Don’t set new farmers up to fail

It is understandable that land has become such an emotional issue and that many South Africans believe if the land is “returned” to them, suddenly all will be well and wealth will fall from the heavens. Sadly, in the real world, it will never be like that. Land restitution has been happening around the country since 1994 but, so far, has not been done on a big enough scale – nor has it been carried out with the necessary government support.

Black farmers who benefitted from land bought for them by the government are, in many cases, reduced to subsistence farming, because the bureaucrats have not put in place effective enough systems to support them to turn the land into commercially viable agricultural enterprises.

The emerging farmers – many of whom were farm labourers or labour tenants on formerly white-owned properties – get very little in the way of financial support, like subsidised loans or grants, or skills training. On a number of these semi-subsistence farms, the land has splintered into even smaller plots as the co-owners have fallen out with each other and demanded their own individual title to a piece of land.

By contrast, in the Western Cape, where there is organised and committed government support, 72% of the supported land reform projects had been successful in the past five years, while only 4% were described as a “total failure”.

Farming has never been an easy business to be in – and South Africa, despite its vast size, has only a small portion of its land which is more than borderline in terms of agricultural viability.

The government needs to be careful about what land is handed over and how it is managed once that is done. These new farmers must be given the support they need – not set up to fail.