

The poultry industry is making strides in establishing previously disadvantaged contract farmers in line with the Poultry Sector Master Plan objectives, but questions about whether this was enough were raised at the recent online Poultry Market Information Day. It was jointly hosted by the National Agricultural Marketing Council and the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development.

Izaak Breitenbach, general manager of the South African Poultry Association’s Broiler Organisation, said the industry had established 13 black farmers since the plan was launched in 2019, while support was approved for an additional five farmers.

During this time, the industry had invested R1,14 billion of the R1,5 billion pledged under the plan, which had helped to increase slaughter capacity from 19,7 million birds a week in 1997 to 22,5 million broilers a week in 2022.

Slaughtering numbers had nevertheless remained at 21,5 million because of the outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), according to Breitenbach.

He said, however, that HPAI infections had slowed and the industry would probably recover its full capacity by the end of 2022 or the start of 2023.

The investment had resulted in 1 465 new jobs being created, which excluded jobs created in ancillary industries such as the packaging and feed industries. Breitenbach pointed out that the creation of one job in the poultry industry translated into at least one job in these ancillary industries.

Nakana Masoka, secretarygeneral of the African Farmers’ Association of South Africa, said, however, that it did not consider the empowerment of managers or supervisors as true transformation, and would rather have the Poultry Sector Master Plan reviewed to empower more farmers and address the underrepresentation of black farmers in the industry.

“Instead of empowering 50 farmers in total, we rather want government to establish 50 new broiler producers in each province and support them to become commercially viable production entities.”

Masoka added that the master plan had lost momentum when it came to transformation since the introduction of tariffs and other measures to address illegal trade. “The urgency to contribute to transformation seems to have been lost when these measures were introduced.” – Glenneis Kriel