Politics of land appeals to many
THE opinion article by Zamikhaya Maseti from the Land Bank (“Expropriation brings hope”, The Star, August 10) is particularly concerning in that it makes the Expropriation of Land Without Compensation (EWC) seem to the ill-informed to be the answer to South Africa’s problems and even the assurance that we will not have to be concerned about food security in the future.
Sadly, his portrayal of the envisioned Peoples’ Farming in SA flies in the face of the reality of food production on a massive scale. The only way in which a country, can feed its growing population and export to African countries is through ever increasingly large farms operating on an industrial scale.
Small plot family farms are a thing of the past in every country. The more so in ever urbanising countries with fast growing populations.
When I was a boy in Canada living in a large dairy farming area outside Montreal, the farms were on the average 100 acres and each little family farm milked 30 to 40 head of cattle at a maximum. That was fine for the local needs of a city of 1 million. That city now has 4 million and every smaller city has increased 5 to 10-fold. Small farms are no more. They are now behemoths drawing on 10 000 acres of cultivates farm land highly mechanised and run by a few labourers and computers.
Instead of a few dozen head of cattle there are now 10 000 cows being milked in 24/7/365 milking parlours all computer-driven and managed.
This principle holds true for fruit and vegetable farms as well as sheep and pig farms. It is all about upscaling stock, downsizing labour and increasing output.
South Africa is no different; or at least should be no different except that the politics of a land grab are appealing to the masses. Who wouldn’t vote for someone who promises the untold wealth of being a land owner?
Farming is not for sissies. Back yard farmers growing a few mealie plants and a tomato are a far-removed prospect from the agri-business required to feed a population of 50 million.
If I was a farmer with this threat hanging over my head I would sell every piece of movable property on my land and tell the bank manager that I was insolvent and let some land grabber and his political masters try to make a living on my land. They might be able to subsist; the new farmer and his immediate family, but any hope of feeding even the village down the road will be impossible.
We are doomed to see, as in present-day Zimbabwe, mile after mile of fallow land being reclaimed by the bush. And with that starving millions.
Millions in Zimbabwe; tens of millions in South Africa. What is it that makes our politicians refuse to see that a failed policy is always going to be a failed policy?
If land must be expropriated, expropriate idle government land, not productive farmland regardless of who the owner is.
More to the point is give title deeds to urban house dwellers. Dr Peter C Baker
Small plot family farms are a thing of the past in every country