Cape Town - Less than 1 percent of family farms in the Western Cape are owned by black farmers.
This is according to African Farmers Association of South Africa (Afasa) secretary-general Aggrey Mahanjana, who criticised the lack of transformation and land reform in the province on Monday.
Mahanjana said farm share equity schemes, which allow farmers the option of selling their land through a share ownership scheme, together with high land prices, made the land reform process in the province more complex.
The Western Cape African Farmers Association of South Africa (Afasa-WC) developed a five-year strategy to drive commercial farming transformation in the province, Mahanjana said.
They include identifying and developing at least 50 black family-run fruit farms with no less than 50 hectares of land, which must have a packhouse with proper cold storage and a marketing company; granting 50 black family farmers a minimum of 1 000 hectares of land for livestock and grain farming; and developing 15 free-range poultry family farmers, each with a minimum of 16 000 birds.
“In reality, we don’t have commercial black farmers in this province. Instead of redistribution of high-value agricultural land to the previously disadvantaged in the Western Cape, the government preferred to use the farm share equity schemes where commercial farmers continued to keep land ownership, but only allocate shares of their farming businesses to farm workers,” Mahanjana said.
MEC for Economic Opportunities Alan Winde said the department was open to suggestions that aim to accelerate transformation.
“Committees will seek to identify land to meet the land reform goals set out in National Development Plan. The NDP has set a target of 20 percent transfer of agricultural land to previously disadvantaged South Africans by 2030, a goal which we are determined to contribute towards.
“I want to urge all of our partners, such as Afasa, to work together to escalate the number of successful land reform projects,” Winde said.
Cape Times