Province’s agricultural sector creates 38,600 jobs

The agricultural sector in the Eastern Cape has created 38,600 jobs in the past four years.

These numbers reflect parents who can put food on the table for their families and buy their children clothes and other essentials.

“We appreciate the efforts of commercial and smallholder farmers in this job creation drive,” premier Oscar Mabuyane said in his state of the province address at the Christian Centre in Abbotsford, East London, on Thursday last week.

Mabuyane said the goal had been to create a new cohort of black commercial farmers.

“But we faced the challenge of a lack of productive land,” he said.

Before 1994, large tracts of productive land were owned only by white compatriots, with black people nonexistent in the commercial agriculture space.

“Since the dawn of democracy, we have been working hard to reverse this tragedy of our history, because land is the primary factor of production,” Mabuyane said.

“As a result, since 1994 we have distributed a total of 561,000 hectares of land to our people.

“The impact of this programme is that because of the efforts of our government, 854 farms are now in the hands of black farmers in all districts.

“The distribution of these farms covers the demographics of our province fairly, with the youth, women and farm workers as the main beneficiaries.

“Indeed, we are sharing the land among those who work it, as the Freedom Charter directed us to do.

“We are thrilled when we see the beautiful work by farmers such as Vuyokazi Tenza from Matatiele, a successful for sheep and cattle farmer.

“Her sterling work in farming brought her accolades such as the Presidential Award in 2022, the Women Entrepreneur Award and the MTN Jump Starter Award in 2023.”

The premier said some of the farms handed over to the people were not productive.

He said with its commodity and private sector partners, the provincial government would unlock an estimated R220m grant in partnership with the Land Commission.

Mabuyane said the strength of the provincial economy rested in the manufacturing sector, but this did not discount the potential of other sectors as growth fronts for the future.

“A decade ago, we decided to diversify our economy, to complement the good impact of the manufacturing sector in employment creation.

“We identified agriculture as a potential growth sector, and we have been proven right,” Mabuyane said.